Read Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe for Free Online Page A

Emily to help him figure out the answers to those questions.
    There was nothing more he could do in his office. His next stop was the morgue.

C HAPTER F IVE
     
    Too many people died every day in Los Angeles, resulting in more corpses than the county morgue could handle. Not only that, but the morgue downtown was a tiring commute from Community General Hospital.
    So several years ago, Mark had come up with a way to relieve some of the county's burden and, at the same time, make it easier for him to examine the victims of the homicides he investigated.
    He brokered an arrangement between the county and the hospital, establishing a satellite county morgue at Community General. The county gained more space and additional manpower at a fraction of the cost of a new, stand-alone facility. The hospital gained a new revenue stream and publicity points for supporting the community in a tangible way.
    Dr. Amanda Bentley, the hospital's staff pathologist, was hired as an adjunct county medical examiner to oversee the new morgue and to roll to crime scenes as needed. Somehow she managed to effortlessly balance her dual responsibilities, becoming as comfortable at a crime scene as she was at an autopsy table.
    Mark was sitting at one of those tables, files spread out in front of him, when Amanda arrived, holding a paper plate with an enormous cinnamon roll slathered in frosting.
    "Busted," she said.
    He looked up at her. "This isn't the first time you've caught me going through your files."
    "But it's the first time you've caught me eating a ten-thousand-calorie cinnamon roll."
    "I'll let you off on one condition," he said.
    "What's that?"
    "You split it with me."
    She grabbed a clean scalpel, slid a stool over to the autopsy table, and sat down across from Mark.
    "I'm having such a feeling of deja vu," Amanda said, cutting the roll in half.
    "Why?" Mark asked, picking up his piece and taking a bite.
    "Because I had this exact same conversation with you last week," she said. "You were even reading Grover Dawson's file."
    Mark set down the roll and licked the frosting off his fingers. "That would explain why the file is sticky. You must have shared a cinnamon roll with me that morning, too. You just lied to me. This isn't the first time I've caught you with one of those pastries."
    "Busted again," she said. "See? You're back to rooting out dishonesty wherever it lurks."
    "What did I have to say about Grover Dawson's file?" 
    "You were convinced something wasn't right about the man's death," Amanda said, "but you didn't find anything unusual in the file."
    "I don't know what I was expecting to find anyway. Your report simply confirms what Steve already told me," Mark said. "What else did we talk about?"
    "That was it," she said, carefully dissecting her roll with the scalpel to reveal the cinnamon filling between the layers.
    "Tell me about the deaths I asked you to look into," Mark said.
    "What does it matter now, Mark? Seems to me you should be at home with Emily, trying to put your life back together."
    She cut off a bite-sized strip of the cinnamon roll, speared it with the scalpel, and popped the morsel into her mouth. Mark guessed she was probably one of those people who separated Oreos before eating them, too.
    "I can't do that until I find whoever was driving that car," Mark said.
    "Leave it to Steve," she said.
    "Jesse didn't get killed saving Steve's life. He got killed saving mine," Mark said. "I need to do this. For him and for me."
    Amanda sighed. "Three days after I found you here, you showed up one morning with another one of these." She held up the plate with the cinnamon roll on it. "We were splitting it when I mentioned how sad it is when someone barely survives a life-threatening experience only to die later in an accident or from some other ailment."
    Mark raised an eyebrow. She tipped her head towards him.
    "That's exactly the expression you gave me then, too," she said.
    "So what provoked you to share that unusual