daughterâwhatâs her name? Lily?âwas back in the picture,â Emma said. âMaybe they didnât think they would meet with any resistance here.â
âSlow down, you two,â Mike said. âYou donât even know whoâs driving this bus. Is it Uncle Hal alone? Or is it Reed? Or are they just stooges doing what someone else has suggested? Iâm not saying either one of them is the killer. Itâs just that once you let the body go, weâve lost any chance of getting what we get on the autopsy table.â
âNobodyâs even heard whatâs in Wolf Savageâs will yet, have they?â Jeremy asked.
âTomorrow afternoon,â Mike said. âThat should tell us something.â
âHow do you know about that?â I asked.
âThatâs what the lieutenant from Manhattan South told Peterson.â
âTo your point, Alex, itâs not only against Jewish law to perform autopsies,â Emma said. âItâs forbidden in Islam, too. And Christian Scientists prefer they arenât done. But it always gives me pause when people come in to oppose the procedure and are looking to fly the body out of the country the next day.â
âWeâve had this scenario scores of times,â Jeremy said. âIâve got to say the objections are usually legit, but weâve had our share of bodies spirited out of here, only to have exhumations ordered by a court later on. Pretty hard to enforce when theyâre overseas.â
I thought of a case that Mike and I had worked together, which involved the exhumation of a teenage girl for an autopsy in a room right down the hall, years after her death. Nothing that I ever wanted to see again.
I put my elbows on the table and pressed my fingers against my forehead, rubbing it to ease the headache that was coming on. âI wish I had never taken Lilyâs call,â I said. âMaybe sheâs the bad guy in all this. Maybe sheâs just using me as the way to get back at her father. Maybe sheâsââ
âLetâs not rush to judgment, kid. These days youâre good at seeing ghosts where there arenâtany.â
NINE
Mike and I left the Medical Examinerâs Office shortly before five P.M .
âIâll shoot you home,â he said. âIâll just be a few hours and then we can grab some dinner.â
âDoctorâs orders, Mike. You heard Emma tell you to keep me close,â I said. âArenât you going to the hotel?â
âYeah.â
âOne more look around? Check out the suite the housekeeper said someone had used?â I asked. âCâmon. Itâs the kind of thing Iâm useful for. An extra pair of trained eyes is always good.â
âGot my extras, Coop,â Mike said. âMercerâs meeting me there.â
âItâs not his case either. Not even in the same ballpark.â
âYeah, but heâs the man on the job I trust more than anyone. Heâs got the bones for this kind of detail work.â
Mercer and Mike had partnered together in the elite Homicide Squad about a decade ago. Both of them loved working painstaking investigations, but while Mike especially enjoyed the factthat homicide victims didnât need handholding, Mercer craved supportive human interaction. So he transferred to the Special Victims Squad, where he savored the emotionally charged work and the task of restoring dignity to a surviving crime victim as much as I did.
âI thought you said that if I stayed sober, I could hang with you.â
Mike looked at his watch. âI guess two extra pairs of eyes donât hurt.â
We were in Mikeâs car for only a minute before I got a text from Lily Savitsky and read it to him. ââThanks for taking me seriously. I really need to talk to you as soon as possible.ââ
âTell her youâre done. The only conversation sheâs having is