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I could imagine the folds under the chief’s jaw getting even deeper with the afternoon headline. In fact, the entire Hall was buzzing with the news that the La Salle Heights murder victim had been related to one of our own.
There were several other messages waiting for me on my desk. At the bottom of the pile I came across Claire’s name. Tasha Catchings’s autopsy should be finished by now. I wanted to hold off on Mercer until I had something concrete to report, so I called Claire.
Claire Washburn was the sharpest, brightest, most thorough M.E. the city ever had, notwithstanding the fact that she also happened to be my closest friend. Everyone associated with law enforcement knew it, and that she ran the department without a hitch while Chief Coroner Righetti, the mayor’s stiff-suited appointee, traveled around the country to forensic conferences working on his political résumé. You wanted something done in the M.E.’s office, you called Claire.
And when I needed someone to set me straight, make me laugh, or just be there to listen, that’s where I went, too.
“Where you been hiding, baby?” Claire greeted me with her always upbeat voice, which had the ring of polished brass.
“Normal routine.” I shrugged. “Staff appraisals, case write-ups… city-dividing, racially motivated homicides…”
“Just my region of expertise.” She chuckled. “I knew I’d be hearing from you. My spies tell me you’ve got yourself a bitch of a case out there.”
“Any of those spies maybe work for the Chronicle and drive a beat-up silver Mazda?”
“Or the D.A.’s office, and a BMW five-thirty-five. How the hell do you think information ever gets down here, anyway?”
“Well, here’s one, Claire. Turns out the dead little girl’s uncle is in uniform. He’s at Northern. And the poor kid ends up being a poster child for the La Salle Heights project in action. Top-of-the-line student, never once in trouble. Some justice, huh? This bastard leaves a hundred slugs in the church and the one that hits finds its way into her.”
“Uh-uh, honey.” Claire cut me off. “There were two of them in there.”
“Two…? She was hit twice?” EMS had been all over the body. How could we have failed to catch that?
“If I’m hearing you right, my guess is you think this shot was some kind of accident.”
“What are you saying?”
“Honey,” Claire said soberly, “I think you better come on down for a visit.”
Chapter 11
THE MORGUE was on the ground floor of the Hall, out a back entrance and accessible from an asphalt path that led from the lobby. It took me no more than three minutes to rush down two flights of stairs.
Claire met me in the reception area outside her office. Her bright and usually cheery face bore a look of professional concern, but as soon as she saw me, she eased into a smile and gave me a hug.
“How you been, stranger?” she asked, as if the case were a million miles away.
Claire always had a way of defusing the tension in even the most critical of situations. I’d always admired how she could relax my single-minded focus with just a smile.
“I’ve been good, Claire. Just swamped since I got the job.”
“I don’t get to see you much now that you’re Mercer’s pet butt-boy.”
“Very funny.”
She smiled that coy, wide-eyed smirk of hers that was partly, Hey, I know what you mean, but maybe a lot more, You gotta make the time, girl, for those who love you. But without as much as a reproving word, she led me down an antiseptic, linoleum-tiled hallway toward the morgue’s operating room, called the Vault.
She glanced behind and said, “You made it sound like you were sure Tasha Catchings was killed by a stray bullet.”
“That’s what I thought. The gunman fired three clips at the church and she was the only one hit. I even went and cased the area where the shots came from. There was no way he had anything even close to a clean shot. But you said two.…”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded. We burst through a closed compression door into the dry, cold air of the Vault. The icy chill and chemical smell always made my skin crawl.
And it was no different now. A single inhabited gurney was visible from its refrigerated vault. A small mound was on it, covered by a white sheet. It barely filled half the length of the gurney.
“Hold on,” Claire warned. Naked post-op victims, rigid and terrifyingly pale, were never an easy sight.
She pulled down the sheet. The child’s face shot into my view. God, she was young.…
