off the ignition. Glancing up into the rearview mirror, she checked her appearance. Not great, but not all that bad either, considering the circumstances. ‘I’m fine, Gary,’ she said, returning the mirror to its proper position and turning in her seat to face him. ‘As far as my colouring goes, I always look this pale. Curse of the Irish. Hell, I get sunburned if I read for too long under anything stronger than a forty-watt bulb.’
Templeton laughed at her joke, and Dana didn’t bother mentioning to him the other curse of the Irish that sometimes ruled her life – a little too often for her to simply dismiss as the harmless blowing off of some steam. The curse of the Irish that sent her running straight for the bottle whenever things got too difficult to deal with. Still, Dana’s alcohol use had clouded her judgment when she’d been investigating the Cleveland Slasher case – had slowed her down mentally when she’d needed to be clear-headed the most – and she was determined to never make that same mistake again. Like it not, people’s lives depended on her and she couldn’t afford to let them down any more. Not now and not ever again.
Dana and Templeton exited the Protégé and stepped out into the freezing wind before heading for the entrance to the coroner’s office fifty feet away. Cold winter air sliced through their jackets like the sharp scalpels no doubt slicing their way through the deceased bodies on the inside of the forbidding building, making Dana wonder briefly if she’d ever feel warm again.
Templeton hustled up the front steps ahead of her. He held open the door for Dana before stepping inside himself. When they reached the front desk inside the lobby of the building, Templeton asked the receptionist where they might find the chief coroner. The woman behind the desk smiled and directed them down a long hallway.
Dana and Templeton moved down the hall and toward Dr Philip Johnson’s office without speaking. As the head coroner for the entire county, Johnson hadn’t been especially pleased with Dana when she’d pressed him into exhuming and re-autopsying the four victims previous to Jacinda Holloway in the Cleveland Slasher case. And unlike Gary Templeton, Johnson was the kind of guy who did hold onto a grudge. Held onto it like a dog with a bone clamped down hard between its teeth.
Dana stopped herself mid-thought. To say the least, an inconvenient way of thinking about things when Christian Manhoff had died in the exact manner he had.
In any event, Dana had very little doubt that Phillip Johnson had gone apoplectic when he’d found out that somebody had snuck into his building and attached a picture of Dana’s half-brother to one of Christian Manhoff’s nipple rings. To his mind, Dana and anything connected with her probably constituted nothing less of a nuisance than a plague of locusts. A nuisance of biblical proportions.
Finally coming to a stop outside Johnson’s door, Dana made a mental note to have background checks run on everyone who’d worked at the coroner’s office over the past three years – much as she’d done with everybody who’d played a part in investigating the Cleveland Slasher murder scenes since it had seemed like whoever had been committing those murders had possessed some sort of background in detective work. Nothing had come of it during that case, but who knew? Maybe Dana would get luckier this time around.
And maybe that Publisher’s Clearinghouse letter stuck in her mailbox back home had a cashable check inside with her name on it.
Dana shook her head and tried to reason things through. Wasn’t easy. In all likelihood, she knew that somebody had probably just been playing a game with her by attaching the picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring, having a mean-spirited laugh at her expense. Law-enforcement types were notorious for their macabre senses of humour, weren’t they? Of course they were. There was a time-honoured tradition in the field of hazing your fellow cops with all the subtlety of drunken frat boys at a keg party. It was just part of the deal, the nature of the beast. Always had been and always would be.
Then again, maybe somebody had been deadly serious about the whole thing. Only one way to find out.
Pity it had to be through a man who detested Dana’s guts as much as Johnson did.
Johnson opened up the door to his office before Dana even had a chance to knock.