Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

Eleven

Unable to sleep due more to the barrage of thoughts in his head than the dull ache in his chest, Lazlo stared, in the dim light from a streetlamp below his window, at the piece of abstract art hanging on the wall opposite his bed. The shapes and lines on the painting seemed to follow no discernable pattern, much like the events of the night, which seemed to be linked only by the strange new drug he had come across. His eyes had finally started to close when he received a call from Duty Sergeant Watson at the precinct. The sergeant informed him that Siobhan Kendrick had left a message about her missing brother, Mark. She said she’d received news that her brother been in a fatal car accident on Staten Island.

“She didn’t want to talk to me?” Lazlo enquired.

“No, she said she’s too upset to talk to anyone and wants the local precinct to handle everything.”

“That’s strange. Call Staten Island and find out how the accident happened and where the body is.”

Watson confirmed he had already done so... “Kendrick was found in his car, which appeared to have been driven into the wall of a building. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and his airbag had failed to deploy. There was a high concentration of alcohol in his bloodstream. The local PD identified the body from fingerprints in the system. He had a few misdemeanors on record. They’re not treating the death as suspicious.”

“And the body, is it with the Staten Island M.E.?”

“No, due to budget cuts, all Staten Island cases are being transferred to the M.E. in Brooklyn. Kendrick’s body is being transferred there first thing in the morning. It’s an open and shut case.”

“Obviously,” Lazlo murmured, unconvinced, before thanking the sergeant and hanging up.

What bothered him was that Siobhan Kendrick’s profile of her brother didn’t fit this accident and his record showed no prior DUIs. It also seemed a little too convenient that the one missing person case he had become interested in, and which had a link to El Gordito’s club, should be neatly closed by a fatal car accident with no other vehicles involved. If the accident wasn’t the actual cause of death—as the pills with the red logo suggested—then surely the M.E. would find traces of the drug, whatever it was, in Kenrick’s blood and report it. But Lazlo had a feeling that the drug wouldn’t be mentioned. The pills were the link to the DNA club and its owner, El Gordito, had a way of making evidence disappear to ensure his record remained untarnished. Knowing the drug lord’s network of connections in the criminal world and, no doubt even in the establishment, Lazlo felt it was not out of the question that he could get an M.E.’s report changed if he needed to.

It was 3:20 a.m., but the lateness of the hour didn’t stop Lazlo from calling his old friend Tom Stevens, a forensic pathologist who’d worked for the medical examiner for many years and was highly respected.

Stevens picked up and immediately launched into a whispered series of cusses. Lazlo assumed this was because the guy didn’t want to wake his sleeping wife. Sure enough, once his friend had calmed down and moved the conversation to the kitchen, he became more reasonable and eventually agreed to be at the chief medical examiner’s office in Brooklyn at 8:00 a.m. the next morning, which happened to be a Saturday and free from work for both of them.

The forensic pathology center of the chief medical examiner’s office was located in the Kings County Hospital campus in Brooklyn. Daniel Lazlo and Tom Stevens had been there many times and quickly found their way to the autopsy room, which was right next to the mortuary.

Luckily for them, the reception desk was unmanned, which saved them registering and leaving a record of their visit. They pushed through an unmarked swinging door and entered a long corridor. As always there was someone mopping the linoleum floors with harsh disinfectant. It never seemed to mask the smell of death but added to the acrid odor that Stevens had once described as similar to old Parmesan cheese.

Soon they came to two doors on opposite sides of the corridor. To the right was the decomposition or special procedures room, which was used for potentially infectious, decomposing, and burned bodies. Through the door on the left, they could hear the forensic pathology team having their morning briefing. It seemed to be overrunning as usual—after all, the dead weren’t going anywhere. Farther along was the morgue, functional and organized, where the bodies were stored in rows of stainless-steel drawers.

Stevens led Lazlo inside and checked the roster on a clipboard hanging on the wall. None of the seven deceased currently under examination was named Kendrick.

Disappointed, Lazlo returned with Stevens to the reception desk. A blond woman was now sitting behind it, bent over as she hurriedly looked through a file drawer.

Lazlo introduced himself and Stevens, and asked whether anyone named Mark Kendrick had been admitted. When she raised her head, she revealed a closed expression with a hint of annoyance and gave her response with a stiff smile before she returned to searching through the documents.

To Lazlo’s surprise, the autopsy of Kendrick had already taken place at 5:00 a.m. that morning, and it had been carried out by no other than the Chief M.E. herself, Rachel Wallace.

“Must be important,” Stevens muttered.

Lazlo interrupted the receptionist again and asked to see a copy of the report. He offered his badge as proof of entitlement. The woman sat up and studied it for longer than he was used to. He figured it was either to annoy him or to satisfy some deep-seated need to be in total control of this domain. He looked at her desk and decided on the latter—the desk was impeccably tidy and ordered. It would also seem to explain her annoyance at not finding whatever she was looking for.

Despite validating his