The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

Moore,” she said to her father. Then she turned to Ben. “By the way, I’m old enough to answer for myself. Eighteen in just a few days, remember? I’ll meet up with you guys in Histology.”
    Her words seemed to balloon out into the very corners of the garage. Ben looked nervously from Cameryn to Patrick, then back again. Finally, her father said, “I guess it’s been decided.”
    “All right then, Miss Almost-Legal,” Ben answered, looking relieved. “You know the way, right?”
    “First door past the autopsy suite.”
    She could feel their eyes on her as she walked up the concrete ramp. They didn’t follow right away. As she opened the door she stole a quick glimpse and saw her father’s hands moving through the air, although he spoke so softly she couldn’t make out the words. Ben merely shook his head from side to side.
    Down the hallways she went, stopping only briefly to let Amber know she was there to see Dr. Moore. Eyeing her up and down, Amber waved Cameryn through, and soon Cameryn found herself knocking on a gray metal door that had a plastic nameplate stamped DR. JOSEPH MOORE, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST.
    “Come in.”
    The door creaked on its hinges as Cameryn stepped inside. “You asked to see me, Dr. Moore?”
    “I did. Sit down, Miss Mahoney,” he said, and motioned her to a brown chair with metal legs. “And shut the door.”
    His office was small, claustrophobically so. Dr. Moore sat hunched at his desk poring over an open file, his reading glasses resting on the tip of his bulbous nose. “One moment,” he said as his finger glided down the page.
    “Sure. Take your time.”
    He nodded and continued reading. The desk was buried beneath neatly stacked folders whose pages bristled with multicolored tabs. Two bookshelves took up what little floor space was left, and three more were bracketed to the walls. Each was filled with medical books and forensic journals, arranged according to height. One solitary shelf had been dedicated to plastic models of various organs: a red- and blue-veined heart sat next to a plastic eye with a removable lens.
    Directly to her right hung a painting of a meadow that looked different from the cheap art that lined the hallway walls. In this painting, grasses bent beneath an unseen wind while flowers nodded on the ends of long stalks. But the flowers weren’t the star of the scene. Colors in the painting consisted mainly of various hues of green mixed with yellows and browns. In extremely small, unobtrusive letters she made out the name Moore etched in the bottom corner.
    He shut the folder and looked up at her, his hands folding together so that his fingers intertwined.
    “This is yours?” she asked.
    “Yes. I like to paint. But I’ve always seen things differently than most. My wife prodded me to put flowers in my meadow, but I personally like the grasses. The grasses and the leaves are what I find beautiful.”
    “The leaves?”
    “Yes. In my opinion the buds get all the glory, but it’s the leaves that keep the plant alive. Rather like forensics. The surgeons on high are the roses of the medical world, but we who choose forensics make the bloom possible. Sit,” he said again, and this time she sank into the brown chair.
    “I’m not sure I understand . . .”
    “It doesn’t matter. Just the musings of an old man. We have other things to discuss today.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. She’d never seen him without his glasses before. The skin around his eyes was riddled with fine wrinkles, like the cracks in a Ming vase. He was minus his white lab coat, another first. His cotton shirt was a blue checkered pattern that he’d buttoned up almost to his collar, which was crisp with starch. “Well, Miss Mahoney, here you are. And here I am. And I don’t quite know where to begin.”
    This, too, was odd. Dr. Moore, so caustic and abrupt, had always charged forth, never at a loss for words or purpose. Cameryn tried to swallow back the nervousness she was beginning to feel. She unzipped her parka and hung it on the back of the chair carefully, making sure it was centered. “You said the case involved me. The Safer case,” she prompted.
    “Yes. But before I get into the technicalities I feel I should give you a reason. One thing builds upon the other, you see. I need you to . . . understand . . . why I’m prepared to breach ethics. I’ve never done that, not in forty-one years in this macabre business. But I’m