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I gulped down the last pieces, then snapped the lid back onto the container and stuffed it down into my bag. “Sorta. I just throw a bunch of veggies into a pan with some tofu. Add rice, maybe some sweet and sour sauce.”
Nick made a face. “Tofu. Gah. Give me real meat any day.”
I hid a smile as I gathered up my things. If he only knew. Yet as I left the morgue and headed up to the main building a thought occurred to me that made me stop and laugh.
Nick was grossed out by tofu, but not at the fact that I was eating my dinner not twenty feet from a cooler full of dead bodies.
I grinned and continued on. We’re all monsters here.
Chapter 10
It was tempting to sit back and consider Dr. Leblanc’s words to me and daydream about doing more with my life, but right now finding out about the stolen body was a shitload more important. As dorky as it sounded, my fucking honor was at stake, and unless I got this shit figured out I was going to have a helluva hard time having any sort of decent future.
Therefore, I headed straight for the investigator’s office. Derrel was there, painstakingly pecking out a report on the computer. He gave me an absent-minded wave with barely a glance up from the screen.
“Angel, why can’t you be more like Nick?” Derrel said with a black scowl.
I could only stare at him for several breaths before I found my voice. “Wh-what? Why do you say that?”
He gave a hmmphing sound. “Because Nick is a godawful fast typist, and Allen has managed to convince the little shit that if he types up all of Allen’s reports it’ll improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He lifted his head and grinned at me.
I returned the grin with relief. “Well, I can’t type, but I can be more of a suck-up if you want.”
Derrel shuddered. “No, please don’t change a damn thing. I’ve already had to fight off a hostile takeover from Monica.”
“A what?”
“Monica wanted to change the shifts so that she was paired with you. I told her to back the hell off. You’re stuck with me, chick.”
I plopped into a chair. “I’m glad to know you love me so much. Now I need you to prove your love by helping me out with something.”
Derrel clicked on something on his screen, then gave me his full attention. “You want to know everything there is to know about the victim from the lab.”>I got the body of the overdose victim onto the table and prepped while Dr. Leblanc made his initial observations and jotted notes on his pad. I stepped back as he picked up a scalpel off the sideboard, but to my surprise he extended it to me, handle first.
I automatically took it, looked stupidly down at it, then back up to him. “Um. You’re kidding, right? You want me to cut him open?”
“You can do this, Angel,” he assured me. “You’re a tough, no-nonsense chick with an iron stomach. You’ve watched me do it a few hundred times. Now, cut that body open.”
I made a face. “Why can’t I just stick to cutting heads?” I said. I might have whined a little bit.
Dr. Leblanc chuckled. “Because I’m lazy.”
“Hardly!”
“How about, because you’re fully capable of doing it, therefore you should.”
I scowled down at the scalpel in my hand. The pathologist had been dropping hints for a while now that he would soon start having me participate more in the autopsies—a statement I hadn’t really understood until now. “I’m fully capable of doing many things that I probably shouldn’t,” I said.
A smile quirked his lips. “I trust that you have the judgment to apply proper discretion. Besides, what you really are is fully capable of being more than a simple morgue tech. There are some agencies where the morgue assistant—or the diener—does almost all of the work of opening the body up and pulling the organs out, whereupon the pathologist simply comes over and takes a look and cuts his samples off.” He gestured to the body lying on the metal table. “A bit more training and you could probably get to that point.”
I stepped grudgingly up to the body. “Okay, so maybe you are being lazy.”
He chuckled. “Curses! Here I thought I was being convincing in my mentor persona.”
“Nope. I see right through you,” I replied, but the truth was that any time Dr. Leblanc made one of those comments it warmed my crusty little soul more than I could have ever explained. More than anyone else in my life, I felt that Dr. Leblanc truly thought I was smart and had potential.
“Dieners make more money,” he added with a sly wink.
“Well why the hell didn’t you just say that to begin with?” I replied, raising the scalpel.
