“What the hell is going on?” Ryker asked.
Spenser’s eyes focused on the group of women in front of the stage. They were screaming, gesturing wildly, and freaking out. She quickly realized the music had stopped, and she saw the band looking shell shocked and on the verge of panic themselves as they gathered around somebody lying face down on the stage.
“Oh my God,” Spenser muttered.
Without a word to Ryker, Spenser took off at a run, shouting at people to get out of her way as she made her way to the bandstand. She raced up the stairs and dashed across the stage, waving for the band to move.
“Somebody call the paramedics!” she shouted. “Now!”
As the drummer pulled a phone from his pocket and made the call, Spenser dropped to her knees beside the prone form of Seth Hamill and knocked his hat out of the way. Amanda was suddenly there beside her and, together, they gently rolled the man over onto his back. Hamill’s pale face was slack, his mouth hung open, and chunks of vomit were smeared across the front of his shirt and the side of his face. His sandy brown eyes were wide open and fixed on some point well beyond this world. The paramedics wouldn’t be able to do a thing for him.
Spenser put her fingers to his neck and then his wrist, desperately searching for a pulse. Feeling nothing, she raised her gaze to Amanda and shook her head, a sober expression crossing her face.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“This is the first time somebody ruined the Strawberry Festival by dying,” Dr. Swift said. “Most years, we only have to deal with a scuffle or two.”
“And I didn’t even get my strawberry fritter,” Spenser muttered to herself.
Hours after she and her deputies interviewed everybody they could find who had been even remotely close to the bandstand, Spenser made her way over to Doc Swift’s office. As the town coroner, he got the first look at the body and made the determination about the cause of death. His ruling and what he put down on the death certificate had legal and administrative ramifications, not to mention it could impact life insurance claims, so it was imperative that he got it right. Spenser had spoken to several people at the festival who’d confirmed witnessing Hamill screaming into his cell phone, gesticulating wildly as he argued with whomever was on the other line.
There might be more at play here, and that was one reason Spenser insisted on being present for the initial examination of a body and asked that Swift consult her before making his final determination. It was a change to his routine Doc Swift hated—he didn’t like having anybody, let alone the sheriff, looking over his shoulder. But as the top cop in town, it was her prerogative to be involved, so she chose to exercise it, much to his chagrin.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, but Swift wore so many hats, and had such a consuming love for playing golf, his attention was often divided and his attention to detail was sometimes lacking. Because they had the potential to affect somebody’s life in a very real sense, Spenser wanted to make sure she agreed with his findings before she let him sign off on them, setting them in stone forever.
Spenser looked down at the body of Seth Hamill stretched out on the stainless-steel table with a white sheet pulled up to his chest, covering everything but the sutured tops of the Y-incision Swift had made when he did the autopsy. His eyes were still open, and his lips and skin had a pale blue pallor. It was so strange to see him in this condition when she’d seen him bouncing and gyrating around on stage not that long ago. It was yet another reminder that life came at you fast and that everything in your world could change in a literal heartbeat.
“What are you thinking?” Spenser asked.
Doc Swift looked up from his clipboard, a stern expression on his face. “There are no internal or external signs of trauma. No gunshot wounds, knife wounds, or unexplainable cuts or bruises. There was some bleeding in his stomach and there appeared to be some slight damage to his heart. The rest of his internal organs seemed to be clean and functional, and since Mr. Hamill has no documented history of drug abuse, I’m leaning toward myocardial infarction.”
Spenser’s eyebrows rose. “Heart attack? Even with the damage to his heart and this stomach bleed you mentioned?”
Swift consulted his clipboard. “It’s a bit of a mystery, I admit, but there are a dozen things that could account for it. However, given the damage to his heart, and according to his chart, there’s a history of heart disease in his family—his father died at age forty-five. Mr. Hamill here is forty—”
“But look at him. He’s in great shape. He obviously works out and takes care of his body—”
“None of which precludes the possibility of heart disease.”
Spenser opened her mouth to reply but closed it again. Medicine wasn’t her field of expertise, so she shouldn’t really have an opinion on it. Heart disease was hereditary in some cases, sure, and if Hamill had become agitated before his performance, that could certainly factor in, but as she looked at the dead musician, something about it didn’t feel right to her. She frowned as she pulled on a pair of gloves then moved down to Hamill’s feet and lifted the sheet. She looked at the soles and heels of his feet and carefully checked between the corpse’s toes.
“What are you doing?” Swift asked.
“Looking for track marks.”
“Sheriff Song, there is nothing in his history or preliminary blood work that indicated drug abuse.”
“Which does not preclude the possibility of drug abuse,” she said, stifling the satisfaction of being able to throw his words back at him. “You know medicine, but I know people, Dr. Swift.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that people lie. People hide things,” she replied. “Just because it’s not in your chart doesn’t mean Mr. Hamill didn’t dabble with drugs.”
“It doesn’t mean he did either.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I think it’s important we do a more thorough exam to rule it out. I’d like to be sure,” Spenser told him.
“You have a very cynical view of human nature, Sheriff.”
“It’s an occupational hazard,” she said. “It also doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
An irritated expression on his face, Swift watched as Spenser checked both of Hamill’s feet and after that, moved on to his hands. She spread the fingers apart and looked closely. IV drug users were notorious for hiding their addiction, as well as the spots they injected themselves. Between the fingers and toes was most common. It was discreet and not easily seen. You had to be looking for track marks in those spots to find them. But Spenser didn’t find any marks on Hamill.
“I told you that you weren’t going to find anything,” Swift said with a note of triumph in his voice. “There is nothing in his records suggestive of a drug problem.”
Spenser didn’t reply but rather was ready to concede the point, and in light of no other obvious explanations, ready to sign off on Swift’s preliminary ruling. As she started to pull the sheet up again, Spenser noticed something on Hamill’s torso and paused. Letting the sheet fall again, she leaned down and looked closely.
“What is it?” Swift asked.
Instead of answering, Spenser reached behind her and took a magnifying glass off Swift’s rolling cart of tools. She held the magnifying glass up and bent low, scrutinizing what had caught her attention. It was hard to see… almost imperceptible. But the way the hair on his belly parted as the sheet moved and the way the light from overhead hit his skin, it revealed what looked to Spenser to be a small puncture wound.
“Doctor Swift, was Hamill diabetic? Did he have to take insulin?” Spenser asked. “Or did he have any condition that required him to take a needle?”
Swift referenced his chart. “No. To both questions. Why? What is it?”
