Centaur of the Crime: Book One of 'Fantasy and Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 1) (22 page)

Shaw made a clacking sound with his beak and leapt into the air with a mighty beat of his wings. Pebbles pelted my shins as the downdraft kicked up loose bits of gravel. The long vinyl sheet made a slithery sound as Shaw bore it aloft. In no time, the griffin leveled out at speed, heading for the heart of the city.

“Let’s go do our part,” I said to Galen, once Shaw had dwindled to a thimble-sized golden speck.

“Agreed,” the wizard said heavily. “I just hope your plan will work. This place where you live…they hide it well, but it’s bewildering to each of us.”

“It’ll work.”

“How do you figure that? We can’t–”

“Galen,” I said, placing my hand on his arm. “Trust me, it’ll work.” I slammed the Expedition’s rear hatch shut to punctuate my statement. “Come on, Mister Wizard. Let’s see if science can answer some of our questions.”

Galen got in and we buckled up. He looked at my security badge where it hung from one of the sun visors.

“You mentioned that one needs a badge to enter your building,” Galen said. “I don’t think my magic will work to fool your machines.”

“I’m not sure either,” I agreed, as I stepped on the gas and pulled onto the main road. “But there’s another way to get into the building. No one thinks to use it.”

“Because it is too well hidden?”

“Actually, it’s because it’s too gross.”

“I cannot help but worry when you say these things, Dayna.”

“Smart man. We’re going in through where they dispose of the medical waste. It’s why I’ve got a pair of scrubs stashed in the center console. And I even brought along something that I normally avoid. Something to help get you past the smell.”

I flipped open the center console and handed Galen the little glass jar I’d pulled from my medicine cabinet.

Chapter Twenty-Six

There’s a reason you don’t enter a morgue through the back door.

Around the rear of the Office of the Medical Examiner is a loading dock where special dumpsters are placed to receive and ship out medical waste. Everything from fluid leavings to broken tools and soiled fabrics go out this way. (And no, we don’t throw out the unclaimed bodies.)

Galen certainly looked human enough. But the security desk wouldn’t let anyone in without a look at a driver’s license, even if they accompanied me. That’s where my trump card came in. I knew that the door lock by the loading area had been busted for months. A repair was pretty low on the list of things that needed fixing. After all, what kind of thief would be desperate enough to steal containers of embalming liquid? Even
I
had problems with the stench.

Which is why, as much as I hated Vick’s VapoRub, I’d handed a glass jar of the stuff to Galen and instructed him to slather a greasy band of it under his nostrils. To his credit, he bore the sweet-rotten pork smell that pervaded the dock with only a few choice curses under his breath. Not until I’d led him through and closed the broken door behind us did he stagger against the wall.

“Dayna,” he gasped, “are we through the worst of it?”

“Yes, we are,” I said, and it was my turn to steady him.

“Superb. Now I need someplace to vomit.”

I grabbed Galen by the elbow. I half-shoved him down the hall and through the doors of the men’s restroom. I waited patiently outside until the sounds of retching and running water had died away. The wizard came back out, looking abashed as he dabbed at his sweaty forehead with a crumpled paper towel.

“My apologies.”

“Think nothing of it, Galen. Happens to all of us.” I took the towel from him and dabbed some drops of water from his upper lip. An unexpected bonus for me was that he’d washed off the Vick’s. My sense of smell was already starting to claw its way back from the edge of the menthol-scented abyss.

Together, we went down the slate-colored corridors. Galen’s eyes darted curiously to the office windows whenever we passed a lab or chemical storage room. We passed one or two people on the way. Clad in our pale green scrubs, no one gave us so much as a second glance.

“I cannot help but notice how quiet it is in here,” Galen said, inclining his head towards me in order to keep his voice low.

“Saturday afternoons are always slow,” I replied. “Ask the cops, no one in L.A. gets around to shooting each other until the third shift.”

I quickened my pace in anticipation as we walked through an entryway labeled
Ballistics Examination
. The ‘gun lab’, as I thought of it, reminded me of a cross between a badly run machine shop and a sleazy cafeteria. Lime green tiles provided a surreal backdrop to the large glass examination cases and stacks of clear Lucite sample trays.

Galen took a seat next to me as I turned on the ancient desktop computer next to one of the cases. While the screen hummed to life, I shook out the bullets we’d collected from the Grove of the Willows and put one in each of the sample trays. Then I slipped the entire thing into the case.

“Shield your eyes for a second,” I warned.

Galen held up a hand as I flipped the switch on the high-intensity lights inside the case. I went back to the computer and then logged into the video control program. Inside the case, a set of four mobile cameras
whirred
and
chuffed
into place like little robotic squirrels. The lenses alternately dilated and closed as I selected a scanning pattern from the program and let it run its course.

“Amazing! I have never seen the like, Dayna,” Galen breathed.

“The cameras are taking pictures of every part on each bullet,” I explained. Galen nodded, but he continued to raptly follow each camera as it crawled into position on its miniature robotic boom. “When they’re done, the computer sort of ‘stitches’ the pictures together. Like if you were piecing together a map.”

