The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

church did a craft project using jelly jars—we put food coloring, fragrance, water, and crystals all together and sold them at the fair. Remember?”
    “No,” Cameryn said. She made it a point to avoid craft fair projects with her grandmother.
    “Well, I’m not surprised, it was years ago. The thing that amazed me was that one little teaspoon of the crystals would soak up enough water to fill the entire jar. A crystal smaller than a pea would swell to the size of an ice cube. So . . .” She jabbed the rose into the vase. “Let me tell you what I know from your father. I understand that Kyle ground the crystals into a powder. I also understand that he cut that powder into Leather Ed’s cocaine. Poor, lost soul, I never knew he was into such things,” she muttered, sticking three more roses in to make a pink halo. “But what I don’t understand is how you, Cammie, figured it out. How did you do it, girl?”
    “It’s not that big of a deal—I just noticed the plants didn’t die,” Cameryn said simply. “And the book—”
    “That part was amazing .” The chair came down with a thud as Justin broke into an even wider grin. “The book was opened to the page that talked about putting polymer into soil. Cammie noticed it when none of us did. Kyle left us a clue but we missed it. Cameryn didn’t.”
    “And the gas—thingamajig. What is that?” Her grandmother frowned.
    “Gas chromatograph—that’s a machine that tells what a substance is made of. The guys in the lab had already run a sample from all three of our vics’ lungs, but here’s the thing: the result came back as unknown. There was no match in the system. Moore said it would have taken weeks, maybe months, to figure out what the jelly stuff was, because there was nothing in the database to compare it to. But once they put the polymer crystals in the test tube they got a perfect hit. All thanks to your granddaughter.”
    “She’s a wonder, that one,” her grandmother agreed. “Would you like me to put your roses in a vase?” she asked, and Cameryn quickly agreed. She had other plans that included Justin, away from her mammaw’s prying eyes.
    “Um, Mammaw, can I show Justin something I made him? It’s in my room.”
    “What? Of course,” her grandmother agreed. “Leave your door open,” trailed after her as Cameryn pulled Justin upstairs, glad she’d at least brushed her teeth. They were barely inside her doorway when he turned her around, pressing her back into her wall as he kissed her, and Cameryn almost giggled at first because he was so daring, before the laughter died and her thoughts once again turned blurry at the edges.
    That was the power he’d taught her—to choose which trail she would mentally follow. Kyle, the horrible murders, the polymers, all were pushed back into the furthest places of her mind and she would choose this joy, this sensation that obliterated the dark. It was Valentine’s Day, and Justin had brought her roses, and a kind of bubbly happiness fizzed inside her with its own effervescence. She wanted to wrap herself inside this good feeling. For a moment he broke free, leaning away so he could look her in the eye, but she pursued him. Bouncing onto the tips of her toes, she pulled him back and kissed him again, noting the slightly abrasive feel of his unshaved skin against her lips. Then he was hugging her, laughing softly as she clung to him.
    “Excuse me, Justin, what is so funny?”
    He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Because I have studied body language—I know what people do when they’re lying, and you just told a whopper to your mammaw.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Really? Then what did you ‘make’ me?” He made a pretense of looking around the room.
    “Okay, I didn’t actually make you anything,” she admitted. “I was going to get you something but then things got all crazy and I didn’t get a chance. So I confess, I wanted to get you alone. Lying is a venial sin, not a mortal one, right? Believe it or not, I’m not sure anymore.”
    “It’s a venial sin.”
    “So I won’t burn in hell?”
    He placed a finger over her lips, hushing her. “Cammie, you are the best present of all.”
    For a moment he reset his gaze on her eyes, and then once again his lips found hers and time seemed to bend so that she couldn’t quite track where she was in space. The music downstairs was a part of it, the soft fluted notes of Celtic music her