“No. The problem with Lauren stopped that,” said Bradley. “Instead, she got the job at the medical examiner’s office. She also had a degree in pathology and thought it would be better to work on the dead. The lawsuit really destroyed her confidence. It’s not uncommon for someone who is accused of malpractice to shy away from his or her profession for a while. Julia was done with shying away. She wanted to fight Lauren and Colin and be a plastic surgeon again.”

Once they were outside, Jack patted Val on the shoulder. “I’m impressed, Val. That was awesome questioning.”

She loved the compliment, but something bothered her. “I can’t get over the fact that she cancelled the policy, for whatever act of revenge she hoped to get by doing this. All she does is screw herself. If Julia wanted to be a plastic surgeon again, if this was her reason for hiring Bradley Underwood—so that he would fight this case—why cancel the policy? Why cancel it before the lawsuit even started? A lawsuit she knew she was going to lose. After this was over, there would be no way in hell Julia would ever be a plastic surgeon again. She would be broke, a bad credit risk and basically uninsurable again. But my bigger problem is that she lied to Bradley about the policy to begin with and that makes me feel that she also lied to him about her reasons for wanting to fight this case. Why would she have done this?”

“We still haven’t answered our original question either. Where did she get the money to pay Bradley, especially if she had no previous plastic surgery practice?” Jack added.

34

It was only 9am and Val had already consumed four cups of coffee. As she ran down the hall to the ladies’ room she looked at her phone. There were two messages from Jack and three from Gwen, all within the last couple of minutes. She was about to read them when she bumped into Zoe.

“I’ve been looking for you,” said the toxicologist. “The results on the testing of the samples from the skulls for the muscle-paralyzing drug pancuronium are finished.”

Val completely forget about the need to pee. “And?”

“The unknown skull found in the Devil’s Hole Park was inconclusive for it, and so was the first one found—the one discovered in Chestnut Ridge Park. I’m not surprised by that, though. It was pretty dried out and that could have had a big effect on the testing. But Francine Donohue was positive for it. This new test actually seems to work. According to this, both Samantha Ritcher and her sister Francine Donohue had this drug in their system.”

Val wanted to hug Zoe for giving her such good news but then Zoe said something that made her legs feel weak.

“But Dr. Blythe isn’t buying it.”