Nothing like the smell of formaldehyde in the morning, Frank Behr thought to himself as he entered the brown brick building that housed the coroner’s office, though the place didn’t smell only like formaldehyde. Truth was it smelled like overcooked ground beef.
“How are you? Frank Behr to see Jean Gannon,” Behr said to the middle-aged woman sitting at the reception desk. He hadn’t been in touch with his friend Jean, a forensic pathologist for the city, in a while and it’d be good to catch up in person before he asked for her help. Behr had a small sack of chocolate truffles and a few airplane-size bottles of Grand Marnier in one coat pocket, the bag holding the hairbrush in the other. It was his custom to bring Jean gifts when she was doing him off-the-books favors. The fact that he had clearance on this one didn’t stop him from keeping up the tradition.
“Jean’s not here,” the receptionist told him.
“Not here as in out getting a coffee, or not at work today?” Behr wondered, glancing at the trophy case across the lobby that held macabre souvenirs of past deaths—a piece of plastic a child had choked on, a length of rebar that had impaled a construction worker, a paper-like hood of dried facial skin, including the nose, of a burn victim. Morgue workers had a specialized sense of humor.
“Not here at all anymore,” she answered. “Jean took early retirement a few months ago and left the office.”
“What?” Behr uttered. He wasn’t surprised often, but this got him. Jean had loved her work. The sense of time moving by was a blow to him. Then there was the fact he no longer had a connection in the coroner’s office.
“I know,” the receptionist said, then rolled her chair to a bulletin board and took down a business card. “Here,” she said, passing it to him. “This is where she’s working now.”
The card read: Scanlon Brothers, Mortuary and Funeral Home.
“Here,” Behr said, placing the chocolates and Grand Marnier on the desk.
“What’s that for?” the receptionist asked.
“That’s for you,” Behr said.
“Thanks!” She smiled. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Frank Behr …” he said, and leaned in for some small talk. The receptionist was a long way from a forensic pathologist he had history with, but he had to start somewhere.
Next stop was the Indianapolis–Marion County Forensic Services Agency—otherwise known as the place that did DNA testing. It shared a building down on South Alabama with the jail. He was there to drop the hairbrush, which he produced along with his license and the release form when he got to the buttoned-down-looking young clerk.
“I need you guys to run DNA on these hairs against the Northwestway Park victim. I’ve got clearance from Lieutenant Breslau, IMPD, and the family,” he told the young man.
“All right,” the clerk said, and took the information from Behr, which he attached to the bag that held the hairbrush. “Just so you know, DNA can only be recovered from hairs with the bulb still attached. There might be some here, but it’d be better if you plucked the hairs.”
Thanks, CSI, Behr almost said. Instead he opted for: “That’s not an option. How long will it take?”
“Things are kind of backed up,” the clerk said. “It’s going to be a couple of weeks at least.”
“Anything you can do to help it through the system would be much appreciated,” Behr said. “I know Lieutenant Breslau feels the same way.”
Truth was, he didn’t know how Breslau felt, but it wasn’t the first time a little bullshit had been spread around this particular building, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“We’re on it,” the clerk said to Behr’s departing back.