Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood by Alex Archer

you get the information translated so fast?”
    “Hmm, what’s this now? A toxicology report?”
    What on earth?
    Then, suddenly, she understood. Garin could read Slovakian.
    “What does it say?” she asked.
    “The toxicology report? Completely inconclusive.”
    “Inconclusive for what?”
    “Anything. The blood they drew was apparently contaminated with a foreign substance they couldn’t identify. There’s also a note that the sample available was of such a small size they couldn’t run the screening test more than once.”
    Annja frowned. “Why didn’t they just request another sample?”
    She could hear Garin tapping the keys on his computer. “Doesn’t say.”
    “Okay, forget that,” she said, waving it off for the time being. “The main autopsy report should say the cause of death.”
    “It does.”
    Annja waited, but Garin didn’t say anything more.
    “Well, what is it?” she asked.
    “What do I get out of it?”
    For a moment, Annja was taken aback. What does he get out of it?
    Then she remembered she was dealing with Garin. She’d never met a more selfish individual. He didn’t do anything unless there was a percentage in it for him.
    This included, apparently.
    “Have you no shame, Garin? A woman was murdered.”
    “Happens every day, dear Annja, more times than you can count. That’s irrelevant to me. You want to know what this report says. I want to know what I get if I give you that information.”
    The problem was that Annja didn’t really have anything to trade. Garin was richer than most developing countries and could buy almost anything that caught his eye. If he couldn’t buy it, he could usually charm someone into providing it for him. He quite literally wanted for nothing when it came to material possessions. Yes, on occasion Annja had been able to entice him with a particularly interesting artifact or with information on a lost culture or an intriguing historical puzzle; but this time around she had nothing to trade.
    “I’m asking you nicely, Garin.”
    “And what? I’m just supposed to give you what you need because of that?”
    She knew he was pushing her buttons, goading her into losing her temper, but she could feel her control slipping away despite the knowing.
    “You know what? Never mind. I’ll figure it out myself!” She pulled the phone away from her ear and hit the end call button.
    Sitting down in front of her laptop, she called up an online translation service and set the software to convert her English words to Slovak. Then she typed “cause of death” into the box on the left. In the box on the right, the words
príčina úmrtia
appeared.
    “Ha!” she said, as if Garin could hear her back in Munich.
    Annja then called up the photos she’d taken in the morgue office and searched them for the phrase. She found it on page four, and in the box next to it were the words
strata krvi
.
    Another query into the online translator and she sat back, staring at the words blinking at her from her computer screen.
    Blood loss.
    There were several lines of notes directly beneath, no doubt giving more details, but try as she might she couldn’t get the translation to make any sense. The words weren’t all that clear in the photograph and without any real knowledge of the Slovak language all she was doing was guessing at what some of the words and letters might be. The translation software was kicking back nonsense as a result.
    She sat there, tapping her fingers on the tabletop. Then, with a sigh, she turned and picked up her phone once more. She hit the redial button and waited for Garin to answer.
    He picked up before it finished ringing the first time.
    Of course.
    “A weekend of skiing with me at my chalet in Switzerland,” he said.
    “Lunch at the Mall of the Americas in Bloomington, Minnesota.”
    She couldn’t think of a more innocuous place. It would drive Garin completely nuts.
    He was far from finished with his bargaining, however.
    “An overnight