All That Falls (42 page)

Morgan snorted. Yeah, right. If there really was a God, It didn’t give a shit one way or the other. She’d seen religion ruin enough lives to figure that out. It was the main reason she’d become a doctor—science meant explanations, answers, truth. Religion offered only lies and maybes.

And you sure saw a lot of those on TV these days. Twenty years of a hard-line right-wing White House had spread the war on terror to a third of the globe. The United States had made a lot of enemies, foreign and domestic, and citizens under constant threat of homegrown terror turned to God and extremism to justify their paranoia. The global economy was just one more theater in the conflict. Wall Street soared on the back of clandestine arms deals and aggressive corporate shock tactics, and the rich got richer, while uptown, urban decay ruled and warring gangs killed each other on the streets in the name of God. The fanatical incumbents in City Hall whipped up the tension with discrimination and overzealous police presence. Some called it a new age of prosperity and righteousness—the new Babylon. Others called it asking for trouble.

Morgan pushed through double plastic doors into the deserted office. The religious nutter on the TV wasn’t screaming or waving his hands, she saw. He was well-groomed and handsome, with short dark hair, a neat suit, and calm Latino eyes. He spoke intelligently, articulately, without hyperbole.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t a frickin’ nutter.

They shouldn’t try to cure the Manhattan virus, he said, because the disease represented God’s will. It was His way of exposing sinners. The Bible said only those carrying the Beast’s
mark would be affected. Everyone else was safe. All we need to do is pray for
deliverance, amen!

Morgan watched for a few moments, her lip curling. God’s will was a city in fear? Twelve hundred fatalities in a week, the National Guard barricading the streets and a temporary morgue in Central Park overflowing with corpses?

Preachers, churchmen, evangelists. No matter what religion, they were all the same. All liars. This guy on the TV was more dangerous, because he seemed normal. People would believe him. And when he turned on them, they’d stare and sob and say
What the hell happened? He seemed so nice and genuine.

Her throat tightened, angry, and she gripped the asthma inhaler in her pocket and forced herself to breathe. “TV off,” she snapped, and the screen flicked silent.

The cultist who’d seduced her mother had seemed nice and genuine, too. Right up until fourteen-year-old Morgan had hopped off the Lexington Avenue subway after Spanish class at Hillary Clinton High to find her mother on the living room floor, her Bible in her hand and a shotgun beside her. Blood everywhere. Bits of her brain dripping down the walls.

The cops had found the emails inciting suicide on her mother’s tablet, but the cult leader who sent them had long skipped town. Similar suicides were discovered throughout the city. All part of the bastard’s plan.

All her family’s money had gone to the cult. All their possessions. Morgan had to pay her way through college and med school on full scholarships and part-time jobs. But she’d made it, without any help. Whenever she faltered, her mother’s messy death sustained her. Depending on others was deadly. Blind trust was a killer.

But Morgan Sterling, MD, junior assistant medical examiner for Babylon County, controlled her own destiny now. And she wouldn’t pray for deliverance from anyone.

The door banged open, and Suhail, the lab assistant, pushed in a trolley loaded with tissue samples in yellow plastic iceboxes, the black biohazard symbol printed on the side. “Another load for you, Dr. M,” he said cheerfully, a grin on his young face.

Suhail was studying at med school and worked at the morgue part-time, when he wasn’t smoking dope and raising
hell with his numerous lurid gang boyfriends. He had messy dyed-blond hair and a tongue stud, and wore a T-shirt with a cartoon of a phallic-looking rocket launcher and the words
STICK THIS UP YOUR JIHAD
.

He also sported a cut lip and the remains of a juicy black eye. Morgan guessed that in gang-happy Babylon, full of militant Latinos and Aryan white supremacists, a mouthy gay Arab anarchist got beaten up by pretty much everyone. But like Morgan, Suhail doggedly made the best of what he had, even if it wasn’t much.

“Thanks, So-so,” Morgan said. “In the last fridge. I’m almost full up.” Manhattan virus was virulent and so far 100 percent lethal, but not particularly infectious. It could be transmitted by blood and fluid contact, like biting or access to an open wound. Only level-two precautions were required for samples in the lab, the same as hepatitis C or HIV. But in the wild, it was another story. When it came to making new friends, Manhattan’s victims were cunning—and determined.

