12th of Never (Womens Murder Club 12) (7 page)

“It’s a good case,” Cindy said. “What does Red Dog say?”

“He says that I’ve got Herman nailed on the evidence, and that he has total faith in me,” said Yuki.

She and Cindy both nodded, Yuki wishing that she weren’t remembering cases she’d lost.

“It’s always about life and death,” Yuki said.

“I have faith in you,” said Cindy. “You can do this.”

Yuki saw doubt in her good friend’s eyes.

CLAIRE WASHBURN DIDN’T mind putting on a dog and pony show as long as nobody sneezed or puked on the body. A high-profile case like this one would be scrutinized for mistakes, and the last thing she wanted was to have to explain to the court how random DNA got on the victim.

There was a bark of laughter outside the frosted glass of her office door. Claire sighed once, forwarded her phone calls to the front desk, then went to the conference room.

The twelve people who were waiting for her turned as one.

Claire couldn’t stop herself from laughing. To a man, and to a woman, her visitors were dressed in baby-yellow paper surgical scrubs and Tyvek gowns. Most hilarious of all was Rich Conklin, Mr. September in the 2011 Law Enforcement Officers Beefsteak Calendar.

Great big handsome man, outfitted like a hospital kitchen worker.

Claire said, “Good morning, Easter chicks,” and she laughed again, this time joined by the group of cops, junior techs from the crime scene unit, and law school grads from the DA’s office who were getting on-the-job education this morning.

She caught her breath and said, “If we’ve never met, I’m Dr. Washburn, chief medical examiner, and before I begin this morning’s autopsy, please introduce yourselves.”

Claire had everyone’s attention, and when the introductions were concluded, she began a condensed lecture on the purpose of an autopsy—to discover the cause and manner of death.

“You’ll see that the victim will be wearing what she had on when she was recovered from the scene. She’ll have bags on her hands to preserve any DNA she may have scraped from a possible attacker. She will have a complete external exam, including total body X-rays, before we do an internal exam, which I’ll conduct.

“If Ms. Farmer’s death is determined to be a homicide—not saying it
was
a homicide, but if the evidence leads to an indictment—the defense may try to prove that our evidence was contaminated, that we’re a bunch of fumble-fingered idiots. Remember O.J.? Protecting the integrity of this postmortem is critical to catching and holding a bad guy. Because of lousy forensics, there are innocent people in jail for crimes they never committed and murderers walking the streets.

“To the dead, we owe respect. To the living, we owe the truth. Nothing less, nothing more, no matter where the evidence leads us.

“House rules: keep your prophylactic outerwear in place. Masks must be worn in the surgery and kept on. Understand? If you forgot to turn off your cell phone, do it now. Save your questions until I ask for them. When I’m done, I’ll memorialize my findings for the record. Everything you see or hear from now on is highly confidential and leaks will not be tolerated.

“Are there any questions?

“All right, then. If we’re all clear on the house rules …” Claire turned to her assistant, the fetching Bunny Ellis, her hair done up to look like mouse ears, reverent eyes turned toward her boss.

“Bunny, will you please wheel Ms. Farmer into the autopsy suite? Everyone else, follow me.”

CLAIRE HIP-BUTTED THE swinging door and entered the autopsy suite. The cops and junior-grade personnel behind her were excited, speaking in whispers that seemed to cut loose, rise in volume, loop around her, then die down to a hush again.

Conklin had the summer intern under his wing. Mackie Morales seemed bright and eager and maybe a little bit too much into Richie—the way she looked at him, the way he was a little puffed up, explaining things to her. Cindy would not be happy if she saw this.

And not too much escaped Cindy.

Claire laughed quietly but didn’t say anything to Conklin. She went to the far corner of the room and pushed the button that turned on the video camera. The light on the camera didn’t go on. She punched it a couple of times and still the little red eye was dark.

That was weird. The camera had been fine yesterday.

She pressed the intercom button, said, “Ryan, check the video setup, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. It was unplugged. It’s on now.”

“Why was it unplugged?”

“I don’t know. I just found it this way.”

