Circle of Blood (Forensic Mystery)

the sheriff, shifting awkwardly in his boots. “You know, I got kids of my own. That girl had her whole life ahead of her, and she did this.”
    “Perhaps,” said Dr. Moore.
    Her father gave Cameryn a look but said nothing.
    Cameryn knew the drill. There was a rote momentum in autopsies that never varied. She tried to get lost in the checklist, attempted to ignore the undigested secret that sat in her stomach like a stone. When she finished taking pictures, her father asked her to chronicle the inside of the backpack, which she was only too glad to do . Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she unzipped the dark blue pack.
    What if Justin missed a pocket with Hannah’s wallet inside it? What will I do then? Hide it? Confess?
    She needn’t have worried. After she opened every zipper and searched each pocket, the backpack revealed only a plastic comb, a ChapStick lip balm (coconut flavored) , a small package of Kleenex tissues, and the pair of silver scissors with the etched handles. Each went into a separate evidence bag, which her father took from her, signing and sealing them mechanically. “We’ll take possession of the backpack itself when you’re done,” Justin told her, handing her a grocery-sized paper bag. It was strange, she thought, that the backpack had been so empty. She was just about to bag the backpack itself when something caught her eye. Something was written on the nylon interior. Block letters, printed in ink along the zipper line.
    “Dad, do you see this?” she asked, excited. “Right there—it’s hard to read because the black ink barely shows. It says ‘GILBERT.’ Look,” she said, pointing.
    Eyes slanting, her father peered at the square letters. “That would have been easy to miss. I think you found us a real clue there.”
    “Yeah,” she murmured. “Maybe. Unless she stole the backpack from someone.”
    Her father looked at her quizzically. “Why would you say that? This girl doesn’t look like a thief.”
    “Uh-huh,” she answered too quickly, nodding. “I’m sure you’re right.”
    “At least that gives us a place to start. We’ll put that name in the database and see what we get. Well done.”
    Gilbert. Mariah Gilbert. Now Cameryn had a name to go with the person she’d chased through the street, the girl who had only moments later put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Having the surname made it harder, not easier. It made Mariah seem more real.
    “Hey, where’s her braid?” Cameryn asked suddenly. “It was in here, too,”
    It was Justin who answered. Standing next to the sheriff, wearing street clothes, he told her, “In the paper bag on the counter. Your pop signed off on it.”
    “There was a braid in her backpack?” Dr. Moore interjected, clucking his tongue. “So she cut off her hair and put it in her backpack? Very, very odd.”
    Patrick said, “The haircutting dovetails with the suicide. ”
    “If that is what we’re dealing with. You Mahoneys seem to want to jump the gun, pardon my pun.” Dr. Moore laughed softly at his own joke. “The word autopsy means ‘seeing with one’s own eyes.’ Shall we wait to discover what the body reveals before rendering a diagnosis? Let’s roll her. Ben—if you will.”
    Dr. Moore and Ben flipped Mariah onto her belly, which was a signal to Cameryn to take another round of pictures. There was mud along the cuff of Mariah’s jeans, and a tiny rip in the shoulder seam of the parka. Cameryn took more overall shots, and then they flipped Mariah once again so that she was supine. Ben, as gentle as a parent, pulled the hair back from Mariah’s face.
    “Let’s get the bags off her hands,” Dr. Moore said. “I’ll wipe them for gunshot residue. Unfortunately, a .22 never leaves much of it.” With a small porcelain pad, Dr. Moore dabbed the palm and fingers of each hand and dropped the pad into a gunshot-residue envelope, which he then sealed and signed. Next he clipped Mariah’s nails and folded the crescent pieces into a tissue, shaking his head as he did so. “The girl’s a nail-biter like you, Miss Mahoney. It makes my job harder since there’s not as much to work with. All right, people, hair samples are next.”
    Evidence was gathered piece by piece. With a black plastic comb, Dr. Moore gently raked through Mariah’s hair, placing the hairs, plus the comb itself, into a tissue. Once again these were slipped inside a coin envelope. This time, though, Moore handed the envelope to