Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“This won’t take me long.” Carlos didn’t bother explaining more, he just hung up on Halstood.
He stepped into the Medical Examiner’s Office, a warm entrance that seemed to be full of people. He’d left Eliana at home resting, checked on Patience, and even got a workout in before his shift. Now he was going to run out of time on his lunch break if he didn’t get this done quickly.
Carlos signed in and got a visitor’s pass—thanks to his uniform. The guard noted his name and badge number, then waved him through the security scanner. Beyond that, in another lobby, FBI agents Fox and Glor waited for him.
Glor lifted his chin as he approached them.
Carlos held his hand out, and they shook. “Good to see you.”
“You as well.” Special Agent Glor nodded. He wore a blue tie today and seemed more…animated. Because of the prospect of these new leads?
Fox shook his hand. “Have you seen Detective Maloney today?”
“I haven’t.” Thankfully so, because Carlos wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to contain the secret they knew—that Maloney might be one of the Reverence Sisters. Or, at least that she might know more than she was saying about them.
The detective had joined the police department under false pretenses at the least. What else it might entail would be for the FBI to figure out.
Carlos looked around. “You chose here to have this conversation?”
“Walk with me.” Special Agent Fox motioned with a tip of her head, and they started down the wide hallway.
He noted the expensive-looking wainscoting and the occasional gilded-frame painting on the white walls above wood paneling that ran the length of the bottom half of the wall.
In this massive office that tried to look like a centuries-old mansion or a university, it seemed whoever the chief was had old-world taste.
“This seemed like a good place to talk,” Fox continued, “given that the two bodies in the morgue are related to our case. I figured we could check in about our friend who might be one of the Reverence Sisters at the same time.”
Carlos had half an hour, then he needed to be back on shift on the streets with Halstood. Given everything that had happened the past week or so, it seemed odd to work a normal shift as if nothing was going on, but that was part of the job. You carried on, whether your head was in it or not.
Inside the elevator, Fox pushed the button for the lower floor, where the actual morgue facilities were located. The ground floor and above were reserved for offices and conference rooms, she explained.
Seemed fitting to put the dead people in a basement area, but natural light would always be Carlos’s preference. Like not living somewhere with so much cloud cover.
As they descended, Special Agent Glor leaned against the wall in the elevator car, eyeing Carlos. “Any thoughts about wearing a wire and talking to Maloney? You could get a sense of what she knows about the Sisters.”
Because it was on him to get them intel?
Carlos fired back. “Any thoughts about you guys taking over their murder case, or inserting yourselves into it at least? You can see what she knows yourself.” He stuck his thumbs in his belt, which made things creak, but then he needed the reminder of who he was and the limitations that placed on him.
A cop couldn’t just go about investigating for the FBI, practically becoming one of their informants.
Fox shrugged. “We need evidence before we can point fingers at a Chicago PD officer.”
“Funny,” Carlos said. “I could say the same.”
The involvement he could have in this, or the lack thereof—at least officially—was determined by department procedure. Not what he wanted. In fact, he should probably be filing a report with Internal Affairs, except that he had no evidence.
As much as he might want to go vigilante and take down everyone who threatened Chicago, he found that he didn’t really care about the city.
Maybe he should, because Chicago seemed like it might be under attack right now.
The truth was, he cared more about his sister.
About Eliana and what happened to her. At least more than the rest of the people in this city.
Carlos didn’t want to admit to anyone how much seeing her sitting on the floor in that bare kitchen with her hands over her ears had shaken him. He’d had to cut her free. He didn’t want to admit how it felt seeing her injuries and talking to her while she lay in a hospital bed. Not even to himself.
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into a brightly lit hall.
“Hold up.” Fox touched Carlos’s arm for a second, and he turned to her. “So you’re out? You don’t want anything to do with this, when there’s a dirty cop in your department and no one knows but you?”
“I came here, didn’t I?” Carlos shrugged. “I just have different priorities than you. I’m not your lackey, so figure it out. You guys are the ones who are supposed to find the Mother and bring these people down before they hurt anyone else. All I want to know is where to find my sister.”
