Chromosome 6 by Robin Cook

although they had met him on multiple occasions. "Did you docs come in to see the floater?" Mike asked.

"No," Jack said. "Is there a problem?"
"No problem," Mike said. "It's just in bad shape." "We've come to talk about last night," Laurie said. "What about it?" Mike asked.
Laurie posed the same questions she'd put to Carl. To her surprise, Mike quickly became irritated. She was about to say as much when Jack tugged on her arm and motioned for her to retreat to the hall. "Ease off," Jack recommended when they were beyond earshot. "Ease off from what?" Laurie asked. "I'm not being confrontational." "I agree," Jack said. "I know I'm the last person to be an expert in office politics or interpersonal relations, but Mike sounds defensive to me. If you want to get any information out of him, I think you have to take that into consideration and tread lightly." Laurie thought for a minute then nodded. "Maybe you're right." They returned to the mortuary office, but before Laurie could say anything, Mike said: "In case you didn't know, Dr. Washington telephoned this morning and woke me up about all this. He read me the riot act. But I did my normal job last night, and I certainly didn't have anything to do with that body disappearing."
"I'm sorry if I implied that you did," Laurie said. "All I'm saying is that I believe the body disappeared during your shift. That's not saying you are responsible in any way." "It sort'a sounds that way," Mike said. "I mean, I'm the only one here besides security and the janitors." "Did anything happen out of the ordinary?" Laurie asked. Mike shook his head. "It was a quiet night. We had two bodies come in and two go out." "What about the bodies that arrived?" Laurie asked. "Did they come in with our people?" "Yup, with our vans," Mike said. "Jeff Cooper and Peter Molina. Both bodies were from local hospitals."
"What about the two bodies that went out?" Laurie asked. "What about them?"
"Well, who was it that came to pick them up?" Mike grabbed the mortuary logbook from the corner of his desk and cracked it open. His index finger traced down the column then stopped. "Spoletto Funeral Home in Ozone Park and Dickson Funeral Home in Summit, New Jersey."
"What were the names of the deceased?" Laurie asked.

Mike consulted the book. "Frank Gleason and Dorothy Kline. Their accession numbers are 100385 and
101455. Anything else?"
"Were you expecting these particular funeral homes to come?" Laurie asked. "Yeah, of course," Mike said. "They'd called beforehand just like always." "So you had everything ready for them?" "Sure," Mike said. "I had the paperwork all done. They just had to sign off." "And the bodies?" Laurie asked.
"They were in the walk-in cooler as usual," Mike said. "Right in the front on gurneys." Laurie looked at Jack. "Can you think of anything else to ask?" Jack shrugged. "I think you've pretty well covered the bases except when Mike was off the floor." "Good point!" Laurie said. Turning back to Mike she said: "Carl told us that when he left for the men's room twice last night, he contacted you. Do you contact Carl whenever you need to leave your post?" "Always," Mike said. "We're often the only ones down here. We have to have someone guarding the door."
"Were you away from the office very long last night?" Laurie asked. "Nope," Mike said. "No more than usual. Couple of times to the head and a half hour for lunch up on the second floor. I'm telling you, it was a normal night." "What about the janitors?" Laurie asked. "Were they around?" "Not during my shift," Mike said. "Generally they clean down here evenings. The night shift is upstairs unless there is something out of the ordinary going on." Laurie tried to think of additional questions but couldn't. "Thanks, Mike," she said. "No problem," Mike said.
Laurie started for the door but stopped. Turning around she asked: "By any chance did you happen to see Franconi's body?"
Mike hesitated a second before admitting that he had. "What was the