Unknown Means Read Online Free PDF Page B

about dying,” she snapped, stung that he would consider his fiancée’s beauty in any medical decision.
    “A trach is too risky, anyway,” he hastened to add. “Of course, intubating means she has to be heavily sedated or she might pull the tube out. She won’t be conscious to answer any questions for a while.”
    For a doctor, he seemed to be thinking like a cop. “Is she on a respirator?”
    “No. The tube is there to keep her trachea from swelling to the point it cuts off her air. There’s nothing wrong with her lungs. But now we have to make sure she doesn’t stop breathing from the heavy sedation. If she does, then we will have to use a respirator, and that brings another host of dangers. We might have to paralyze the muscles with curare, and then she’d have to be weaned off that—”

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    Now he sounded like a doctor. “Did the lack of oxygen have any . . . effect?”
    “Her EEG is normal. No brain damage. Her body is in shock from what has happened to it, but she should recuperate. She’ll be fine.” He repeated this, as if convincing himself. “She’ll be fine.”
    “There’s something else you should know.” Evelyn gave him the basic information regarding Grace Markham’s death.
    “And this woman lived in our building?”
    “Tenth floor. You didn’t know her?”
    “No, but I never have the time to meet my neighbors.”
    “Marissa moved in with you, what, three months ago? Did she ever mention the name Grace Markham?”
    “No. You think this guy could live in the building?”
    “It’s a possibility.” Evelyn moved out of the way of a nurse with a meds cart. Marissa and Grace Markham vaguely resembled each other—in their twenties, pretty, long dark hair. The killer could have an obsession with those characteristics. “Any odd incidents come to mind? Weird phone calls or letters? Someone following either of you? Any ex-boyfriends of Marissa’s coming out of the woodwork?”
    She could see the gears in his battered mind dutifully turn.
    “Nothing. We’ve had tons of calls lately, but all about the wedding.
    We just want to get married, and my mother is trying to turn it into the social event of the season, so there’s a lot of back-and-forth with caterers and the ballroom. But nothing odd.”
    “Where was she tonight?”
    “Out with the entourage—the bridesmaids. They had a dress fitting tonight and were going to get dinner afterward.”
    “Has Marissa seemed worried lately?”
    He managed a grin for a split second before reality returned and erased it. “Just about my mother. And her mother. And then my mother again.”
    Evelyn asked herself the same question and got the same answer.

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    She saw Marissa five days a week at a stressful, demanding job, and lately the girl had been nothing but radiant. Evelyn leaned closer, trying not to breathe on the young man through her unbrushed teeth. “What about you? Any old girlfriends, a past flame who can’t let go?”
    A brief, modest smile, which didn’t reach his eyes. “Nope. My girlfriends bid me adieu with shocking ease. Hell, the last woman I dated before Marissa is coming to the wedding and bringing her husband.” He paused. “What about Marissa’s job? You guys must come in contact with scumbags every day.”
    “Yes and no.” Marissa’s DNA analyses had sent a lot of people to jail, but forensic testimony represented only part of the overall prosecution. Defendants were more likely to resent the cops who arrested them, the juries who convicted them, or the judges who sen-tenced them as opposed to one lone lab tech. But one never knew. If Marissa’s testimony had been the prosecution’s entire case, a violent offender might have secretly vowed revenge. Evelyn would direct the cops to Marissa’s past cases, ask them to check who might have been recently released.
    And whose trials were approaching. A criminal might just be stupid enough to believe he could