Wister pretended to glance around the room. “Don’t tell anyone, but to get away from Davies? I’d sit in on every autopsy.”
She gave a short laugh, then motioned him to take a seat. “It seems you and I are the only two interested in this. Unless you know someone else who’s intending to show?”
“Nope. Everybody else has found something else to do. Can’t think why.”
“Me neither.” They were silent, watching the screen as the sign was changed, and a covered body was wheeled into the room. Suddenly, the cover was pulled back, and Alex felt her stomach rebel at the sight.
The body was recognizable as primate, but not necessarily human. The bottom half was mostly charred bone; there was no flesh left. The upper body had retained flesh, though the skin was gone. There was the vaguest hint of clothes on the upper torso, blackened layers of what appeared to be cloth. The face was gone, the only flesh left on the skull was at the back of the head, where a small clump of hair still clung to the scalp.
Alex had seen many post mortems in her career. The ones she still shuddered at were those of the victims of the Indiana killer who removed the internal organs, filling their space with potting soil. But even those hadn’t turned her stomach the way this did. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the acrid taste of smoke that filled the back of her throat. After a minute she opened them, glancing over at the Lieutenant. She was gratified to see that his face had gone pale, and he was studiously looking at anything but the television.
A voice brought their attention back to the screen, where the medical examiner was beginning to record the statistics of the body.
“The body is that of an unidentified male, approximate age 35, eye color unknown, hair color —” he paused and looked at his assisstant.
“Brown.”
“Are you sure? I thought it was black.”
“Hair was dyed. Original color is brown.”
The M.E. nodded. “Hair color is brown, dyed black. Length of the body is sixty-six inches, giving an approximate height of five-foot-six to five-foot-nine. Not possible to be exact due to damage from the fire.”
The voice droned on, giving statistics, and explaining how the autopsy was going to be handled. Alex filled her notebook with details, watching the screen only when the voice was silent. Wister was doing little of either, clearly uncomfortable with the graphic images before him.
“Oh, hey, I almost forgot.” The Lieutenant reached into the back of his notebook and took out a blue folder, handing it to Alex. “We found the guy’s badge. It was melted to the inside of the his jacket. But you Federal people must use some special kind of paper, because they actually managed to salvage most of the card inside the plastic.”
The pages inside showed several photos of an FBI ID card, ranging from extreme blurriness to progressively clearer images.
“Our photographic experts were able to scan the image digitally, then clean it up. They said it was a bitch to work with; the little chip inside had burned away the picture, and the fingerprint. But the name and ID number was what they were after, and they got ‘em.”
“This is great. Your computer guys are pretty good.”
“Yeah, they do good work. The badge itself has already been sent over to the FBI lab, along with copies of the enhancements. You can have this copy; it’ll save you the trouble of requesting it from either office.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant. This will really help me out. Between this and the sketches you sent over, we have at least some semblence of who this guy was.”
“No problem, Agent Reis.”
They were quiet again, Alex taking notes and Wister trying not to watch the t.v. There was a pause in the examining room, and Alex flipped back through her notes.
Suddenly, she stopped and stared at something she’d written down. Then she pulled out the blue folder, flipping to the last page.
“Fuck me.”
Wister froze next to her. “Uh, Agent Reis?”
Alex leaned forward and hit the intercom button. “Excuse me, Doctor?”
The figure shrouded in white turned to face the camera.
“You said earlier that the body measured sixty-six inches?”
“That’s correct.”
“Which corresponds to what approximate height?”
“About five-seven, but possibly shorter or taller.”
“Taller? How much taller, five-ten? Six foot?”
The doctor rubbed his chin with his gloved hand. “Well, maybe five-ten, but not six-foot.”
“How can you tell?”
“We have enough bone structure left to approximate his height. Of course the calculations may be off by an inch or two, but not by much more than that.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Alex turned off the intercom, and slumped into her chair. “Fuck me.”
“Alex? You want to tell me what’s wrong? Not that it isn’t a nice offer, but …”
Alex pulled the last sheet from the blue folder and laid it next to the page in her notebook. She pointed to the height noted in the autopsy, then the height listed on the enhanced badge. The two numbers didn’t match.
“Unless your guys pulled the wrong numbers off that badge, this guy isn’t Perry Watson.”
*******************************************************
Special Agent David Wu was going over his notes from the autopsy he’d observed. There wasn’t much there, he thought as he sipped his coffee. The driver of the blue Escort had been little more than bone fragments and ash. Only the very back of his coat and the back of his head had survived the fire. The best the medical examiner had been able to do was supply three facts: 1) the person was definitely male, 2) he’d had blonde hair, and 3) he was approximately thirty years of age.
Dropping his notebook on the seat beside him, he leaned his head back against the wall, shifting uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair. The corridor he sat in was outside the medical examiner’s office and the staff break room. He’d gone there to wait for Alex to return from her own post-mortem observation. It still wasn’t far enough away from the exam rooms for him, and he grimaced at the scent of formaldehyde which hung in the air. David felt like he needed another shower.
“You know, this is getting to be a bad habit.”
David looked up as Alex approached. “What is?”
“Meeting in corridors. Hospital corridors, to be precise.”
“This ain’t no hospital, Alex.”
Alex sniffed the air. “You’re right. The antiseptic is too strong.” She noticed the look on David’s face. “I didn’t know people of Asian descent could turn that shade of green, Dave.”
Her partner stood, dropping his still half-full cup of coffee into the nearby trash can. “You’d be green, too, if you were drinking coffee that tasted of cleansers and chemicals.”
“You mean it doesn’t normally?”
“Oh, ha. Can we get out of here please?”
“You betcha. Wanna drive?”
“No, I’m gonna let you. But we may have to pull over at some point; my stomach’s not too good right now.”
“I could tell. Don’t worry, green looks good on you.” Alex chuckled at David’s discomfort. “Besides, I’m not feeling especially confidant in my stomach either.”
David studied her for a second. “Yeah, you’ve got some green, too. I take it Mr. Watson didn’t look any prettier than his driver did?”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s get out of here, and I’ll explain later. You call Ken, I’ll call Rick.”
“Who’s gonna call Keller?”
“Rick is. I’m not up to his bullshit.”
“Think he’ll show up?”
Alex gave a sour grin. “On a Sunday night? Not hardly.”
They left the building, each pulling out their cellular phones.
*******************************************************
Alex had been right in her comment, as it turned out. Price had called Agent Keller just to be told he wasn’t feeling well, and that the older Agent would see him at the office the next day. Price, who’d gotten exactly two hours of sleep, kept his comments to himself, but it was obvious the younger man wasn’t happy.