Meg Callahan’s face was green. She clapped one fuchsia-fingernail-polished hand over her mouth and ran, hunched over, toward the bathroom at the coroner’s office.
As soon as the door slammed shut behind her, drawn-out retching noises emerged from the small bathroom, which was right in the middle of the coroner’s front office. Several of the secretaries grimaced.
Tommy just smiled and shrugged.
Guess Meg wasn’t cut out for a visit to the morgue. She probably wouldn’t race to any more photo assignments that involved dead bodies, either. Her shots this morning were of a bunch of cops standing around a body covered with a sheet.
This afternoon, she got a close up of what it was like to see a dead body.
It wasn’t Tommy’s fault. For some reason, Sandoval thought every new photographer should have to visit the morgue. Tommy was just helping out. Being a team player.
Plus, Tommy wanted to ask about the autopsy of the kid found this morning in the Mississippi. While Meg heaved up what remained of her lunch, Tommy took Deputy Dan Reed aside. “Find anything in the floater’s windpipe?” Her voice was low.
He gave her a strange look. It was a strange question.
“Autopsy on the kid’s not until morning, but I can tell you we don’t usually look in there.”
“Trust me, this time you’re gonna want to take a peek,” Tommy said. “I got a call.”
“Huh.” Reed moved off causally as another deputy rounded the corner.
Tommy fidgeted and pointed to the bathroom door. “New photog. Not quite up to seeing the motorcycle vic on the slab today. Head cracked like an egg. Crappy way to go.”
“Yeah, that one ain’t pretty,” the other deputy said. “Made me skip the chow mien at lunch today.”
“You’d think they’d make it a law to wear helmets in Minnesota.”
“You’d think,” the other deputy said and slipped through the door that led from the morgue offices to the autopsy room.
She eyed Reed. “I got a call from the killer, I think.”
“What?”
“You look in the windpipe. Tell me what you find and I’ll tell you more.” She scribbled her cell phone number on the back of her card and tucked it into his front shirt pocket. “He called me on my cell. Nobody has that number. Now you do. Let me know what you find.”
“I can’t do it right now.”
“Well, whenever.”
Meg emerged from the bathroom with red eyes and damp hair around her face.
“Ready?” Tommy asked.
Meg nodded weakly.
“Good because I’m starving and I know this really great Chinese food restaurant just around the corner. They’ve got a killer chow mien.”