Chapter Two

Woody stopped in at the front desk at the morgue and picked up a visitor's pass. Since he was no longer with homicide, he no longer had carte blanche access to autopsy and trace. He was sure Garret would arrange something for him, at least until the Philip Buchanan case was solved. He walked down the hall to where Lily's office was. "Hey, Lily," he called out, pausing at the grief counselor's door.

"Woody! What are you doing here?" She rose from her desk to give him a quick hug.

"Had a big corporate guy take a bullet this morning. Chief sent me over."

"Oh....the Philip Buchanan thing...Jordan's working with him now."

"Where's she at?"

Lily checked her chart. "Autopsy three."

"Autopsy three? Where's that? You used to have only two..."

"It's around the corner from her office. It's a more private autopsy room...with more of the expensive equipment. It's saved for our more....affluent victims or victims that had died under really suspicious circumstances. You can't miss it."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks Lily. And you're looking wonderful."

"Thanks, Woody. You, too."

He walked down the hall towards Jordan's office. Nothing much had changed. Nigel's and Bug's offices were still where they were. So was Garret's...and so was Jordan's. He hadn't been back since his transfer to white collar crimes. He paused by her office door. Still pretty much the same, but she had finally persuaded Garret to let her paint it a pale lavender. She had hung a few pictures. There were even a few plants. And there were some photos on her desk. A recent one of her and Max. Woody smiled. He didn't know Max was back. He was truly glad for Jordan. One of her and Nigel. One of her and Garret. One of her and Lily. One of Bug and Lily. None of him anymore. Not that he expected it. As a matter of fact, as well as he could remember, she had slowly removed his when he began seeing Devan. He pulled himself away from the door and headed down to the new autopsy room.

He could see her through the doors. She was still working on the body with trace. He quietly swung the doors open. "What do you know?" he asked.

Jordan jumped at the sound of his voice. He had startled her. She had been so engrossed in her work that she didn't hear him come in. "I know quite a bit right now," she said. "You may need to come in and sit down.

"To begin with, your guy didn't shoot himself. There are print marks of the gun on his palms, yes, but no gunpowder residue. So your guy didn't commit suicide. He was killed."

"Do we know when?"

"Well, the best that lividity and liver temperature tell us, roughly 14 hours ago."

"That doesn't mesh the time that witnesses said they heard the gunshot..."

"Yeah, I know. But the facts don't lie. Your guy didn't kill himself and he was dead before he was shot."

"Okay, the shooting was an attempted cover up. So do we know how he died?"

"Not yet. Let me do the autopsy and hopefully I'll have some answers for you."

"Mind if I stay?"

"Knock yourself out," she said as she proceeded to do the Y-incision and begin her detailed autopsy of the victim.

Woody watched her in silence. Watching her work brought back so many old memories – some of them incredibly good. And some of them incredibly painful. He had learned a lot in the morgue. About forensics, about life....about love.

He had pursued her. Gallantly, patiently, carefully. And it hadn't worked. He had been fascinated by her from the beginning....her beauty, her brains...her past. A past that so closely mirrored his own it was scary. And it was due to his past that he understood her so well. What it was like to lose a mother at a young age. What it was like to have a cop as a father.

What it was like to miss your dad so incredibly much. The only thing different was that Max had come back. His father never would.

But he had never let her know this. Never. Not once. He had let Jordan go on thinking he was truly the happy-go-lucky detective from Kewuanne, Wisconsin. Somewhat innocent. Somewhat blundering. Overly hyper. He had never once told her the truth about himself...or his dark past. He didn't know if he hadn't wanted to burden her with his own best-kept secrets or if he just hadn't wanted to talk about them – in the hopes that if he ignored them, they would truly go away. Never have existed. And Jordan would continue to think about him in the same way.

Only he couldn't live like that. After three years, he couldn't deal with it anymore. After the Maulden fiasco, he could feel her pulling away from him. And then came Devan.

Devan. Poor Devan. Devan had touched him in a way that Jordan didn't. She listened to him. Despite the fact that she was a driven woman, she was driven by her ambitions, not her past. She was eager to learn, eager to please, and eager to know him better.

She had listened to his problems, sympathized with his issues. She had taken time to go places with him. He didn't love her, God and she had known that. But he did care for her. And when she died in the airplane crash, he knew it was time to move on with his life. He had helped identify her remains. He had returned them to her family. He had gone to her memorial service. He had grieved for his friend. Then, he had requested a transfer to white collar crimes. Trained under some good men. Became very adept in his field.

And he had moved on. He traded his one bedroom apartment for a bigger one across town, nearer his new office. He wasn't in this part of Boston much anymore. He seldom saw his old detective friends. He made sure he rarely saw Jordan. He never went back to the Pogue. And he was thankful that Boston was a big enough city he could do this.

It wasn't all anger he felt with Jordan...maybe disappointment. Maybe frustration. And maybe it was more directed at himself, for not being more honest with her. For avoiding the subject. Either way, he had made a new life for himself, even purchasing a small vacation house on the bay. His weekend piece of heaven. He made more money with white crimes. He was seeing other women.

"Hey, Woody – check this out," Jordan said, bringing him out of his revere.

He walked over to the autopsy table. Jordan had Buchanan's chest open. He had never gotten used to this part of his job. Someone's insides spread out for the world to see. "What is it?" he asked.

"The bullet shouldn't have killed him. It would have definitely put him in the hospital, but not killed him...not as quickly as 911 was called. The paramedics would have stabilized him and got him to the hospital."

"So he definitely died before he was shot?"

"Yeah. In my professional opinion, the shooting was a cover up for something else. The tox screens are running now. I should have an answer for you in a few minutes. I'd take a chair and get comfortable, if I were you."

So Woody sat and watched her in silence as she worked. This was the way he remembered it – her work in the morgue. If he had to hang around for an autopsy, he had gotten used to sitting in silence. Her work engrossed her... but she processed forensics better than anyone he knew. She still did. When his chief had ordered him to go to the scene of Buchanan's death, he had called the morgue and requested her. He had been relieved when Bug had told him she was already on her way.

"Whoa. Look at this," she said when she pulled his tox screens up on the computer. He walked over to where she was at with the computer. All he saw was a bunch of graphs...peaks and valleys....and names of chemicals and words he had no clue how to pronounce, much less knew what they were.

"What am I looking at, Jordan?"

"Look...see that enzymatic spike there? Know what that means?"

Woody shook his head no.

"It means your boy had a stroke."

"He wasn't in the risk or age group for a stroke, Jordan. Are you sure?"

"Hey. The science doesn't lie. He had a stroke."

"But that makes no sense. Why would someone want to shoot a man who had died of a stroke?"

"I have no idea. Want me to keep going on this?"

"Yeah. You'd better. This is getting stranger by the minute. I'm going to head out now and talk to some of the witnesses and the other detectives on sight. Can you call me when you're through?"

"Sure. But I'll have to have your new cell phone number."

So she had tried to call him after he left homicide...and couldn't reach him. He pulled a business card out of his wallet. "This has all the information you need on it," he said and slid the card into the pocket of her scrub pants.

It took every measure of control Jordan had not to jump at the touch of his fingers.