Bunny entered the room from the door that led to the morgue. She signaled to Claire as if to say, I need to talk to you.

“What’s the holdup, Bunny?”

“I need to see you for a second, Doctor.”

Claire sighed, crossed the room, and followed Bunny to the morgue, a refrigerated room lined with stacks of stainless steel drawers, each designed to hold a body. Some of Claire’s patients had recently checked in. Some had been waiting for months for someone to ID them before they were buried as nameless corpses.

“What is it, Bunny?”

The girl’s blue eyes were shifting and her lips were trembling. Claire didn’t get it. What the hell?

“I can’t find her,” Bunny said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Faye Farmer,” Bunny said. “She’s gone.”

“What’s her drawer number?” Claire asked, exasperated. She went to the whiteboard, ran her finger down the list.

“Twelve,” said Bunny Ellis.

Claire turned away from the whiteboard, crossed to the wall of drawers, pulled the handle of number 12. The drawer slid out smoothly, bringing the corpse into view. There was a tag tied to the big toe. Claire saw instantly that there had been a screwup. Faye Farmer was not and had never been a seventy-year-old black man.

She said, “Who mixed up the bodies? What drawer is this man supposed to be in?”

“Seventeen,” said Bunny. “Dr. Washburn, I already checked.”

Claire reached down, opened drawer number 17. It was empty. She started pulling out drawers, slamming them closed, each body in its assigned box except for the black John Doe in Faye Farmer’s drawer.

Bunny was crying now. She was a competent young woman and liked to do a good job.

“Stop that,” Claire snapped. “Think. Did you see Ms. Farmer’s body after she was checked in yesterday?”

“Not after I logged her in. She’s supposed to be in twelve.”

“Who moved John Doe one thirty-two out of box seventeen?”

Bunny shrugged miserably. “Not me.”

The body couldn’t have left the premises.

That was impossible.

CLAIRE WONDERED WHAT she was supposed to tell the gang of junior law enforcement personnel.
We’ve been robbed?
She returned to the autopsy suite, clapped her hands, and said, “People, we’ve encountered a problem that I need to address right away. Sorry about this. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can reschedule.”

Conklin stood like a tree in a stream that flowed around him as grumbling law enforcement trainees shed their outerwear and filed out. He said to Claire, “What’s going on?”

“Ms. Farmer’s body has been misplaced. I want to make a joke about how she didn’t like the accommodations, Richie, but there is nothing funny about this. If we don’t find her in three minutes, I’m going to have a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“Tell me what you know, from the beginning.”

“The beginning: Faye Farmer was logged in last night at eight seventeen p.m. and stowed in drawer twelve. We’ve got double records and triple logs on that. When I left last night, Faye was tucked in. I came in this morning, ready to do the post, as you know, and overnight the body vacated the morgue.

“She’s a one-hundred-and-thirty-five-pound dead woman. I can’t see her anywhere. She’s totally missing.”

“Okay. Calm down, Claire. She didn’t walk out of here, did she? She was positively dead?”

There
had
been a few instances in which people who appeared to be dead had regained consciousness after a stunning head injury or after having been in a coma. And a few of them had sat up on an autopsy table and walked out. Claire had no personal knowledge of these cases, but there were stories. This couldn’t be one of them. Faye Farmer had a bullet through her head. Through and through.

It was cool inside the morgue, and yet Claire was sweating through her clothes and her lab coat. Sweat seemed to be pooling in her shoes. She had never lost a body before. This was unimaginable.

“She was dead, Rich. Dead dead. Ten minutes ago I was worried about someone sneezing on her. Now, at the very least, we’ve lost chain of custody, which is plenty bad enough. Worst case is, we don’t recover the woman’s body and we never learn what killed her.”

“Okay, okay, Claire. We’ll find her.”

Morales and four kids from the crime lab strip-searched every part of the medical examiner’s office—the morgue, the back rooms, the supply closet, the administration bull pen.

Meanwhile, Claire and Conklin took the AV tech, Ryan Perles, into Claire’s office, shut the door, and questioned him.

