He shook his head inside his suit. “How did she die? Can you tell me that?” His tone wasn't demanding. It was gentle, respectful.
“She was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
I nodded.
“But that doesn't make any sense. I mean, who would want to hurt Emma. She was the friendliest person in this hellhole. Everybody liked her.”
Apparently not everybody.
“What about boyfriends?” Chunk asked. “She date anybody around here?”
He shook his head again.
“I wouldn't know. I mean, I've seen her around at the lounge of course, drinking with the others, but… No, I've never seen her with anybody. She had an effervescent personality, you know? The kind of woman who makes everybody in the room smile when she walks in.” He said, “My God, I can't believe somebody would want to kill her. That just doesn't make sense.”
“You said she was with the World Health Organization? Is that who you mean when you say the others?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Their office is through that door over there,” he said, and pointed to a green metal door on the opposite side of the morgue. “You'll have to go out the south exit and then you'll see their trailers right up against the building.”
“We'll come back for that list of your staff,” I said.
“I'll be here,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders at the bodies out on the floor.
“We'll probably have some more questions too.”
“Like I said, Detective, I'll be here.”
Chapter 3
The World Health Organization's office was a mobile home they'd parked about fifty feet from the rear of the morgue's main building. A couple of used U-haul vans were parked next to it. They'd been painted white and decorated with the WHO logo on the side panels, but you could still tell they were just old battered moving vans under the paint.
After we went through the decon showers, we stripped out of our mop suits and donned regular gauze face masks.
Inside the trailer, the first thing I noticed was how packed-in everything was. They'd stuffed computers, laboratory glassware, office supplies, field gear, lap tops, cameras, radios, TV screens, and machines doing God knows what into every available cubby hole and overhead bin in the place. The staff moved through the clutter like bees in a hive.
We stood there for half a minute before anybody noticed us. But finally, a skinny, dopey-looking guy about my age, maybe thirty, thirty-one, came over with a questioning, but friendly enough expression on his face. He walked like a duck, feet pointing outwards, and he had a black eye. The left one. It looked like somebody had hit him pretty hard, and recently.
His eyes were smiling at first. Then he saw our SAPD badges, and he stopped smiling.
“Yes?” he said, a noticeable chill entering his voice.
I asked him, “Who's in charge?”
“Dr. Madeline Laurent. Back there.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder.
It looked like he didn't want to get out of the way though, like maybe he wanted to challenge why we were there, or maybe just tell us to go spend some quality time with our thumbs up our butts. But it also looked like he didn't want to get into it with Chunk.
What the hell's wrong with this guy?
Then, suddenly, he said, “Is there something I can help you with?”
“We'll want to speak to the entire staff,” I told him. “Later. But now we want to talk to Dr. Laurent. Do you mind?”
I looked him square in the eye, and he looked away almost immediately.
He stepped aside.
Chunk and I followed a short hallway back to Dr. Madeline Laurent's office. She was there, her back to us, hunched over a lap top computer that was running some kind of bar graph program. The bars flickered up and down busily, and she watched them intently, like they were telling her something in plain English.
I was shocked at how fat she was. And short, too. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall, but she probably weighed more than Chunk. She was practically ball-shaped.
Chunk whistled quietly.
“You still got that magazine?” he asked. “How to feel good about yourself naked?”
I elbowed him in the ribs.
Dr. Laurent didn't notice us, though we were standing right behind her. She was lost in thought. I watched her make a few key strokes. Watched the bars flicker. Watched her shake her head. She typed some more, waited, watched, then shook her head again.
“Dr. Laurent?” I said to her back.
Her fat hand slapped onto the desk angrily. Even though her back was to us, and her face was covered by a mask, I could tell what kind of look she was wearing on her face. Why the hell are you bothering me?
She turned around. Looked at both of us in turn. She saw our badges, and her eyes narrowed.
What is it with these people? What'd we do to piss them off?
“What do you want?”
Right away I heard the French accent. Very thick.
“I'm Detective Lily Harris,” I said. “This is my partner, Reginald Dempsey. We're with the San Antonio Police Department's Homicide Unit.”
Her eyes remained fierce little slits. She said nothing. Crossed her arms impatiently.
“Do you know this woman, doctor?”
I handed her Emma Bradley's picture-a 3 x 5 taken postmortem. The 8 x 10 we had earlier had to be trashed when we went through decon.
She snatched the picture from me and looked at it. Her eyes widened.
“What is going on here?” she asked. “Yes, I know this woman. Of course I know her.”
I told her about finding the body at the Scar. I saw shock, and then denial, cloud her face. Then anger.
“I suppose you have not yet caught the man who hurt her?”
“No ma'am,” I said. “We've only just now found out who she is.”
“Will you look for him?” The tone in her voice made it sound like she didn't believe we would.
“Now that we know who she is, yes, we will look for the person responsible,” I said to her, nice and polite. Getting into a pissing contest with her wasn't going to solve anything. “You asked if we had caught the man who did this to her. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt her?”
She gave us an indignant laugh. More of a snort. “I have an idea, yes.”
“Can you give us a name?”
“Of course I can. He's one of your officers.”
“One of ours?” Chunk and I traded looks. No way.
She snorted again, evidently looking at a picture of the man in her mind. “His name is Kenneth Wade. He is assigned to our so called Protection Detail.”
She smirked at us both. “What is the expression you Americans use? He is like the fox watching the chicken house?”
“The hen house,” I said under my breath. I knew Kenneth Wade. He was a patrolman, a member of the VIP and Executive Protection Detail before the outbreak changed everything. The name still surprised me though.