“Sure thing. A few more homicide DOAs down in the morgue, too.” Suhail leaned his skinny brown elbow on his cart like the first-class time-waster he was, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “So how’s it going? You finding anything on the hush-hush?”

“Nope.” Morgan bit her lip. Medicine couldn’t solve every problem. But neither did it promise all the answers. She’d helped the CDC track down the virus’s likely zero point, which was a start. But it was far from a cure.

“The boss, has he figured you out yet?”

His delight made her smile. Suhail liked breaking the rules, and he’d covered for her enough times, hoarding samples and fiddling paperwork and making excuses to the boss. She snorted. “J.C.? Like he’d stick his head out of his office for me.”

“This is not what I hear.” Suhail scratched his tight-jeaned ass loftily.

“Well, you heard wrong.”

He winced. “Oh. Sorry. Bad date?”

“Something like that.” Morgan sighed. “I’d better go prepare those autopsies, just in case. Give me a reason to be here so late.”

“Yeah. Clear out a few fridges, why doncha? We’re still
swamped, even with the deadhouse tent in the Park.” He chuckled. “Babylon County, stiffs ‘R’ us.”

She stifled a laugh. The irony of a crazy gangboy like Suhail working in the county morgue didn’t escape her. Half the corpses she examined were gang-related deaths. Still, you had to keep your sense of humor, and at least Suhail didn’t spout religious platitudes while he was raising hell. “Sorry, tell me again why you’re studying to be a doctor?”

He grinned. “Gotta contribute to society while I’m tearing it down.”

“Well, you’d better hurry, or these damn nutters on TV will get in ahead of you. What are they trying to do, scare people?” Frustration crept into her voice. She’d volunteered for duty down at the temporary morgue. Of course she had. But her boss held a lottery, and she’d lost out. Someone still had to deal with the boring old gunshot homicides, gang assassinations, honor killings, and victims of impressionist serial killers. Babylon’s moniker as ‘crime capital of the country’ was well earned, and the happy-sick funmongers didn’t all take a vacation just because a nightmare plague had broken out.

Suhail fiddled with his twin-pinned steel earrings. “Hell, I believe in God. Maybe it’s the end of the world, just like that preacher guy’s saying. God’s plan, and all that?”

She smiled. “I don’t think so. The world’s tougher than we think. We were all going to die of arctic flu, too, remember? Global warming? We’re still here.”

“I thought you believed in science, Dr. M.” Suhail winked slyly.

“I do, smart-ass.” Morgan tossed a rolled-up ball of paper at him, and he caught it, grinning. “What I don’t believe in is scaremongering, and conjecture masquerading as data. I want proof before I’ll batten down the hatches. How about 2012? That turned out to be bullshit.”

“My grandma said she prayed all night that night. Just in case.”

“Well, good for her,” said Morgan shortly. The very idea that one person’s blind wishes could alter events offended her. Even the White House chief of staff, who warned nightly on the news in her severe blue Air Force uniform that the Manhattan virus might be a biological attack by terrorists—or the
paranoid conspiracy theorists on the Internet who insisted that The Government Did It—made more sense than that.

And that made it all the more important to Morgan that a cure for Manhattan was found. If it could be cured, it was no miracle.

“Yeah,” agreed Suhail cheerfully, wheeling his cart toward the fridge. “She said I’ll burn in hell, too. Not sure if that was for being nice to all those lousy unbelievers or for taking it up the ass, but still.” He shrugged, tolerant. “Pity the mean old tart isn’t still alive. She could try her praying mojo out on this one. Can’t hurt, right?”

“Guess not,” Morgan lied, smiling weakly for politeness’ sake. Yes, it could hurt. It could hurt very deeply. “I gotta go. See ya.”

“Have a good one, Dr. M,” he called, already loading her samples onto the stainless steel shelves.

Morgan grabbed her flash memory voice recorder and hurried out, through the office doors and down a long vinyl corridor. More fluorescents gleamed, the lemony scent of anti-viral spray hanging. At this hour, no one was about—
oh, hell.

The CME poked his dark head from his office door, tie loose around his unbuttoned collar. “Morgan? You still here?”

“Sure am, Dr. Torres. Just finishing up tomorrow’s prep.” She kept walking, like she had something better to do and the work was keeping her.

