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Valerie stood up and shook his hand. “Hello, Doctor Birkin, my name is Agent Valerie Law.”
“I know who you are,” he said with a grimace. “I want it known for the record that I don’t like to be rushed.”
“Time is of the essence, Doctor,” Valerie said. “A killer is on the loose in Kerry County.”
“A killer she says!” the old man laughed, looking at Sheriff Carter. “She acts like we’ve never had a homicide before. I’m eighty-six years old, and I’ve seen it all, so please don’t treat me like some sort of ill-informed country bumpkin.”
Valerie felt herself bristling. Normally, she would have been more forceful in return, but she couldn’t take the risk that the autopsy reports for the three victims be stalled any longer.
“I mean no offense, Doctor Birkin,” Valerie said.
“The FBI are here to help us, Larry,” Sheriff Carter said softly. “And from what I can see, they’ve sent their best.”
Valerie softened at that. Carter’s charm could melt an iceberg, but she was worried slightly byhow muchshe found him charming.
“I’m not interested in your new friends, Glen,” Larry Birkin snapped. “I’m only interested in doing things in a methodical way, and this rush today is not conducive to that. I know you like to do things roughshod, but you know thatI do not.”
Valerie sensed the tension between the two men. Everything about Larry Birkin’s demeanor and body language told Valerie that he really did not like Glen.
“Larry, please,” Sheriff Carter said. “I can’t explain, but we have limited time here with the FBI … At least, Agent Law and her department. They specialize in this sort of thing, and we need to make as much headway as we can while they’re here.”
“We’re here to benefit from your decades of experience, Doctor Birkin.” Valerie was trying to ease the tension in the room, but the staring eyes of the stuffed animals made everything feel especially strange and skewed. “The best way for us to catch this killer is to combine the resources of the FBI with the expertise and experience of Kerry County’s finest.”
Now the old man across from her grinned like a Cheshire cat. “She’s persuasive, I’ll give her that.”
Valerie hated the way the old man spoke about her in the third person as if she wasn’t there. But she tried to put it down to, as Sheriff Carter had called it, a quirky personality. Deep down, Valerie thought the man might simply be mean.
“May I ask?” Valerie inquired. “Has the autopsy on the third victim been completed?”
The old man sighed. “Yes, it has, Agent Law. But it is not my best work. As I said, I don’t like to be rushed. That leads to mistakes. It leads to oversights. I refuse to have either at this coroner’s office.”
“It would be of great benefit to all of us,” she said, opening her arms up as she spoke to create a sense of safety, “if it would be possible to see all three victims side by side at the same time. Comparison like that would help identify leads. I’m assuming the bodies of the victims are still held here in your morgue?”
“The bodies are here,” the old coroner said. “But it’ll take at least a day for me to put everything together for you. All the appropriate paperwork has to be carefully collated. And having the bodies moved from storage back to the autopsy room. I’ll need a porter for that and there are none here today.”
Valerie sensed deception. The man was lying through his teeth.
“For Christ’s sake, Larry!” Sheriff Carter said abruptly. “We don’t need all this runaround. You know damn fine well that the second morgue downstairs hasn’t been used due to flooding early in the spring. The bodies must be through that wall in morgue two. Why are you trying to slow things down unnecessarily? I know you don’t like me, but this is unacceptably poor. It’s obstruction. We’re supposed to be on the same team.”
Larry Birkin went red in the face. “Carter, you’ve never done things as they should be. Your predecessors knew how to treat the Kerry County coroner’s office with respect. You don’t. And I won’t berunaroundhere, asyouput it, by your lack of manners and sloppy methods. You are a disgrace to that uniform and our community. You can come back tomorrow, and I’ll have my assistant take both of you through into the morgue. Only then, and not before!”
“Like hell,” Sheriff Carter said. “I hate to do this …” He turned to Valerie. “Agent Law, you may want to cover your ears. I wouldn’t want you privy to anything underhanded. But it is what it is.”
“No, I think I do want to hear this,” Valerie said, almost enjoying Sheriff Carter's newfound defiance in the face of the old man’s stalling.
“Glen, what the hell do you think this is? Do you think I’m scared of an outsider dressed up as Kerry County’s Sheriff. A failure. A bum. Don’t make me laugh before I have that badge forcibly taken from you for threatening an official trying to do his work,” Larry Birkin went on.
Valerie could feel the hatred coming from the old man. He really had it in for the sheriff.
“How is your son, Larry? How is he these days?” Sheriff Carter suddenly asked in relaxed fashion.
That seemed to stop the old coroner in his tracks. “Eh …” He stammered. “What … what do you mean?”
“You mentioned my predecessors a moment ago,” Sheriff Carter said, smiling. “Did you know I’ve done my due diligence ontheirprevious exploits? Oh yes … for example,I know that the previous sheriff cut you some slack over your boy. But you know that, too, don’t you?”
“Sheriff Carter, you’re making a mistake that will prove monumentally fatal for your career,” Birkin said through gritted teeth.
But this did not deter his opponent. “Your son was caught with an unreasonable amount of cocaine in his trunk about twenty-six years ago. In fact, there was so much that there was no doubt he wasdealingthe stuff to our community. Your son should have ended up serving a lengthy prison sentence, and you would most probably have been out of a job for trying to get local law enforcement to ignore the matter.
