Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

Avenue and finally stopping in front of a stone building on Thirtieth Street. It was the neighborhood of University Hospital, and one was likely to see interns and residents, nurses and aides in their hospital whites or surgical greens, mixing with regular residents. Most New York hospitals maintained fairly inexpensive living quarters, giving their employees a break, compared to what it cost the average New Yorker to live.
    The building had a name printed on the metal awning over its entrance: DEPARTMENT OF FORENSIC PATHOLOGY.
    On the sidewalk, Ferrante and Martens presented credentials and spoke briefly to the security guard, who warbled into a walkie-talkie. A few minutes later a young Asian man in whites, whose name tag said “Dr. Michael Reyes,” came up the stairs and led them down into the basement. All except Wetzon. She was Velcroed to the floor. Looking down the stairs, she felt a shiver of dread. It was going to be someone she knew, and she had the irrational thought that maybe she could put it off. Let them go ahead. She would wait here.
    “It’s okay, Ms. Wetzon.” Martens had come back up the stairs and was standing three steps below her so they were on eye level. He had melting chocolate eyes. “These things are never easy, but you’re our best bet. He might have a worried wife and kids somewhere ... Okay?” When she nodded, he added tersely, “And breathe through your mouth. You won’t like the smell.”
    Ferrante had disappeared below, and when Wetzon reluctantly followed Martens to the bottom of the stairs, she saw Ferrante talking to a pale, attractive woman who wore a cream knit dress under an open white lab coat. She was introduced as Dr. Jennie Vose, the assistant medical examiner.
    Built into the near wall was a window that looked in on a room containing built-in floor-to-ceiling steel filing cabinets with huge drawers.
    Ferrante said, “We’re just going to slide him out, Ms. Wetzon, and uncover his face. Take a good look. You ready?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go, Mike,” Ferrante said to Dr. Reyes, who went into the filing room with Dr. Vose.
    Mike pulled the handle on a drawer and it started to open. Dr. Vose peered in. She shook her head and pointed to another drawer.
    Oh God , Wetzon thought, taking air in short gulps. Her whole body was quivering, turning to ice. She felt Ferrante’s hot breath on her ear and closed her eyes.
    When she opened them, the next drawer was partway out. She saw the outlines of a face under the white cloth. Somewhere in the depths of her soul she crossed her fingers. Let this not be anyone she knew.
    “Now, Ms. Wetzon.” Mike flipped the cover from the face and Wetzon forced her eyes downward.
    She saw reddish-brown hair, squared jaw, red and purple mottled skin. Bare shoulders and curly red chest hair. Mouth contorted in a silent scream. One eye, raccoon-marked; the other—oh, God— Cover his face. Cover his face! her mind shrieked. Hands up to protect herself, she heard her own strangled cry and stepped back into Martens.
    “You know him?” Ferrante demanded.
    She closed her eyes and breathed in sharply through her nose, forgetting instructions. Dead animal smells mixed with antiseptic. Biology lab, the frog pinned to the dissecting tray. Her groan was inadvertent. Grow up , she commanded. Grow up!
    “Who was he?” Ferrante sounded impatient.
    Wetzon looked at the face again. Even through a window, viewing a body on a slab was horrifying. He was naked and vulnerable. His left eye was blown out. Where it should have been was a double ring of two different shades of dried blood, pieces of bone, gook, and other things she didn’t want to give a name to. A black ribbon of caked blood came from his right ear.
    “It’s Brian Middleton,” she said.

7.
    “B RIAN NEVER SHOWED up at his new firm this morning,” Wetzon said. She was sitting in a waiting room of sorts, on a plastic chair, sipping orange juice from a Styrofoam container that Jennie Vose had supplied from her private refrigerator. Which made Wetzon wonder whether organs and other things sat on the shelves in mason jars next to orange juice and English muffins. Her hands shook, and a trail of orange liquid slipped over the lip of the container and dribbled through her fingers.
    “What exactly do you do?” Martens was writing everything down in a small black notepad.
    She felt a kind of déjà vu. Silvestri had asked her the same question when they first met four years ago after Barry