Minka
Ifall into a working rhythm, processing a body, signing the certificate, annotating the files, and then moving on to the next.
One person. Then two. Three. Four. A standard autopsy can take anywhere from thirty minutes to thirty hours, depending on the complexity of the case and the hardheadedness of the detectives breathing down my neck.
But the bodies rolling through my door today are relatively simple.
They’re unhoused folks dying of heatstroke, or the elderly… dying of heatstroke… or in an exceptionally unfortunate case, a sweet toddler who sat in a car too long while mom snuck inside her boyfriend’s house for a quickie… dying of heatstroke.
These autopsies are easy enough to process, and the stack waiting for me in the fridges on the second floor grows smaller with every hour that passes.
“New York Malones are arriving tomorrow,” Aubree murmurs from behind her full-face plastic shield.
She slices into a male patient’s abdomen—mid-sixties, approximately twelve hours post mortem, yellow-stained fingers, yellow-tinged eyes, and partially rotted teeth.
Making the Y incision all the way to his stomach, she trades her scalpel for the chest separator.
“Felix is staying at your place, apparently.”
Unimpressed, I peek up from my notes and hit her with a severe scowl. “Nope.”
“Not, like, your apartment. But the house house. The Waterfalls.”
“Mm.” I look down again and continue mapping our vic and his wounds… as in, none visible. “I knew that.”
“Will you stay there, too?”
“Nope. I have a perfectly good apartment down the street from here, and if Felix is in town, chances are Cato will hang at the house, too. A quiet apartment is a rare experience these days.”
“But they’re your guests.” She digs into Doug’s chest—Douglas Hamerway, according to the friends who ID’d him on scene—and slides her hand into the cavity. “They’re staying at your house… makes them your guests.”
“The house technically belongs to them. It’s their own house.
Their vacation home, if you will.” I mark up the long-ago healed scar on Doug’s thigh, and three inches below it, another.
But it’s deeper and longer. “Felix is coming to stay at the home he owns on the opposite side of the country from where he normally lives. And since we’re talking technicalities, they’re here for your wedding. Makes them your guests.”
“If you move to the house, we can be almost neighbors again.” Glancing up, she flashes a wide smile. “Please? I could drop in at your place before work, and then we can share a ride down the hill. We could make a boring commute significantly more fun.”
“Moving was your choice, Doctor Emeri. Now you must live with the consequences of your actions.”
“But I’m lonely!” She lowers her shoulders, and with them, her lips.
“Tim wanted the big dumb house, and he likes living on the big dumb hills. He doesn’t mind driving into town, since he never actually has to come in for a standard commute.
But I still have a nine-to-five job, and sometimes that nine-to-five extends to midnight strolls at the Bay and dead bodies at the local Chipotle.
I like being there with him, but I’d like it even more if you moved, too. ”
“Sounds like a you problem. Just because you’re feeling a certain way about your mansion with all those floors and all those bedrooms and way too many stairs, not to consider installing a whole-ass elevator right down the middle, doesn’t mean I should uproot my life.
I currently live mere blocks from my job.
Blocks from Archer’s job. I’m next door to the bar that serves excellent coffee, and there’s a restaurant on every block, no matter which direction I look.
I like living where I live, but don’t stress so much.
” I smirk. “I heard the apartment above the bar is still empty. If you divorce T3, you get half his shit, anyway.”
“T3?” She extracts Doug’s heart with an easy one-two slice, twisting and placing the organ inside a stainless-steel bowl. “Calling him T3 is crass, even for you.”
“I feel it has a certain ring to it.”
“Oh, shit!”
I swing my focus to the left, to the shouted gasp from a tech in the next suite over, only to catch in real time, Doctor Flynn’s DB falling clear off the table and splatting to the floor.
With wild eyes and gritted teeth, she spins and meets my stare, seemingly more worried about getting into trouble than she is about the body on the ground.
I gesture her way with a flick of my wrist, breaking her from her rooted stance.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
“Did she seriously just toss that John Doe?” Aubree shakes her head, her plastic apron rustling with the movement.
“Back in my day, doing something like that would be grounds for a stern talking to.” She meets my eyes.
“And by back in my day, I mean a year ago, when the studious Chief Mayet was new, socially scornful, and mean.”
“I’m still scornful and mean.” I set my clipboard and pen aside, and, pushing to my feet, I stride to the suite door and swing it open. “Doctor Flynn! Are you for real right now?”
“I’m sorry!” She gets under her John Doe, grunting. “He just slipped, Chief! He was here, and then he wasn’t. Kirk!” She hounds the poor young tech and brings his desperately-trying-not-to-notice gaze around. “Be a gentleman, won’t you?”
“You’ve softened.” Amused, Aubree slides a needle into Doug’s eyeball and extracts fluid for the toxicology lab. “OG Minka Mayet would’ve called a staff meeting and chewed everyone out. You remember the dead guy who wasn’t actually dead?”
“Landry Mellet.” I close the door again and turn, pressing my back against the glass wall.
“I remember clearly. His name. His age. I remember what he looked like when he regained consciousness inside the fridges in my building, and I especially remember the time he attempted to sue this facility for mismanagement.” I raise a single, questioning brow.
“I remember all the details, Doctor Emeri.”
“And yet…” She snickers under her breath. “Flynn’s out here flipping DBs like this is a slumber party.”
“You’re entirely too…” I push away from the wall, screwing my nose and lips tight, and return to my clipboard. “Jovial. It’s weird.”
“I’ll be less jovial if you move into the big house with me. If you have a moral objection to living at the Waterfalls, then you might be interested to know I have approximately thirty-eleven spare bedrooms. Take your pick. We won’t even notice each other, since the house is so large.”
I snag my pen and plop back onto my seat, and trailing my eyes along Doug’s left side, I note the old, healed grazing on his knee. “Pass. But thanks for thinking of me.”
“Pain in my ass,” she grumbles. “Why do you have to be so difficult?”
“And lift,” Flynn coaches, straining under her DB’s hefty weight. “I said lift, James!”
“I am lifting!”