together in Guatemala. A vacation had seemed a good plan then. We’d both been under tremendous pressure. The place. The circumstances. The sadness of dealing with so much death.
I rinsed my hair.
The vacation that never was. The case was done. We were on our way. Before we’d reached La Aurora International, his pager had sounded. Off he’d gone, regretful, but obedient to the call of duty.
I pictured Katy’s face at the picnic today, later at the site of Boyd’s discovery. Was my daughter serious about the intensely captivating Palmer Cousins? Was she considering dropping out of school to be near him? For other reasons?
What was it about Palmer Cousins that bothered me? Was “the boy,” as Katy would call him, just too damn good-looking? Was I growing so narrow-minded that I was starting to judge character by appearance?
No matter about Cousins. Katy was an adult now. She would do what she would do. I had no control over her life.
I soaped myself with almond-peppermint bath gel and reverted to worrying about Boyd’s plastic sacks.
With a little luck, the contents would be animal bone. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if Joe Hawkins’s ax theory wasn’t a joke?
In a heartbeat the water went tepid, then cold. I leaped out of the shower, wrapped one towel around my torso, another around my hair, and headed for bed.
Things will be fine, I told myself.
Wrong.
Things were going to get worse before they got worse.
5
SUNDAY MORNING. TIME: SEVEN THIRTY-SEVEN. TEMPERATURE: seventy-four Fahrenheit. Humidity: eighty-one percent.
We were heading for a record. Seventeen straight days busting ninety degrees.
Entering the small vestibule of the MCME, I used my security card and passed Mrs. Flowers’s command post. Even her absence was imposing. All objects and Post-it notes were equally spaced. Paper stacks were squared at the edges. No pens. No paper clips. No clutter. One personal photo, a cocker spaniel.
Monday through Friday, Mrs. Flowers screened visitors through the plate-glass window above her desk, blessing some with a buzz through the inner door, turning others away. She also typed reports, organized documents, and kept track of every shred of paper stored in the black file cabinets lining one side of the room.
Turning right past the cubicles used by the death investigators, I checked the board on the back wall where cases were entered daily in black Magic Marker.
Boyd’s find was already there. MCME 437–02
The place was exactly as I’d expected, deserted and eerily quiet.
What I hadn’t expected was the fresh-brewed coffee on the kitchenette counter.
There is a merciful God, I thought, helping myself.
Or a merciful Joe Hawkins.
The DI appeared as I was unlocking my office.
“You’re a saint,” I said, raising my mug.
“Thought you might be here early.”
During the recovery operation, I’d told Hawkins of my plans for a Monday escape to the beach.
“You’ll be wanting yesterday’s booty?”
“Please. And the Polaroid and the Nikon.”
“X rays?”
“Yes.”
“Main or stinky?”
“I’d better work in back.”
The MCME facility has a pair of autopsy rooms, each with a single table. The smaller of the two has special ventilation for combating foul odors.
Decomps and floaters. My kind of cases.
Pulling a form from the mini-shelves behind my desk, I filled in a case number and wrote a brief description of the remains and the circumstances surrounding their arrival at the morgue. Then I went to the locker room, changed to surgical scrubs, and crossed to the stinky room.
The bags were waiting. So were the cameras and the items needed to accessorize my ensemble: paper apron and mask, plastic goggles, latex gloves.
Fetching.
I shot 35-millimeter prints, backups with the Polaroid, then asked Hawkins to X-ray both bags. I wanted no surprises.