“I came in at about eight this morning,” Perles said. He looked smug, Claire thought. Or as though he liked the attention, which he didn’t normally get.

“I had a lot of things to do when I got in and I was busy doing them when Dr. Washburn paged me. I looked and saw that the cord to the video system was unplugged from the battery backup. When I left last night, it was plugged in and A-OK.”

“Let’s see the disk from last night,” Conklin said.

The young tech opened the CD drawer. It was empty.

Claire put her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself. The conclusion was inescapable. Whoever took Faye Farmer’s body had access to Claire’s lab; most likely it had been someone who worked for her.

She could already visualize a video of Faye Farmer in some obscene pose in a car or a Dumpster posted on YouTube, going viral.

“Ryan, you came in this morning through the side door?” Claire asked him.

“Yes. Same as always.”

“It was locked?”

“Yes ma’am. Of course it was locked.”

“You’re sure?”

“Do you mind if I ask what’s wrong?”

“Ryan, let’s take this conversation upstairs,” Conklin said. “Sometimes a change of scene can help a person remember something he didn’t know he forgot.”

IT HAD BEEN a long, loud, fussy night, but Julie had finally worn herself out and gone to sleep on Joe’s chest. His clock projected the time on the ceiling in bright red digits. It was 4:54. I reorganized my blanket and settled in for what I hoped would be maybe forty-five minutes of deep sleep.

But Joe was wide awake. He said, “Let’s talk about this again, Linds. I think in this case I know what’s best for you better than you do.”

I yawned, fluffed my pillow.

“I can’t go back yet, Joe. I’m only going to be thinking about you and Julie, anyway.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the oldest of seven. I have burped and changed a lot of nephews and nieces, and while it might hurt your feelings, I’m good with Julie. I can take fine care of her.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, yes. I’ll go back to work.”

“Wait.”

“What am I waiting for?”

“I had some persuasive arguments I haven’t used yet.”

I started laughing. “I’m persuaded. You did a good job, Joe.”

“But you said you didn’t want to go back to work.”

“You won, sweetie. Don’t be a spoilsport.”

He laughed and I fell asleep without saying another word. I woke up at seven, snuck out of bed, and showered. After that, I felt around in the dark for my blue blazer; I found it and my trousers in plastic wrap on hangers in the closet.

Since my trousers seemed to have shrunk, I picked out a big shirt—one with pink pinstripes—and hung it out over my waistband, which I would have to do until I was a size 10 again.

Get used to it, everyone.

I buckled on my shoulder holster, got my gun out of the nightstand, then hung the chain holding my badge around my neck.

I air-kissed Joe and Julie so that neither of them woke up, carried my shoes out to the hallway, and put them on as Martha did a happy dance.

I took my dog for a short walk. I mean
short
. As soon as she did what she needed to do, I took her back home, then went back out to the street and looked for my car.

Did I feel guilty leaving Julie?

You bet I did. I thought of my baby girl, and it was like an umbilical bungee cord was connecting us, pulling me back toward home.

But I had gotten a compelling, nearly irresistible call from my former partner, Warren Jacobi, now chief of police. He had said, “I’m not saying drop-kick the baby and come in right away. It’s like this. Brady is short-staffed and over-whelmed. He needs your help.”

My old blue Explorer was parked a half block down from our apartment. I got in, turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started right up, almost as if it had been waiting for me.

I pulled out onto Lake Street and the car shot away from the curb, tires screeching. I could not wait to get to the Hall.

BRADY’S GLASS-WALLED OFFICE is about the size and shape of a votive candleholder. He was sitting at his desk, dwarfing it with his bulk, his head bowed over an open file, phone clapped to his ear.

I no longer felt steamed that this once was my office when I was squad lieutenant. I had wanted to work hands-on, on the street, and I wanted that badly enough to ask for a demotion to sergeant. I rarely regretted that decision.

I knocked on the glass door and Brady looked up, said into the phone, “I’ll call you later.” He hung up, got to his feet, reached across the desk, and shook my hand.

“Good to have you back, Boxer. You feel okay? Want desk work for a couple of weeks? Kind of ease back into things?”