Courting Death Read Online Free Page B

determination. “Even if your theory is true, then what my client needs is treatment, not jail.”
    “That’s between you and the prosecutor. My job is to investigate and charge her if she deliberately suffocated that baby.”
    I winced at his blunt assessment. Through the chapel door, I heard yelling. We both made for the door, but I reached it first. In the hallway I determined the direction of the disturbance and raced, Sam on my heels, into the viewing room.
    With horror I saw the lid on the tiny casket had been opened. With the strength of the crazed, Claire reached for the body, fighting off the people grabbing at her. For a moment she rested her hand on the child’s chest. I thought she meant to pick up the baby, but instead she appeared taken aback, shaking her head and perhaps coming to her senses. I pushed through the crowd, trying to reach Claire before Sam did.
    “Sweetheart, please. No.” Brian tried to draw his wife back, but she pushed him away. She reached out again, this time ripping the front of the pink frilly dress. Her primal scream of horror and rage filled the room.
    “Where’s my baby’s heart?”

Chapter Three
    My frustration vented itself through the loud click of my high heels against the hospital’s linoleum floor as I marched toward the nursing station on the first floor.
    At nine that morning, armed with a medical release signed by both Whitmans for good measure, I had presented myself at the records department. The pinnacle of hospital bureaucracy. After letting me simmer for over an hour, the clerk had informed me that baby Rebecca’s chart wasn’t there.
    The only other logical location was the neonatal nursing station. Strange, as it had been several days since Rebecca had been rushed to the hospital, but nothing would surprise me about the marvels of hospital records keeping.
    I didn’t know if anything would ever shock me again, not after seeing that Y- shaped surgical scar across the baby’s torso last night. I’d thought I’d seen it all, but nothing had prepared me for the sight of that tragic Frankenstein corpse.
    Brian Whitman had finally caught his hysterical wife up in his arms and carried her out. I pushed the lid shut as Sam called for a patrol unit. A white-faced Colin Depp had ushered out all the mourners. Then standing in the viewing room, almost wringing his hands, he swore up and down the baby had come to the home in that condition. He’d assumed the baby’s surgical scar was why the Whitmans elected a closed casket service.
    I didn’t get home until almost midnight and, after apologizing profusely to Kate who had stayed with my mother, spent a sleepless night tossing and turning, the image of Rebecca’s mutilated body haunting me. Up at dawn, by seven I had paid a visit to the fire rescue team who had transported her to the hospital and confirmed that they had resuscitated the infant but her vital signs had been extremely weak when she arrived at Oceanview Medical Center. I was in no mood for a bureaucratic two-step.
    A pinched-face, middle-aged woman dressed in a floral nurse’s uniform stood behind the counter, flipping through charts.
    “Excuse me.”
    “Be with you in a sec, honey.” The woman didn’t even bother to look up.
    I sighed and slapped the medical release on the counter. I wasn’t about to spend one more minute in this chilled antiseptic-laden atmosphere than I had to.
    “I’m Nicole Sterling. I have a signed parental release for the records of Rebecca Whitman, a five-month-old girl brought in several days ago.”
    “Records department is on four.”
    “I’ve already been there. They didn’t have the records. They said to check here.”
    The nurse rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath about clerical screw-ups. “What was the name?”
    “Rebecca Whitman. Parents, Claire and Brian.”
    She moved to another section and shuffled through the folders.
    “Well, well, well. Aren’t you the early bird?”
    Bracing myself, I