Read Online Hour Game by David Baldacci - Free Book Online Page B

pushing a gurney with a body on it. She rolled the gurney to her workstation area and clicked on the overhead exam light.
    Clancy coughed and put a hand up to his face mask. Sylviaquickly gave him the same lecture on sense of smell deadening. He removed his hand grudgingly but seemed to be a little unsteady on his feet. Sylvia nudged a chair over near him. Michelle noticed the movement; Clancy didn’t. The two women exchanged a silent communication.
    “This is Steven Canney.” When she uncovered the body, Michelle’s hand shot out and pushed the chair behind the deputy in time to catch him as he slumped backward, gagged and then passed out.
    They rolled him in the chair to a far corner of the room, where Sylvia cracked open a tube of ammonia and stuck it under his nostrils. He came to, jerked up and shook his head, looking awful.
    “If you’re going to be sick, there’s a restroom right there,” she said, pointing.
    The young man turned red. “I’m sorry, Doc. Real sorry.”
    “Deputy Clancy, there’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s a horrific sight. And the first time I saw something like that, my reaction was the same as yours.”
    He looked surprised. “It was?”
    Yes, she assured him, it was. “I have a written report that I can give you. If you want to leave, you can. If you want to rejoin us when you feel better, that’s fine too. If you just want to sit here, that’s okay as well.”
    Deputy Clancy decided on the latter, although as soon as they turned away, he slumped down on the desk, his face in his hands.
    Sylvia and Michelle went back over to Steve Canney’s corpse.
    “Did you really pass out your first time?” asked Michelle quietly.
    “Of course not, but why make him feel even worse? The men almost always pass out. And the bigger the man, the faster.”
    Sylvia pointed out various areas of Canney’s wounds with a long stainless-steel rod. “As you can see, the supratentorial of the brain was pretty much eviscerated, not unexpected with a shotgun wound.”
    She put down the rod and her face clouded over. “Canney’s father came in to see his son. I advised him not to, that the wounds were very bad, but he insisted. That’s the toughest part of this business. He was able to give a presumptive ID from a birthmark and a scar on his knee from an old football injury. We obtained a positive ID from dental records and fingerprints.”
    Sylvia took a deep breath. “My heart went out to him, although he took it pretty stoically. I’ve never had children, but I can imagine what it would be like, having to walk into a place like this and…” Her voice trailed off.
    Michelle let the silence hold for a few moments and then said, “And Canney’s mother?”
    “She died several years ago. I guess that was a blessing of sorts.”
    Sylvia returned to her examination. “Determining the firing range on shotgun wounds is tricky. The most reliable way is to fire the same ammo from the exact same gun with the same choke setting. We don’t have that luxury here, but you’ll note that the entrance wound has no scalloping of the margin and no satellite lesions. So the distance between muzzle and victim was contact to less than two feet.” She covered what was left of Canney’s head with a small sheet.
    “Do you know the make of the ammo?”
    “Oh, yes. The wadding from the shotgun round was recovered from the wound. All the pellets also stayed in him. That’s why the wound is so devastating. All the kinetic energy’s used up internally.” Sylvia looked at her notes. “It was a twelve-gauge loaded with nine double-ought pellets of Federal manufacture.”
    “And Pembroke died the same way?”
    “She was shot in the back. The injuries were instantly fatal but not as devastating. There were numerous bits of the shattered windshield glass embedded in her skin as well. Conclusion: the killer fired the first shot through the windshield. Looking at the wounds alone, you’d think the range of weapon