“And this ‘map’ tells you something about the bullet?”

“It should. See, when a bullet is fired through a rifled barrel, it’s etched with a pattern of fine grooves. The patterns can be very distinct from weapon to weapon. It’s why we call it ballistic ‘fingerprinting’.”

A soft chime came from the computer as the cameras completed their run. My fingers flew over the keys, next pulling up the archived photos of the bullets that had been fired at me. Next, I split the screen so that I could see the grooves from that sample on the left.

I placed the scans of the bullets we’d retrieved from Andeluvia on the right. Together, the pictures rotated through 360 degrees of scans, as if they were satellite pictures taken of a swarm of particularly dirty, rust-colored asteroids.

Galen snorted. “It looks plain enough to me, unless my wits are addled.”

“Your wits seem to be fine,” I agreed. In each case, the scratches and dings looked the same. As if to underline the point, the program spit out the result at the bottom of the screen.
Ballistic Points Matchup: 99.77%.

“So someone tried to kill me with the same rifle they used on Benedict,” I said. “That clears up one thing, but muddies another.”

“It does?”

“It tells me we’re dealing with one person. One Andeluvian. At least, only one that’s willing to pull the trigger.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” Galen said, giving me a questioning glance. “Couldn’t any of your fellow humans pick up a rifle and fire it?”

“Yes, that’s true. But ask yourself this: how willing would you be to let someone use any of your personal magical tools?”

Galen pursed his lips in thought. “Not very, truth be told. Anyone who uses magic can be funny that way. For example, Master Seer Zenos uses his staff of stunning quite well. I’ve seen him knock people off horseback at fifty paces. He’s gotten it balanced just to his personal taste.”

“Some people can be that way about guns,” I acknowledged. “But in my world, rifles are mass produced. You can even buy them in sporting goods stores.

So if you’ve got more than one person on your team, why share a single firearm when you could buy more?”

“You make a good point.”

“See, that’s where things get muddy for me again, Galen. The events of Benedict’s assassination still don’t make sense to me. The body of the person you found next to Benedict. The guy you left in my world, to lure me to Andeluvia. Who is he? And you know what bothers me most of all…”

“Yes, Dayna?”

“It’s the fact that it takes less than a second to pull a firearm’s trigger,” I slapped the desk next to the keyboard in frustration. “Why go out of your way to kill one person with a rifle, and then switch to magic to kill the other?”

Galen looked troubled. “These questions baffled me, too. It’s why I spoke in favor of Albess Thea’s plan to bring someone like you onto the case.”

I powered down the computer and the examination case, and then retrieved the bullets from the sample trays. I tapped the desk with one knuckle and made my decision.

“Whenever you’re in a corner…” I murmured, half to myself.

“Dayna?”

“It’s one of the lessons I learned in school,” I said. “We used to joke about it—when you’re out of leads, you’re stuck in the ‘Coroner’s Corner’.”

“Ah,” Galen replied.

“And the moral is: whenever you’re in a corner, go back to the body.”

“Back to the body?”

“That’s right.”

And with that, I led the way to the gowning room. I swapped out the scrubs we’d sneaked in with for new ones that could be used in the autopsy room, then showed Galen how to put on the protective mask.

“Are you absolutely sure you want me to wear this?” The wizard’s voice sounded small and muffled behind the mask. “I would be more than happy to wait elsewhere.”

“No dice,” I said firmly. “I need a fresh pair of eyes. Maybe you’ll see something that I missed.”

“By chance, could I have more of that fragrant grease for my nose?”

“Galen!”

“Right, right, I didn’t suspect I could.”

Finally, with our latex gloves in place, we entered the chiller rooms, where we kept the bodies. I led Galen past the cheery yellow-brick tiles and over to the deep-chill compartments. Each compartment was a miniature, wall-mounted fridge where we could slide the bodies in or out for inspection.

I ran my hand down the clear plastic tags attached to the compartment handles. Medical examiners still called them ‘toe tags’ even though we didn’t put the tags right on the body anymore. I found the tag labeled ‘Connor McCloud’, and grasped the handle next to it.

With a rattle of stainless steel rollers, I slid out the inner compartment. Galen’s breath whistled through his mask in amazement. All I could do was stare.

The steel examination table gleamed back at us.

Empty.

I clenched my eyes shut for a moment, as if trying to blot out the sight. I tugged down my face mask and choked out a breath. Galen did likewise.

“There’s supposed to be a body here,” I said. I slammed my fist on the table with a
clang
. “There’s supposed to be an effing body here!”

“Dayna, be calm,” Galen said. “Perhaps…you opened the wrong door?”

“Like hell I did!” I flared. “This guy didn’t just walk out of here! And nobody’s just going to move him without my signature–”

“Sure they can,” drawled a voice.

Galen and I spun on our heels. My hand flew to my chest and I let out a gasp. A heavyset figure in a set of green scrubs and a pair of pince-nez glasses came into the light.

Chapter Twenty-Seven