Close to the Bone

9

Henry parked behind his clinic the next morning.

Even though the practice was small, it filled him with pride every time he saw the building. He was making a difference on the island and didn’t know how the residents had survived without a doctor for so long. He looked forward to the rush of the tourist season and wondered if it’d feel as if he was back in a busy LA emergency room. Probably not. He grabbed his bag out of the back seat, imagining a line of tourists with swimmer’s ear and allergy problems. Not LA car accident or shooting victims.

One of the back windows caught his eye.

Is that broken?

He froze and studied the high window. Some shards of glass were still visible at the top, but most of the pane was gone. His gaze shot to the back door. Closed. Pulling his hand inside the cuff of his shirt, he tried the handle. Unlocked.

They got in through the window and left through the back door.

He’d considered an alarm system a dozen times. But the island had seemed so mellow.

The drug seeker.

“Shit. Asshole.” There were no drugs on the premises. The strongest medication the idiot would have found was Advil.

Henry circled the building, eyeing the other windows and checking the front door. Everything else was fine. He pulled out his phone and searched for the local number for the sheriff’s office. This wasn’t a 911 situation. No doubt the druggie was long gone. In fact Henry almost hated to bother the deputies, but maybe “Blake Shelton” had left fingerprints behind and was already in a database for a different crime.

Deputy Black assured him she’d be right over. Not an exaggeration, since their tiny office was three blocks away. Two county SUVs appeared within a minute, and Henry greeted Tessa and Bruce, his nurse’s fiancé.

Tessa and Bruce circled the property as she directed Bruce where to take photos. When they were ready to go in, Tessa slowly opened the back door and announced herself. She and Bruce entered with their weapons ready as Henry calmly leaned against the hood of his vehicle. If the druggie was still in there, he had to be sound asleep to not hear all the noise the three of them had made outside.

“Come on in, Doc,” Tessa called after a minute. “It looks pretty good in here.”

Henry walked through the office and had to agree. Cabinet doors were open, but the insides were neat.

Bruce and Tessa tailed him on his tour. He stopped in the doorway to his second exam room. “Dammit.” Glass from the broken entry window covered the floor.

“At least that seems to be the only damage,” Tessa pointed out. “Is anything missing? Drugs? Equipment?”

He told her about his encounter with the drug seeker from the day before. “The only drugs here are available over the counter. I haven’t noticed that anything is missing yet.”

Bruce spoke up. “I’m surprised he didn’t take your computer equipment or anything else he could sell for quick money.”

“Me too,” said Henry. He checked in his lab, a small room with a microscope, monitor, and some other portable equipment that would have been easy to walk away with. Again the storage cabinet doors were open, but nothing was out of place. His gaze shot to an empty spot on a low shelf, and his heart stopped.

“Shit.”

The tub of bones was gone.

An hour later Henry still felt like an incompetent idiot.

He’d crossed the drug seeker off his list of suspects—why would he steal bones and not the equipment? Now his suspect list was completely blank.

Tessa had called Cate, who now stood with her hands on her hips, clenching her jaw in irritation as she glared at the empty shelf. “We had just looked at them,” she mumbled.

Henry said nothing. He’d fucked up.

Cate looked at Tessa. “Chain of evidence was intact. Leaving the bones with the coroner for delivery to the lab wasn’t wrong.”

“I agree,” said Tessa. “If the county had stored them, they’d still be gone if that was the thief’s primary goal. Our evidence shed is locked with a chain and pathetic padlock.” She looked at Bruce. “I’m assigning you a project. Figure out an upgraded evidence storage system for our office. We’ve been lucky for too long. I’ll get the funding from the sheriff.”

“I’m on it,” the deputy replied. He’d covered areas of the office with black fingerprint powder, and Henry had watched in fascination as the young man twirled the feathery brush. The tons of smeared fingerprints on the cupboards weren’t encouraging, but Bruce had seemed pleased with some prints he’d found on large pieces of the broken window.

“I should have locked up the bones. They were evidence,” Henry said. “This is on me.” Bruce won’t be the only person looking for secure storage. And an alarm system.

“What’s done is done. Locking your cabinet wouldn’t have made a difference,” said Cate briskly.

“This brings the entire investigation to a halt,” complained Tessa. “We’ve got to find those bones so we can have them identified. I’ll get the fingerprints entered as quickly as possible and hope we can track down our thief.”

Henry looked at Cate, sending a question with his eyes. She gave a small nod.

“Maybe it’s not a complete halt,” said Henry. “I did a comparison between Samantha Bishop’s and Becca Conan’s films with the teeth. I’m pretty certain the bones belong to Becca.”

Tessa stared at him, hope in her eyes. “How certain?”

“Ninety-nine percent.” He pictured the small incisors on Becca’s films. The skull had the exact same anomaly. “The skull and Becca’s films had pegged lateral incisors, or microdontia—I looked up the right term last night,” he told Cate. “It’s not a rare occurrence, but it is unusual enough, along with some other things I noticed, to make a tentative identification.” He glanced over at Tessa; she still wasn’t convinced.

“I can’t go to Rex Conan with that,” she said.

“I agree,” said Cate. “And I don’t think we should tell him the bones are gone just yet. He’s not expecting an identification until the ferry can get the bones to the mainland. We’ve got a window of time to hunt them down.”

“Before everyone knows I screwed up,” said Henry. “My reputation here is shot.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Cate said forcefully at the same time Tessa declared, “You did nothing wrong.”

He wasn’t comforted.

“They couldn’t have gotten far with the bones,” Cate said. “The thief has to still be on the island.”

“Unless they took a personal watercraft.” Tessa turned to Bruce. “Contact the marinas. I want to know who’s left since yesterday afternoon. Luckily most boats are out of the water for the winter, so there won’t be much activity.”

Bruce nodded and strode toward the front door.

“Private docks,” muttered Cate.

“I know,” agreed Tessa. “But maybe we’ll get lucky. Thieves aren’t usually rich enough to afford a boat, let alone a property with a dock.”

“He could have stolen a boat from a private dock or marina,” added Henry.

“I’d planned to review Becca’s last twenty-four hours today,” said Cate. “Do you want help with finding the bones instead?”

“No. Do what you planned.” Tessa eyed Henry. “The doc here seems pretty certain the bones are Becca’s. Let’s not stop our progress on that aspect.”

Henry felt like he was under a spotlight. “What can I do?”

“Open up shop,” Tessa told him. “Widow’s Island still needs its doctor.”

True.

But it felt like Tessa and Cate were cleaning up his mess.