of NETWORK OF DECEIT
by Tom Threadgill
Read Part One of
the excerpt on The Page Unbound.
He nodded. “Zachary Bryce Coleman,
seventeen-year-old Caucasian male. I have his file ready to, um, it’s right,
well . . .” He moved his hand over his desk twice, then pounced
on a folder. “Here we go. The young man expired in rather peculiar
circumstances.”
“Yeah, it was on the news too.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I’m afraid I
don’t spend much time watching television.” He dragged his finger down a sheet
of paper. “The death happened two days ago. Exceptionally hot, if you’ll
recall. The decedent and a group of friends planned to escape the heat at the
water park. Have you ever been there, Detective?”
“Uh, no. Not that I recall.”
He tilted his head. “Is that something
you’d forget? Of course, if you visited before the age of three, it’s unlikely
you’d remember, and recent studies regarding Freud’s childhood amnesia theory
indicate that most events occurring before a child reaches seven or eight fade
as—”
“No,” she said. “I’ve never been
there. You were saying the victim and his friends wanted to spend the day at
the water park?”
“Yes, along with thousands of others.
He had a blood-alcohol content of point-zero-eight. The final toxicology report
may show a variance from that number, but he definitely consumed alcohol. Our
initial theory was the combination of excessive temperatures and alcohol
consumption led to heatstroke. The autopsy, however, showed no signs of
petechial hemorrhages or—”
“English, please.”
“There was no indication of bleeding
in the membranes surrounding some of the body’s organs. No congestion in the
lungs or swelling in the brain. None of the symptoms we’d typically identify in
a heatstroke victim. And before you ask, alcohol poisoning would exhibit many
of these same indications, as well as others which also were not detected
during the autopsy.”
She planted her elbows on the chair’s
armrests and inched forward. “How did he die, then?”
“We don’t know. It will be four to six
weeks before the toxicology tests are completed, so as of now, the cause of
death is undetermined.”
“You told Lieutenant Segura it was
suspicious. Just because you don’t know how he died doesn’t mean it’s a
potential homicide.”
His eyebrows scrunched together. “What
in the world?” He leaned back in his chair, pulled off his left shoe, and
removed a tea bag from it before tossing the thing in the trash.
Don’t ask. Don’t do it. No wonder
Sara broke things off. “I was asking why you think this might be a
homicide?”
He slid a large photograph toward her.
“Take a look at this. That’s from the water park’s security cameras. First image
of Coleman on that ride. I requested video of him from the time he entered the
water until he was pulled out. This is all they had. Something about camera
malfunctions, but they estimated he’d been on the attraction for somewhere
around two minutes at that time, based on the distance between the last working
camera and this one.”
The cropped photo focused on the teen,
though numerous people were visible in the water around him.
Amara glanced at the doctor. “Is he
alive or dead here?”
“Hard to tell, isn’t it?”
“No video of him getting in the
water?”
“What you saw is everything I
received, but my request was extremely limited in scope. Beyond that, you’d
have to ask the park.”
She scooted back in her chair and
crossed her legs. “I get why you think this could be suspicious. Trust me, I’d
love to look into this, but so far you haven’t said anything that makes me
believe it might be a homicide.”
“I thought not.” He pulled another
photo from the folder and passed it over. “Tell me what you see.”
She held the picture higher. “Bottoms
of his feet? Nothing unusual as far as I can tell.”
“No? Think about it.”
Guessing games. What fun. “Dr.
Pritchard, I’m not a medical expert. If there’s something here that might—”
“Do you ever shower? Take a bath?”
How did Sara last so long with this
guy? “Now and then.”
He waved his hand in a circular motion
for her to continue. “And your toes and fingers . . .”
She knocked her fist against her
forehead. “They wrinkle. Pucker up. And Zachary Coleman’s toes didn’t.”
“Precisely. Our central nervous system
triggers an involuntary reaction when we interact with water. Our capillaries
shrink, causing the skin to furrow. As to why this happens, there are several
theories. My favorite is—”
“I’ll cede the point,” she said. “So
why weren’t his toes wrinkled?”
“It usually takes less than five
minutes for the body to initiate the reaction to water. That didn’t happen with
Mr. Coleman because his nervous system ceased functioning before the response
could begin.”
Amara licked her lips. “You think he
was already dead when he went in the water.”
“No, Detective. I’m certain of it.”
Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of February 21-28, 2021, compiled by aTexasBookLover exclusively for Lone Star Literary Life. 
