“So, Doc,” he began, once back near the man. “What’s his COD?”
He laughed.
“Oh, I see you missed my hint when I said that the agents here are laid-back. That was your cue to calm down and follow suit.”
Gene laughed.
Oh, they had no idea what kind of storm was bearing down on this island.
Gene planned on running this hard so he could close it and salvage what was left of his vacation with Ethan before the week was up.
There would be no‘laid-back’.
Getting this done was his priority.
“Yeah, I come out of thePhillyoffice, Doc. I literally run back-to-back cases continually. Sometimes, I have two at once. I don’t do laid back. I do fast-paced in a race to the finish line.”
The man understood.
That was how it had been in his last office.
“I worked out of Denver before this. I get the picture, but I’m going to have to open him up. What I already told you is that he has bruising in certain parts of his body. That tells me he was alive at the time. Thus, how I knew the rocks didn’t cause it.”
Yeah, someone wasn’t sharing information. That‘do not go there’sign was up.
So, Gene would work with what he had.
“Okay, then, someone broke his bones and then wrote on him?” he asked. “That sounds…ritualistic.”
Ben pulled out his liver probe, and started his process without looking up at the man.
“It could be. Like I said, they look familiar. I’ll see if I can find an origin for those marks in some old cases I’ve worked back home, and we’ll go from there. Here’s my card,” he said, turning his hip, so Corbin could get his badge from it. “It’s behind the ID.”
Yep.
He was done talking until the autopsy was officially done. Someone didn’t play ball.
So, Gene did what he could.
He grabbed a card.
On it, there was the office address.
“Pop in tomorrow morning, and by then, I’ll have COD, TOD, and anything else I can process tonight. You might get toxicology if I can get that too. I’m not giving out anything else tonight, Agent, and let me reassure you that I’ve had plenty of agents try to get me to talk. I don’t.”
The line was drawn.
But at least the man would work through the night.
Gene appreciated that.
As they saw someone approaching, as barriers were being put up by the cops, it looked like Gene was getting his laptop tonight.
Thank God.
“Sorry, no gun,” Lucas admitted. “One of the other guys had to have removed it from the lockbox.”
Uh, so they lost a gun?
