small crowd on the sidewalk.
Soo’s face was stonelike as he looked at the lead technician, Javier Iglesia. Soo had known Iglesia going back to South Philly High, where Kim had been two grades behind him.
Iglesia, a beefy but fit thirty-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, was normally a very talkative sort, always ready with an opinion on anything. Now, however, holding the body at the shoulders, Iglesia was being unusually quiet.
Finally, Iglesia said, “I knew being a tech for the ME wasn’t going to be all glory, Kim. But days like this, when it gets personal, I honest to God genuinely hate this damned job.”
Iglesia looked at Soo, who said, “I know.”
After getting a stronger grip on the housecoat, Iglesia said, “Ready? On three. One, two, three . . .”
The lifting took considerable exertion, and they both grunted with effort as the body began to budge. The “lift” was actually more of a slide off the couch, then a slight drop to the black vinyl body bag that was positioned on the gurney.
The big-boned, obese body made for a fairly tight fit in the body bag. It also made the bag more or less droop over the gurney’s tubular frame.
“Principal Bazelon was a good and decent woman,” Javier said then. “I remember the year before she retired—it was my first year at Shaw Middle School. This woman was so strict, but also so kind.”
Soo nodded, his face looking sympathetic.
“I’ll tell you,” he went on, “she was a major influence on me back then. And so many others. She taught me a lot. ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ That’s Shakespeare. She got me reading him.”
He looked down at the body in the bag. “And now this?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Iglesia said, then glanced around to see if anyone could be listening. He went on in a softer voice: “What I think is, she didn’t just die in her sleep, is what I think.” He paused. “No, I know she didn’t. Just look at her wrists and ankles. Bruised and swollen from something. Tied with something, some rope, something that’s been taken off. And that’s called tampering with evidence.” He paused again, then nodded as he added, “Mitchell will make it. He misses nothing.”
The medical examiner, their boss, was Dr. Howard H. Mitchell, a very busy bald man with a dark sense of humor. He was usually found in a well-worn rumpled suit and tie, either performing an autopsy or dealing with the paperwork of a place that had to deal with an average of a murder a day, plus the questionable deaths, such as that of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon.
Iglesia shook his head, then closed the top flap and began working the web straps over the bag that would secure the load to the gurney.
That done, he and Soo grabbed the tubular handles at each end of the height-adjustable gurney and lifted, once again grunting under the weight. They raised the top of the gurney to about the level of their waists. They wanted it high enough to have better control while wheeling it, but not so high that the center of gravity could cause the gurney to become ungainly and top-heavy and dump onto its side.
Kim Soo unlocked the rubber wheels, and he pushed as Javier Iglesia began pulling the gurney toward the open front door.
As they went, Javier shook his head and quietly said, “I was there when they threw Principal Bazelon’s big retirement go-away thing. It was a big deal, it was. She was a big deal. And whatever happened to her, this just isn’t right. What I think is that girl of hers isn’t saying what really happened.”
After Iglesia and Soo had first arrived at the house and were processing the scene before preparing to remove the deceased, Javier had overheard a good bit of what Sasha Bazelon had been telling the two blue shirts.
Iglesia had been impressed with her—at eighteen, she was a year younger than his baby sister—and while she was just shy of hysterical, it was clear that on any other day, the slender, light-brown-skinned young woman would be absolutely beautiful.
The five of them had all been in the living room, the two cops interviewing the girl while the techs did their work.
Officer Geoffrey Pope, nineteen years old, was a rail-thin five-nine with closely cropped blond hair and a youthful face. Javier knew he had exactly one year on the Philadelphia Police Department.
Corporal Charlene