A second after he finished talking, an alarm sounded. The hall flashed with red light from above one of the doors down the hall, to the right. “Biological contaminant in Autopsy Three.” Klaxons sounded, three loud blaring tones, then the voice repeated its warning.
Carlos jogged down the empty hall to the door, where reflex had him reaching for the handle.
“Don’t.” Glor pulled him back. “There are protocols. Don’t go rushing in there.”
“It’s locked.” Fox pointed to the join of the doors beside the handle. “You can’t get in anyway.”
“So what do we do?” Carlos peered in the small window, the glass crisscrossed with wires, and spotted two metal autopsy tables side by side.
The two women who had been shot in that apartment were—
“They’re sitting up.” He let out a tight breath and stepped back, glancing both ways down the hall. No one had come running from elsewhere in the building.
What was the protocol? Surely, a team of people should be here by now.
He looked back at the window, but they hadn’t moved. And why would they? These two women were dead. Sitting up, with their lower bodies still in the half-unzipped body bags.
What on earth?
Glor bent to look through the window. “Look at their mouths.”
Fox peered in beside her partner. “Smoke coming out. Some kind of gas that’s probably the contaminant.”
Carlos moved to the window on the other door and looked in. “I don’t see any staff. Who hit the alarm? And where is a team of people to contain this? If there’s a gas in the air, it could be leaking out of the vents.”
“Unlikely, since the autopsy room is in lockdown.” Fox shook her head. “There will be safety protocols to stop contaminated gas from going into the HVAC system.”
“But we have no idea.” Carlos walked over to a phone handset on the wall and picked it up. Hammered his finger down on the button. “This thing isn’t working. There’s no dial tone.”
“So we’re cut off down here.” Glor pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Carlos retrieved his cell from his belt. No signal. He didn’t know if that was typical.
A loud thump from inside the autopsy room rocked the doors.
Carlos whipped around and saw a dark-haired man fog up the window. The guy cried out, but Carlos couldn’t hear more than a muffled scream through the sealed doors.
“We have to help him!” Fox grabbed the handles and tried to tug the doors open.
Glor pulled her back. “We can’t go in there, remember? They’ve locked down the room.” He turned to Carlos. “I’m going to run upstairs and find help.”
Behind the window, the man in Autopsy 3 cried out. Head tipped back. Liquid slid from his red rimmed eyes, down his clammy cheeks. He started to drop out of view, so Carlos moved to the window.
With his face almost pressed against the glass, Carlos tried to get a clearer view. The guy had collapsed to the floor. A few feet away, another person lay on the tile.
“Biological contaminant in Autopsy Three.” Klaxons sounded, then the voice repeated its warning.
“There are two of them in distress, the doctor and another person.” Carlos looked around, his gaze snagging on the two women on the tables.
Sitting up. He could see that autopsies hadn’t started.
Maybe they never would’ve been, given the two women had both been shot.
There was no reason to look for another cause of death.
But clearly something had happened after those two body bags were laid on the tables.
“Why are Sarah and Faith sitting up?” Fox peered in the window. “Was there something in their stomachs?”
“Whatever it is, the system registered it as a contaminant, or one of these staff people hit a button.” Carlos gritted his teeth.
“That’s the medical examiner we were supposed to meet, and his assistant.” Fox peered in the window at the two on the floor. “Not that you want anything to do with it.”
As if he was going to take that bait. “Where’s Glor with that help?”
Fox grabbed the edges of the window, peering closer. “Someone just entered the room.”
Carlos tried to see what she’d noticed. Sure enough, people in white PPE walked through the room from a side door, masks over their faces providing them with clean air to breathe. He looked for lanyards or badges but saw none. “Staff?”
“No idea.” Fox hammered the palm of her hand on the glass. “Hey!”
Carlos did the same, but the PPE people didn’t seem to notice the doctor and his assistant lying on the floor. “Hey! Over here!”
Four people in total, dressed in their protective clothing, and they never looked at the two staff members in distress by the door.
Not once did they glance over. Carlos couldn’t see the doctor and his assistant clearly enough to know if they were even alive.
Two of the figures in PPE went to one of the dead women, and the other two went to the second.
They pushed the torso back and laid the women flat, then zipped up the body bags they’d been lying in.