Juan Carlos Torres was a fine doctor and a good boss. But lately, he kinda gave her the creeps. She should’ve known dating him would be a mistake. Sure, he was a little older than she—midforties to her thirty-something—but he was good-looking and clever, and she’d thought they might have something in common. Something they could talk about.

Turned out they did. All he wanted to talk about was work. He hadn’t asked her a single question about herself. They’d discussed cases and autopsy techniques all evening, and the worst part was, she’d had a good time.

A good time. Christ. Emotional avoidance much?
He hadn’t even tried to kiss her. If that was her idea of a hot date, she really needed to get out more.

Dr. Torres smiled absently, already heading back to his desk. “Don’t stay too late. All work and no play.”

“Sure thing.” She snorted under her breath.
Physician, heal thyself.
Like he didn’t sleep here half the time. Although, given the influx of work lately, a bed in the office wouldn’t be a bad idea…

Ouch. That settled it. When she was done here, she was going out for a drink. A nice modern bar had opened on Third Avenue, just around the corner from her building, where no one did drugs or started gang-related fights, at least not yet. Maybe she’d even talk to a man. One who wasn’t wearing a white coat or pushing a sample trolley.

Or lying on a cold metal slab. Dead guys were low-maintenance, but their conversation sucked.

She grinned, and walked down the steps to the mortuary.

Thick plastic sheets sealed in the air-conditioned atmosphere, keeping the pressure constant, and she keyed in her passcode and entered the cool sanctum. Pale vinyl floor punctured with drains, rows of steel autopsy benches, and sinks under bright lights. A digital thermostat on the wall kept the temperature even, and the ventilation system hummed. Steel trolleys carried rows of stainless instruments on white paper lining.

She strode past the benches to the refrigeration area, where one wall was filled entirely with square steel doors, their handles shining. Bodies could be stored here for months awaiting court rulings, though more commonly, autopsies were completed and the bodies released to the families within a few days. Mostly, samples sufficed for long-term storage, though lately a backlog had built up.

She checked the plastic clipboard hanging on the wall. Two new arrivals, signed in with Suhail’s scrawled initials. Fridges 21 and 22. Initial autopsy prep involved checking the body for obvious trauma, making sure it correlated with the police’s suspected cause of death, reading through the police notes for any factors that might mean the autopsy needed to be done urgently, and noting any irregularities that might call for the CME’s personal attendance to be scheduled. It was paperwork, diarizing, prioritizing. Mortuary triage. Menial work, but it required a qualified ME.

Yes. Just what any self-respecting single girl should be doing at 9 p.m. Hanging out with dead guys. At least there was no chance of date rape.

Morgan shrugged into another white coat, snapped on plastic gloves, and opened fridge 21.

The trolley slid out easily on greased wheels, loaded with its black rubber body bag. She slid the handwritten notes from the pocket on the front, flipping past case ID codes and serial numbers.

Caucasian male, twenty-eight to thirty-five, DOA, single stab wound to the chest plus multiple lacerations. Dumped in Battery Park, no witnesses (yeah, right, probably a dozen people standing right there and no one saw a thing), and no weapons found on the scene. Big guy, too, if the bag’s shape was any guide. She set her recorder on the trolley and pulled the zipper down.

It jammed. She gripped the plastic edges and pulled harder. The bag popped open, and something white and fluffy puffed into her face.

She jumped back, waving her hands to clear the air. Shit. If that was white powder, she was going to march down to 1st Precinct homicide and shoot whoever wrote those notes. Once she finished dying of anthrax.

But as the fluff settled, she realized it wasn’t powder.

Feathers.

The body bag was stuffed with soft white feathers. Downy little ones that drifted and curled on the air, as well as long sleek ones with thick pale cores. They smelled of sugar, or candy. Some were smeared with blood.

Morgan sneezed, and waved her hands again. Nice prank. Any evidence on the body would be contaminated. She yanked the zipper fully open, and scraped the feathered heap, revealing pale flesh, strong limbs, a heavily muscled torso.

Single stab wound to the chest, all right. This guy had been run through. Gingerly, she touched the puncture wound, between two ribs just to the left of his sternum. Something had pierced clean through the intercostal muscles and into his heart. Bone fragments were shoved in deep, the flesh torn, like the weapon had been twisted to make the kill. A sharp piece of metal or alloy, broader than a knife. A sword, or maybe a spear. Babylon gangs had all kinds of weapons these days.