The Survivor

“This is out of our league, Nate. And certainly too much for you to handle. We need to enlist the help of folks whose job it is to deal with people like this.”

“Pete, I researched this guy. He’s a heavy hitter. He means what he says.”

“He made a death threat. On a girl. They can move on him fast, get him behind bars.”

“Investigations take time. A lot of time. And Pavlo Shevchenko is rich and connected.”

“So he owns cops?” Pete’s voice rose, fear and frustration masquerading as anger. “Federal agents? Who will do what? Call to warn him?”

“I work in a cop shop, Pete. It doesn’t take a dirty cop. It takes one clerk with a big mouth. One IT guy willing to search a file. Trust me, I looked stuff up today I wasn’t supposed to.”

Jane lifted her head and pulled her arm across her chest, tugging at the back of her elbow, grimacing.

“I’m talking about one offline conversation,” Pete said. “With someone I trust.”

“Are you willing to take that chance?” Nate stabbed a finger up, aiming in the vicinity of Cielle’s bedroom. “Given what he’ll do to her if you’re wrong?”

Pete stopped pacing, his long face looking even longer. The drain dripped invisibly beneath the sink.

“No,” Janie said. “Not yet anyway.”

“Shevchenko gave me five days,” Nate said. “I have until Sunday.”

“To do what, Nate? Rob a bank?” Pete blew out a breath, ran both hands through his thick hair. “You make messes, Nate. That’s what you do. And other people clean them up for you.”

Janie gripped the top of her head, pulling gently to the side, trying to stretch out the knot she always got on the right side when she was tense or upset.

“Her shoulder.” The words came out more sharply than Nate had intended.

“What?”

Nate pointed at Janie. “Rub her damn shoulder, Pete.”

A puzzled pause, and then it finally dawned, and Pete stepped behind her, massaging. Janie grimaced against the pain.

Nate took her hands across the island and looked into her scared blue eyes. “No matter what I have to do, I will not let them hurt our daughter. I promise you.”

She gave the slightest nod. He started out.

Pete called after him, “Where are you going?”

“To handle it.”

Nate passed Casper at the front door, gnawing on Pete’s wing tips. He seemed to be enjoying the hot sauce.

Chapter 18

The Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner was closing up as Nate slotted the Jeep into a parking spot. The imposing administrative building, a majestic interlace of brick and stone, pinned down a street corner on North Mission at the brink of the USC Medical Center. The building had first been dropped into Boyle Heights, a not-altogether-pleasant East L.A. neighborhood, as the County General Hospital. Ceramic floor tiles still spelled out the original function. Given the surfeit of movies that used the location and the glut of tourists-yes, tourists-it was the only coroner’s office, at least that he’d heard of, with a gift shop. Among the expected macabre paraphernalia, it sold coffin couches and chalk-outline beach towels. A sign by the cash register declared, CHECKS ACCEPTED WITH TWO FORMS OF ID OR DENTAL RECORDS.

It was Wednesday night, so Nate’s favorite coroner, Eddie Yeap, would be toiling into the wee hours. Nonetheless, Nate put a spring into his step before the front door locked. As he had learned in his job: Always start with the body. In this case it was all he had. If he was ever going to figure out a way into Urban’s safe-deposit box, he’d need to find out as much about the man as possible. And finding out as much as possible about the deceased happened to be what Nate was best at.

Department security had been beefed up since the O.J. trial had brought to light evidentiary chain-of-custody weaknesses. Winding down the corridors, Nate greeted the sets of guards by name, finally ending up in the doorway of one of the wide, cool autopsy rooms. Eddie stood hunched over a corpse, his wet latex gloves pulling up into view, gripping a pair of angled scissors. A soft little man with a nervous laugh, he inexplicably referred to all the corpses as “Jonesy.”

“Mr. Overbay. Heh. Serving another death notification tonight? They’re keeping you as busy as me. Heh.”

The understaffed department processed over twenty thousand autopsies a year, and even so a crushing backlog waited in the wings. They were running out of space quicker than a state jail, the main lab and crypts jammed to capacity. Some years back there’d been a big stir when rats had gotten into the refrigerated annex behind the main building and chewed up the inert inhabitants.

“Yeah. Must be a full moon.” The chill tightened Nate’s arms, raised the hairs at his nape. “Did you work on Danny Urban?”

“Nine mil above the right eyebrow. A hit man. Heh. That got Jonesy fast-tracked.”

“Anything unusual about him?”

“Guy had a whole damn armory in his closet, a real gear queer. Cops took assault rifles and no foolin’ C4 into evidence. Not yer average Jonesy.” Eddie glanced up. “You give ’em all the treatment, don’t you? Sit and hold their hands. Read the reports. Even a hit man. Heh. I guess if it helps you with the next of kin. Not their fault, I suppose.”

Nate mustered a flat smile in response, glad to find Eddie focused again on his work. “Where’d you store him?”

“Dunno. Check the computer. I’m logged in. I’d do it myself, but”-he shrugged, gloves buried to the wrists in the Y incision-“got my hands full.”

Nate checked the computer, then found his way to the appropriate crypt. A security guard unlocked for him the thick metal door, which released a waft of cold, medicinal air as it yawned open. The corpses were not stored in metal drawers but slotted in plain sight on trays that lined the walls like bunk beds on a submarine. Full to the rafters. Nate moved among the scattered morgue gurneys that accommodated the overflow, checking tags attached to body bags or to the flesh itself. A short ways in, he found Urban’s gurney and nodded a thank-you at the guard, who left him alone with the body, as was their arrangement.

When Nate unzipped the body bag, it exhaled a puff of sweet rot and ethanol. As the vinyl fell away, Urban’s face emerged, cold and firm. The ridiculousness of the task struck Nate. But he hadn’t known where else to start.

“What’s your safe-deposit-box number?” he asked Urban.

The unblinking eyes stared up at him.

Nate searched the corpse, taking his time. Hairline, toes, shoulders. One ankle was swollen and discolored; Urban had probably twisted it in the shoot-out. Nate didn’t know what precisely he was looking for and discovered nothing of interest. Giving up, he sat beside the corpse and, more from habit than anything, took the intact hand in his own weakened grip. Alone with the dead, he considered the enormity of the job before him. A little more than four days to break into a safe-deposit box for which he had no number, to retrieve he knew not what. If he didn’t figure something out, Cielle would be next on that slab. So much to accomplish before he could rest.

As he rose despondently, Urban’s cool hand slid from his and he felt a slight rub on the finger. He turned over the hand, examining the white flesh. A thin seam of something sticky across the pad of the index finger. And a bit more under the nail. Adhesive?

The heavy door boomed back into place behind him when he exited the crypt, and he grabbed a few lungfuls of moderately fresher air as he crossed to the autopsy room. “There’s something sticky on Urban’s hand. Did you identify it?”

“I remember something,” Eddie said. “Turned out to be insignificant. Report’s on my desk, though, you