SIX

Josh Friedrich loved working the overnight shift in the morgue.

Sure, a lot of people thought that made him a loony, but Josh had long ago stopped caring what other people thought. It made it easier to sleep through the night.

Or, rather, sleep through the day, since he spent his nights here, in “the frigidaire”—his nickname for the freezer where the bodies were kept—and in the lab doing his thing.

The best part was that the cops usually didn’t bother him all that much. Josh loved his job as a coroner, but he hated dealing with the police. While they were impossible to avoid completely, they didn’t come to the morgue at night unless it was absolutely necessary.

As a result, most of Josh’s reports were either delivered by messenger, or left for someone to pick up during the day.

Which suited Josh fine. He got to investigate the human body at his leisure, he got to help solve crimes, and he rarely had to talk to the fuzz. Or to reporters.

Reporters were worse, and every day of his life Josh was thankful he wasn’t part of the Zodiac killer nonsense. Anybody came to him to talk about it, he just said he wasn’t on the case, and ran away.

One downside to working late was that he had to work on the Sabbath. That didn’t bother Josh all that much, but his mother suffered from serious diarrhea of the mouth whenever the subject came up. To silence her, he either told her that his job was important, or tried to get Friday nights off.

But he’d never request the day shift. He liked it quiet.

So it was kind of a drag when the FBI agent showed up. The guy just stormed in like it was his living room or something. Josh knew he was a Fed the minute he walked in the door, just by the way he carried himself. He was bald, so he didn’t have the trademark slicked-back hairdo, but the rest of him just screamed Bureau.

As soon as he got into the morgue, he put his hands on his hips and stared straight at Josh.

“You Dr. Friedrich?”

“Uhm, yessir. What can I—”

“You’re the coroner on the Wenzel case, right? And the other burnings?”

Josh blinked. Rude sonuvabitch, isn’t he?

“Uh, yes—yessir, I am. I didn’t realize this was a federal case.”

“Why are you surprised at that, exactly, Doctor?” the Fed asked tersely.

Swallowing nervously, Josh thought for a moment before he replied.

“Well, uh—to be honest, the fuzz here don’t really like Feds, sir.”

“Well, we’re not all that fond of them, either.”

“I don’t blame you,” Josh said quickly. “Anyhow, I’m surprised they called you guys in.”

“They didn’t—we called ourselves in.” Then he looked around the room. “I need to see the body.”

“Sure,” Josh said. “Follow me.”

Josh led the Fed—did he say his name?—back to the frigidaire.

“Sorry about the cold,” he said, knowing that the fuzz always yammered about the temperature.

“I’ve been in worse,” the man said with a shrug. He was definitely a cool cat.

Walking over to the south wall—that was where the most recent cases were kept—Josh went immediately to the metal door behind which lay Marybeth Wenzel’s body.

He didn’t even need to look at the file to find the right drawer, since he’d been fascinated by this case—or, rather, these cases, since this was the fourth body that had come in like this.

“I’m glad you guys are here,” Josh admitted. “The fuzz ain’t gonna be with-it on this one, if you know what I mean.”

Pulling back the sheet, he revealed a body that was badly charred and cut up. Josh wondered briefly if the Fed would be a puker, but the guy didn’t even blink.

“That’s pretty bad,” he said flatly.

“You said it, brother. We were only able to identify her from dental records. She had great teeth,” he added with a smile that showed his really bad ones. His mother was always bugging him to see a dentist. “Anyhow, she’s got third-degree burns all over her. And that’s the really weird part.”

The Fed had bent over to peer at the cuts, but looked up at Josh’s last words.

“What do you mean by ‘weird,’ Doctor?”

“Well, the burns are even, all the way from head to toe. The only way for that to happen is for the body to be completely immersed in fire, all at once. But there’s too much left for it to have been an explosion, so it doesn’t make sense.”

The Fed raised an eyebrow that made him look just like Mr. Spock on TV.

“So?”

“Well, she had to have been killed where she was found— the burns made the body too fragile, so if she’d been moved postmortem, there’d be signs, and there aren’t. But the place where she was found? No signs of fire at all. Now, with burns like this, that just isn’t possible.”

“What’s your theory, then?”

That threw Josh for a loop. He wasn’t used to law enforcement asking for his opinion—or, rather, hypotheses, since that was all he usually had, even though the fuzz always misused the word “theory” that way. He would often volunteer one, and sometimes they’d even pay attention, but no one had ever asked before.

He kind of liked it, though he’d have liked it more if he actually had a hypothesis.

“I don’t know,” he admitted ruefully. “I’m sorry, but— well, I’m at the end of my rope with this one. It’s the same with two of the others—Hsu and Ding have the same burns, with the same lack of any kind of fire at the crime scene. Even with Verlander, the only other damage was to a small table. Isn’t that freaky?”

“That’s one word for it.” The Fed took another look at the wounds. “Are these animal cuts?”

Josh barked a laugh, which prompted a withering look. Again, Josh swallowed—this cat knew how to glare and mean it—and he hastily answered.

“Uh, no, sir, no they aren’t. The cuts are clean and almost—uh, surgical. Looks like they were made with a long blade, like a big knife.”

“Or a sword?”

That resulted in another barked laugh—he couldn’t help himself.

“What, Basil Rathbone killed him? Sorry,” he added quickly, “but who uses a sword anymore?”

“You’d be surprised,” the Fed replied, his face an expressionless mask. “And you say that the other three are the same?”

“Yup.”

“Can I see Hsu and Ding’s files? And Verlander’s?”

“Sure.” Josh went back out into the main office and stepped over to the file cabinet. The manila folders were all still in the wire-frame basket on top of the cabinet, since these were “hot” cases. Too soon to stuff them into a drawer.

The Fed flipped through each folder like he’d been doing it all his life—which, Josh supposed, he had—then just handed them back.

“Thanks.”

He’d been trying to be good, but Josh found himself unable to resist asking.

“Is this another serial killer, like the Zodiac?”

The Fed just shook his head.

“I’m not at liberty to say right now, son. And the FBI would appreciate if you kept this meeting to yourself, savvy?”

Nodding quickly, Josh replied eagerly.

“Oh, absolutely.” Besides, who was he gonna tell?

The man took his leave, and Josh smiled. For once he had actually been treated like a person, instead of a loony who played with dead people all night.

He wondered what kind of job options there were for coroners working with the Feds. And if they had a night-shift available.