of odors: vomit and a whiff of bowel, medicinal smells and the cat-piss aroma of disinfectant from an orderly’s mop and pail.
When crime-scene investigators arrived at the hospital, the male victim from the first hanging tree was comatose and awaiting a gurney ride to the intensive care unit. The pads of his fingers were quickly blackened with ink and rolled across the white cards that recorded his prints. A technician swabbed a Q-tip inside the man’s open mouth for a DNA sample, and another CSI collected debris from fingernails. Then a man with a camera pulled back the sheet to expose more rat bites and flesh frayed by ropes.
The ER doctor had been ordered to stand aside – quietly – nomore complaining, no whining, no yelling. He could only watch, head shaking in disbelief, and then he gasped when Detective Mallory plucked hairs from his patient’s scalp.
The technicians stopped their work, and every face turned toward a late arrival. An angry bear of a man, the commander of Crime Scene Unit, stood at the foot of the gurney. Heller’s slow-moving brown eyes had missed nothing, not the manhandling of the patient, not the petulant doctor who stood helpless with his back to the wall, nor the detective who had ordered his people to start without him – and obviously against medical advice.
Mallory backed away from the gurney, making a deliberate show of this submissive gesture. She knew how to pick her fights. Tomorrow, Heller would find out about the ropes and burlap bags stashed in the trunk of her car. She was saving herself for
that
battle.
Heller jabbed his thumb toward the doors of the emergency room. His technicians packed their gear and silently filed out. He nodded to the man with the stethoscope, and the doctor resumed his post by the patient’s side. Turning on Mallory, Heller said, ‘That’s
one
.’ It was their custom to start a fresh count of her trespasses with each new case. He would reach the count of implosion when he discovered that his CSIs had not yet been invited to two crime scenes, but the young detective planned to be long gone by then.
Mallory handed him the bag of plucked hairs and left before he could order her out. She had what she came for. A close inspection of the roots had satisfied her suspicion of a bad drugstore dye job for a man in his twenties. And judging by the original hair color, the coma patient was most likely Coco’s missing Uncle Red.
Books were neatly arranged on the shelves, and every scrap of paper knew its place, stacked in shallow boxes marked IN and OUT. It was the office of a very efficient man. The only clutter was on the back wall above his credenza, a cluster of plaques and framed awardsthat honored Dr Edward Slope. His name also appeared on a roster more elite than the presidency. Over the past hundred years, only seven men had preceded him in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Though, without the clue of his white lab coat, he more closely resembled a military man in his bearing, always at attention, even while seated; his expression was stony, smiles were rare, and his wit was gunpowder dry. As a groundbreaking pathologist, his fame was international. At home, he was best known as a man who ate cops for breakfast.
Dr Slope raised his eyes from the paperwork on his desk. ‘Hello, Riker.’ And now he acknowledged the second detective to enter his private domain. ‘
Kathy
.’ He so enjoyed needling her with the forbidden use of her first name.
‘
Mallory
,’ she said, correcting him, as she always did.
She preferred the chilly formality of her surname, and the doctor’s training in the use of it had begun upon her graduation from the police academy. But she had failed to distance him then – and now. As a charter member of the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game, he had first come to know her as Kathy the child, and she would be Kathy till one of them died.
‘That woman’s body just got here,’ he said. ‘What could
When crime-scene investigators arrived at the hospital, the male victim from the first hanging tree was comatose and awaiting a gurney ride to the intensive care unit. The pads of his fingers were quickly blackened with ink and rolled across the white cards that recorded his prints. A technician swabbed a Q-tip inside the man’s open mouth for a DNA sample, and another CSI collected debris from fingernails. Then a man with a camera pulled back the sheet to expose more rat bites and flesh frayed by ropes.
The ER doctor had been ordered to stand aside – quietly – nomore complaining, no whining, no yelling. He could only watch, head shaking in disbelief, and then he gasped when Detective Mallory plucked hairs from his patient’s scalp.
The technicians stopped their work, and every face turned toward a late arrival. An angry bear of a man, the commander of Crime Scene Unit, stood at the foot of the gurney. Heller’s slow-moving brown eyes had missed nothing, not the manhandling of the patient, not the petulant doctor who stood helpless with his back to the wall, nor the detective who had ordered his people to start without him – and obviously against medical advice.
Mallory backed away from the gurney, making a deliberate show of this submissive gesture. She knew how to pick her fights. Tomorrow, Heller would find out about the ropes and burlap bags stashed in the trunk of her car. She was saving herself for
that
battle.
Heller jabbed his thumb toward the doors of the emergency room. His technicians packed their gear and silently filed out. He nodded to the man with the stethoscope, and the doctor resumed his post by the patient’s side. Turning on Mallory, Heller said, ‘That’s
one
.’ It was their custom to start a fresh count of her trespasses with each new case. He would reach the count of implosion when he discovered that his CSIs had not yet been invited to two crime scenes, but the young detective planned to be long gone by then.
Mallory handed him the bag of plucked hairs and left before he could order her out. She had what she came for. A close inspection of the roots had satisfied her suspicion of a bad drugstore dye job for a man in his twenties. And judging by the original hair color, the coma patient was most likely Coco’s missing Uncle Red.
Books were neatly arranged on the shelves, and every scrap of paper knew its place, stacked in shallow boxes marked IN and OUT. It was the office of a very efficient man. The only clutter was on the back wall above his credenza, a cluster of plaques and framed awardsthat honored Dr Edward Slope. His name also appeared on a roster more elite than the presidency. Over the past hundred years, only seven men had preceded him in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Though, without the clue of his white lab coat, he more closely resembled a military man in his bearing, always at attention, even while seated; his expression was stony, smiles were rare, and his wit was gunpowder dry. As a groundbreaking pathologist, his fame was international. At home, he was best known as a man who ate cops for breakfast.
Dr Slope raised his eyes from the paperwork on his desk. ‘Hello, Riker.’ And now he acknowledged the second detective to enter his private domain. ‘
Kathy
.’ He so enjoyed needling her with the forbidden use of her first name.
‘
Mallory
,’ she said, correcting him, as she always did.
She preferred the chilly formality of her surname, and the doctor’s training in the use of it had begun upon her graduation from the police academy. But she had failed to distance him then – and now. As a charter member of the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game, he had first come to know her as Kathy the child, and she would be Kathy till one of them died.
‘That woman’s body just got here,’ he said. ‘What could
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