“What on earth?” Fox breathed the question against the glass. She hammered the flat of her hand against it again. “Hey! Over here!”
Again, she was ignored.
The elevator door at the end of the hall dinged, and Carlos heard the doors open. Glor raced out with two security guards and a guy in a lab coat.
“Biological contaminant in Autopsy Three.” Klaxons sounded, three loud blaring tones, and then the voice repeated its warning again.
“There are people in there!” Carlos called out as they raced down the hall. “Who was sent in already?”
Fox shook his arm. “They’re taking the body bags.”
One of the security guards tried to shove Carlos out of the way.
“What’s going on?” The doctor stopped, breathy and pink cheeked.
Carlos said, “We need to get in there before—”
“They’re taking them out!” Fox grabbed his arm and pulled him over.
Carlos looked through the window.
One of the security guards said, “What’s the protocol, Doctor? There are people in distress in there.”
“Uh…” The guy reached back and squeezed his neck.
Glor said, “Can you get on your radio and call for an ambulance for the staff? I’ve got no signal down here.” He looked like he was about to run back upstairs. He’d probably go out on the street and flag down a medic before these guys made up their minds about what to do.
Carlos yelled, “Doctor!”
“Right.” The older heavy-set man moved to a panel beside the door and tapped the screen. The Klaxons blared again.
“They’re going to die before we get inside.” Carlos went to the window so he could try to see the two on the floor. Were they already dead? Maybe it was too late.
A figure in white PPE stepped in front of the window.
Breath caught in Carlos’s throat. He couldn’t see the person’s features, with the hood of the safety clothing covering their hair and a mask over their face.
After a second staring at him, they reached down and injected something into the two people on the floor, the medical examiner and the assistant.
He saw the plunger of one needle go down. It was tossed aside. Another needle.
Plunger down. The needle was tossed aside.
They’d never get prints off that, because the person was wearing gloves. But whoever touched it before them might’ve left a print.
The PPE person rushed to the door at the far end and disappeared from sight.
“They’re getting away.” Carlos looked at Fox, and both of them turned to the security guards. “Where does that hall go?”
“West exit.”
Fox grabbed his arm. “Come on.”
Carlos raced after her. Hopefully, she knew where she was going. All he could do was pray for the two who’d just been injected. Was it with something that would end their suffering quickly, or would it reverse the effects of whatever substance incited the alarm?
Fox pushed ahead of him through a set of doors.
Glor grabbed the door over his head as Carlos passed through, and the three of them raced down a hallway, brick on one side—the exterior of the building—and small rooms with waiting-area-style chairs on the other side.
Beyond two of those was a storage closet. Bathrooms.
Fox pushed out into the bright light of afternoon and immediately yelled, “Hey!”
“FBI!” Glor took off running through the door, after his partner, moving faster than Carlos would’ve believed he could in those dress shoes. Gun out. Determined to stop them.
Squinting, Carlos saw the four in their PPE get into the back of a black van, hauling the body bags with them.
The last one looked at him, then climbed in, slamming the doors shut.
“FBI!” Fox raced after her partner, gun drawn.
Carlos strained to read the license plate on the back of the van, and when it was too far away, he slowed to a stop. Pulled out his notebook. Wrote down what he remembered.
“Did you get it?” Fox came close and looked.
“Partial.”
“Better than nothing.” She clapped him on the shoulder.
Glor raced back. “What do they want with the bodies?”
“To get rid of the evidence?” Fox said.
Carlos put his radio to his mouth and called it in, asking for units to pursue the van.
Fox had her phone out as well, saying, “Yes, sir, that’s correct.”
Glor stared in the direction the van had gone. A couple of squad cars blew past on the street, lights and sirens going.
Carlos listened to the dispatcher for a second, then said to the feds, “The ambulance just pulled up out front.”
Glor went to the door. “I’ll pull security camera feeds. Fox, find out what the doctor and his assistant can tell us. If they’re able to talk. Officer Ryson—”
“I have about five minutes left on my lunchbreak.”
Fox held the door for him. “Aren’t you glad you came?”
Carlos didn’t answer, he just went inside.