The Double Eagle

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‘Good,’ Corbett had nodded as he reached the meeting room door he’d been heading for. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t add up. Let me know what you find. Oh and Browne…’ He had said as she turned away. ‘Nice work.’ She could almost have kissed him.

The mortuary was an anonymous white slab of a building on the outskirts of town, only a short drive from Louisville International Airport and screened from the road by a wall of cedar trees. Jennifer stepped gratefully out of the humidity’s dank embrace into the building’s refrigerated reception area.

There was a hint of desperation to the way it had been decorated, the walls painted a jarring concoction of pinks and blues, orange moulded plastic seating lining one wall. The Beach Boys was being piped through a lone ceiling speaker, the noise muffled where the protective mesh had been painted over by mistake.

An expressionless woman, funereally dressed behind a rectangular access hatch punched into the far wall, acknowledged her with a shrug, dialled a number and announced her arrival in a whisper. A few minutes later and a short balding man – about fifty years old, Jennifer guessed – bustled into the room, gold pocketwatch chain spanning his stomach before vanishing into the depths of his waistcoat pocket.

‘Agent Browne? I’m Dr Raymond Finch, the pathologist here. We spoke earlier on the phone.’

‘Hello.’ Jennifer shook his hand warmly, holding out her ID in her other hand, although she noticed that he barely gave it a glance. ‘Thank you for inviting me down here.’ He’d had no choice really but she knew that it never hurt to show a little humility, especially with the locals.

‘No problem. We’re pretty much good to go if you are.’

‘Great.’

He led her through a door, along a narrow corridor, down some stairs and then through a set of heavy double doors that swung open in front of them to reveal a small, white tiled ante-room. The temperature had dropped down here and her throat had a slight burning sensation from the cocktail of disinfectant and formaldehyde that seemed to grow stronger as she penetrated deeper into the building’s entrails.

‘You ever done one of these before?’ Finch handed her a long white gown that she slipped on over her black jacket and long skirt, taking one for himself to cover the pale green scrub suit he was pulling on. He then placed a set of plastic shoe covers over his brown deck shoes.

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s pretty straightforward. Ugly but straightforward. You’re welcome to sit out here until we’re done, if you like.’

He smiled sympathetically but Jennifer gave a firm shake of her head. She hadn’t travelled all this way to miss the action.

‘I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, Doctor. One more won’t hurt.’

‘Okay. Then let’s get started.’

Finch led her through another set of double doors to the autopsy room. It was quite a wide space, perhaps twenty foot square and blindingly white. Powerful lights beat down on the spotless tiled walls and floor and reflected off the stainless steel worktops and glass fronted cabinets that wrapped themselves around two of the walls. In the middle of the room stood a stainless steel table, a waist-high slanted tray that had been plumbed for running water. A chrome hanging scale rocked gently in the air conditioning’s hum like a medieval gibbet.

‘So what’s the Bureau’s interest in this case?’

‘It’s just a routine enquiry. Nothing to get excited about,’ she lied, hoping that she had disguised the deceit in her answer better than Finch had disguised the curiosity in his original question.

‘Ah.’ She could tell he didn’t believe her. ‘Well, it may be routine for you but we don’t get too many suicides round these parts. And when we do, they tend to have put a gun to their head. So this is about as exciting as it gets.’