Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [64]
Had Jason waved the knife at his attacker, like he’d done in the bar? Had the killer grabbed the knife and used it on Jason? What kind of sick fucker did that?
One smart enough not to leave evidence behind.
Frustrated and sickened, I flipped back to the first page. The coroner’s report.
No autopsy had been performed, the coroner examined the body basically as it’d come to her. The first page was a diagram of the body. Each wound was listed with precise measurements. Each bruise, each scratch. The diameter of the bullet holes. The sizes of the exit wounds. The length of the knife gashes. The depth of the knife gashes. But no gashes on his forearms.
I found it interesting that the knife wounds had been inflicted after the gunshot wounds. Had the killer been afraid Jason would survive? So slicing and dicing him after riddling his body with bullets was extra insurance?
If Jason had been bleeding out, no defensive cut wounds on his forearms made sense; he’d had no need to protect himself.
The coroner’s conclusion stated the victim had died between eleven p.m. and two a.m. There was no scientific way to know how long it’d taken him to die. If I’d gotten off shift early at Clem-entine’s that night, would it have mattered?
Had Jason lain there dying, hoping I’d swoop in and save him from the grim reaper just like he’d saved me?
Sick to my stomach, I had to close the file and let that guilty thought soak in. I took a deep breath and flipped the page.
Blood work information. A list of the standard tests, which I didn’t understand the necessity for. J-Hawk had obviously been murdered. What difference would it make if drugs were found in his body after the fact? Drugs hadn’t killed him.
I scanned the list, because like Kiki had warned me, it contained a whole lot of medical gibberish. A couple of details caught my eye. High levels of OxyContin. The second number was abnormally high—a drug I’d never heard of: Nexavar. But it was the same one found in his motel room. I typed the name in the search engine.
Immediately 275,000 references popped up. Clinical trials. Testimonials. Research papers. FDA approval.
Nexavar was a drug for the treatment of cancer.
Cancer.
J-Hawk had cancer?
No. Fucking. Way. Had to be a mistake. Maybe a misspelling of the common pharmaceutical name. I spelled it differently.
Same results.
Stunned, I sank back in my chair and stared at the screen, thoughts racing around my head like escaped lab rats.
If Jason had cancer, why hadn’t he stayed close to North Dakota so his physicians could monitor his vitals?
My mouth dried. After what he’d told me, I knew he’d rather deal with a cancer diagnosis on his own, on the road, away from his family, instead of allowing his attention-monger wife to care for him.
Didn’t cancer treatment make you tired? Wear you down?
Yes, but cancer treatment could be painful, so that explained the large amount of OxyContin in his system.
But it didn’t explain the massive amounts of OxyContin in his possession.
So Major Jason Hawley, who’d hated taking even a simple aspirin during his army years, had started popping pills to erase the pain and side effects from the cancer meds? Or had he become addicted to drugs because they helped him cope with how much he’d hated his life?
What a vicious circle. I wished he’d confided in me earlier. Not that I could’ve done a damn thing about his cancer or his drug dependency, but it might’ve offered him some comfort that he did have friends he could talk to.
I wondered who’d known about his use of painkillers.
His wife? Not likely.
His employer? Not likely.
I wondered who’d known about his cancer.
His wife? Likely.
His employer? Likely.
Anna? No.
J-Hawk couldn’t risk telling Anna he was dying. She would’ve said fuck it and stayed by his side until his life ended.
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone, because technically, I wasn’t even supposed