“I guess neither of us should be surprised at too much anymore.”
Stan had worked off most of the tape now but stopped when he saw what looked to O’Dell like a thin black thread overlapping the lower lip. At first, she thought it might be a suture. Then it moved.
“Holy crap!” Stan jerked back.
O’Dell stared and watched, mesmerized, but she didn’t dare get any closer. The object poking out of the corpse’s mouth was made up of small segments and moved almost in robotic twitches back and forth.
“Seems I spoke too soon,” Stan said as he looked around his workspace. He grabbed a large Ziploc bag and shoved it at O’Dell.
“It’s not a spider leg.”
“No,” Stan agreed. “I’m guessing antenna. The bastard’s sticking it out to get a sense of his new surroundings.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“The one primitive species that has survived for millions of years and can survive anywhere on earth and probably in hell. Yes, I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing.”
He twisted around to his tray and plucked up tweezers and a bigger hemostat while O’Dell pulled on a pair of latex gloves. She had left the gloves in her pockets since she hadn’t intended to touch anything. Stan was a stickler for no interference. That he was suggesting she assist him was a breakthrough she could actually do without. Still, she took the plastic bag and followed his instructions.
“He’ll either retreat when he sees the lights or he’ll race out,” Stan told her as he donned headgear that provided magnification and a stream of LED light. Then he bent over the victim, fingers ready.
“What makes you think there’s only one?”
He looked up at her over the contraption as he flipped the light switch and shot the beam of light in her eyes, making her blink.
“Just be ready to play catch,” he told her. “I don’t want a bunch of cockroaches running around my autopsy suite.”
52
O’dell had gotten to Quantico with only forty-three minutes to spare before the dreaded meeting with AD Kunze and Agent McCoy.
While she printed out the autopsy photos of this latest floater, the images of the cockroaches reminded her of the scorpions. It would take a long time to forget that feeling of them skittering over her body.
She rubbed at the backs of her hands. The swelling was completely gone this morning. Dr. Avelyn’s sticky paste mixture had reduced the welts to mere red marks, no more noticeable than a mosquito bite. A small amount of makeup and her hair covered the ones on her neck and cheek. She’d keep her jacket on, though, to avoid any more reactions like Stan’s. Although she was pretty certain the attention wouldn’t be on her after showing these photos.
Stan had removed a total of five cockroaches from the victim’s mouth. Only one hadn’t come out willingly and had to be extracted. The other four had raced out as soon as he pried the lips apart. One almost escaped up the medical examiner’s hand before O’Dell swept it back into the plastic bag, which she had tried to wrap tight against the victim’s bloated face. The trick was that Stan had to keep the tweezers and at least his fingers inside the bag to open the mouth. He was fast but not as fast as the roaches.
O’Dell had to admit, she had a newfound respect for Stan. He hadn’t flinched. If he had, all five roaches would probably have been long gone in the corners and cubbyholes of his meticulous autopsy suite.
Only after Stan was convinced there were no more cockroaches had he dug deeper and worked carefully to remove the other object that had been stuffed down the throat — the man’s driver’s license.
Before she left the District to head to Quantico, she had typed “Robert Díaz” into several searches available to her. Those were also waiting for her to print out.
When she arrived five minutes before three o’clock, she was surprised to find everyone waiting for her. And even more surprised to see Senator Delanor. She was seated in the same chair across from Kunze’s desk, where O’Dell had found her the last time. AD Kunze introduced O’Dell and Agent McCoy with no explanation about the senator’s presence, and Senator Delanor made no motion to leave. She was obviously a part of this meeting. And immediately, O’Dell felt her guard go into place. She seemed to be the only one here who had no clue what the hell was going on.
“Agent McCoy was just filling us in about what happened at the Bagleys’,” Kunze said, as he waited for O’Dell to take the chair next to the senator. McCoy evidently had chosen to stand.
“Yes, how are you doing?” Senator Delanor patted her arm. “How dreadful.”
Before O’Dell could respond, Kunze added, “You should have told me about the scorpions when we talked yesterday.”
And there it was — already the sympathy had been converted to blame.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she told the senator. To McCoy she said, “So you knew about Trevor Bagley?”
“Oh, he and his wife have been on our radar for some time.”
“Would have been nice if you had shared that when we pulled his body from the Potomac.”
“Agent O’Dell,” Kunze scolded.
“No, that’s okay.” McCoy smiled and waved a hand at Kunze, dismissing O’Dell and her comment even before adding, “I’ve already heard she’s a pistol.”
O’Dell had checked him out, too, learning everything she could, though there wasn’t much available. In the last twenty years, Agent McCoy had been promoted up the ranks, starting out as an immigration officer before moving to the DEA.
Somewhere she had read that he was a Texan, and she half expected a big and bold cowboy with a southern accent. Even in the confines of the office, he still managed a swagger, but there were no other signs. No Stetson, no cowboy boots, no decorative belt buckle. She was almost disappointed. Agent McCoy looked very much like an official government agent — square shoulders, a standard steel-blue suit to match his tie and eyes, polished black leather shoes, and slicked-back hair with just enough gray at the temples to make him look seasoned.
“What happened is unfortunate, Agent O’Dell, but we could hardly expect that you’d be running out to Alabama and tromping all over the Bagleys’ property, now could we?”
“I’m curious why not?”
“Excuse me?”
“If you knew it was Bagley in the river, and this was such a sensitive case, why weren’t your people at the Bagleys’ before me?”
This time Kunze didn’t hush or scold her. At a glance, she could see that her boss was also interested in the answer.
McCoy used that moment to sit down on the corner of Kunze’s desk, ignoring the assistant director’s look of disapproval. His perch kept him higher than everyone else, establishing an air of authority and making the rest of them all look up to him. It was an old trick. O’Dell had used it herself sometimes when questioning suspects. However, she had never done it with a colleague.
“We tend to measure our moves carefully, instead of running half-cocked.” He shot an irritated look at Kunze. McCoy no longer seemed amused by this “pistol,” though he didn’t mind continuing the metaphor. “We’ve known that Mr. and Mrs. Bagley were running drugs. We were waiting for the right time to raid their property so that we could use them to help make our case against George Ramos. We wanted to do as much damage as we could to Choque Azul. Are you familiar with them?”
“Agent O’Dell was responsible for putting Ramos behind bars,” AD Kunze said, and for the first time in a long time O’Dell thought she heard a hint of pride in her boss’s voice.
“Ah yes, that’s right,” McCoy said. “You went out to rescue him and his kids on his houseboat during a storm and ended up interrupting a drug pickup in the middle of the Gulf.”