“It’s in the basement?” Doyle asked after Larkin had thumbed the Down button.
“Unfortunately.”
“Have you been here a lot?”
Larkin held up two fingers. “As a detective, only once.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The first time I was still on patrol.” The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Larkin tapped LL and said, as the doors wobbled shut, “January 3, 2013, Anthony Vargas was arrested for drug trafficking after selling over ten thousand pharmaceutical pills—benzodiazepines and opioids—to an undercover cop. While that was going down, an associate of Vargas’s entered the apartment, pulled a .22, and shot the undercover officer. He shot back and killed the associate. I was dispatched to the scene for crowd control, and while a neighbor across the hall argued with me that Vargas was just trying to make a living, a man’s gotta eat, a man’s gotta provide for his girl, said girlfriend had apparently been hiding in the apartment the entire time—” Larkin paused, looked up at Doyle, and clarified, “I was not the one to secure the scene.”
“Obviously.”
The doors opened at the basement and Larkin stepped out first. He said, while they walked down a long, stark white and sterile hallway, “According to the team from the OCME, she popped out of a closet and stabbed their driver in the leg while they’d been bagging the body of the associate. She was arrested, the driver was taken away by ambulance, and the remaining medicolegal investigator was so shaken that I aided in the body transport by driving the van for him.”
“Your beat years were certainly more memorable than mine,” Doyle remarked.
Larkin said sardonically, “Fun City.”
They reached a pair of double doors with glass windows affording a view of the windowless room within. It had a low-hanging ceiling with fluorescent overhead lights, a clunky HVAC system, and stainless steel autopsy tables—eight in all—lining the right side. The wall at the foot of the tables was crowded with sinks and tubing, cutting boards not unlike something found on sale in a home goods store, hanging scales for the weight of organs, and biohazard trash bins. On the left side of the room was a mess of shelving and medical bins, storing everything from PPE, evidence collection bags, containers for tissue and organ samples, jugs of formalin, and even a pair of shears normally used for yardwork.
Two autopsy tables at the midpoint were currently in use: one medical examiner hovered over the body of an elderly male, still dressed, performing an external examination, while the next pathologist was currently removing the digestive tract from their decedent and setting it on the table near the feet. A third examiner, wearing gray scrubs, a white lab coat, and an N95 mask, watched from the head of the table, motioning at something in the body cavity currently open and being rummaged through. Laid out on the table second closest to the entrance was the mummified remains of Larkin’s unknown woman.
Larkin pushed open the door and Doyle followed him inside.
The onlooking pathologist turned at the sound, tugged his mask off, and gave a friendly wave as he started across the suite toward them. Dr. Baxter was Larkin’s height—a very average five foot nine inches—but with a slender frame that bordered on slight. Should he have been half a foot taller, he’d have been more suited to displaying upcoming fashion trends on the runway versus schlepping about a basement autopsy suite in a pair of scrubs. Baxter’s hair was a natural coppery color (notstrawberry-blond) and styled in a modernized James Dean quiff. He wore retro browline glasses that brought together his whole chic, nerdy aesthetic, and Larkin had to admit that the good doctor was quite cute outside of full-body PPE.
“Detective Everett Larkin,” Baxter said in that light, teasing, confident voice.
Yes, Larkin thought.Very cute and he knows it.
“Doctor,” he said, offering a handshake. “It’s a pleasure to finally see your face.”
Baxter smiled wryly, looked at Doyle, and explained, “I was wearing a jumpsuit and respirator when we first met.”
“Alfred Niederman,” Larkin said to Doyle.
“Yes, the human soup,” Baxter agreed, but it was clear his attention was now elsewhere as he held a hand out and shook Doyle’s. “You must be the artist. Lawrence Baxter.”
“Ira Doyle. It’s nice to meet you, Doctor.”
Baxter shuddered theatrically. “Goddamn. That’s some vocal tract you have. Felt that resonance down to my balls.” He blew out a breath, put a hand to his chest, and said, “Well, come over here so we can talk about your gal.”
“I really need to get out of 1PP more often,” Doyle murmured. He glanced down at Larkin. “He’s the guy who told you his eyes were like quasars, right?”
Larkin felt his cheeks warm at the reminder of the less-than-professional conversation. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Doyle made an amused sound under his breath and followed Larkin toward the autopsy table.
Baxter was yanking on a pair of latex gloves as he asked Doyle, “Whatever happened with that first casting I made you? We’ve a dearth of gossip at the OCME.”
“It helped us catch the guy responsible,” Doyle confirmed.
“Oh, I do love a man with a sense of justice.”
“You love any man!” one of the other pathologists shouted from behind Baxter.
He said, without missing a beat, “It gets lonely down here.”
