Free The Butcher's Granddaughter by Michael Lion Page B

comforting in a long, long time. I decided it was nice.
    My last thought before slipping under: Not many nice things in this town.
     

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
     
    Li was still sound asleep with her head on my chest when the phone rang at a quarter-to-nine. It didn’t wake her up. Without waiting for a hello from me, Caz said three words, “Coroner’s office. Now,” and hung up. I thought about not going, then rolled out of bed and stretched, waking Li.
    The morning sunlight was even more in love with her than the city light from the night before. She turned over on her back and drew herself out in a luxurious stretch, and then I was sure I’d have to leave. She propped herself up on her elbows and said, “Was that the phone?”
    “Yeah. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”
    She smiled and softly said, “OK,” and went instantly back to sleep. Her slow, rhythmic breathing followed me around as I made coffee and then stepped out the door.
     
    If it weren’t for the sign next to the driveway, you would think the L.A. County Coroner’s office was an inner city bed-and-breakfast. The exterior is all red brick, with a dark brown round-shingled roof and friendly looking windows. Inside, it looks like any other stiffhouse: cold and gray and stainless.
    Cazwas in the hallway beyond the ambulance entrance when I walked in. “There any coffee in this crypt?” I asked.
    She pulled out a cigarette as big around as a toothpick and lit it right underneath a red-and-white No Smoking sign. Then she pointed down the short hallway and said, “Right around that corner.”
    When I came back, Death House Masterblend firmly in hand, Gene Robinson was walking up behind Caz. He glanced at the cigarette, then at the sign, and decided it didn’t matter much.
    Gene is the weekend man at the County Coroner’s office, and I think his main job is to eat strange-smelling foods in front of visitors because that’s all I saw him do that morning. Gene doesn’t look like a stiff shuffler. With darkish blond hair cut in a garden-variety fraternity clip, beer-bottle brown eyes, the kind of lips that co-eds like to nibble on, and shoulders a little too narrow for his height, Gene looks like he belongs on a polo field. The only thing that gives him away is the waxy, light gray tinge of his skin that comes from spending too much time under sterile florescent lights. That, and the fact that in a room full of bruised, dismembered, and eviscerated corpses, he was fully involved with a grilled deli-combination sandwich from the Jack In The Box across the street. He hadn’t bothered to button the dirty blue smock he wore, and grease dripped ironically onto The Smiths/Meat Is Murder t-shirt he wore beneath it.
    Cazintroduced us. “Gene Robinson, this is Bird.” As we shook hands she turned to me and said, “Sorry to keep buggin’ you in the morning. I know it’s not your best time.”
    I stretched and said, “Screw you.” Gene’s mouth was full, so I didn’t say anything to him as I shook his hand for fear he would feel obligated to respond and spray me with sandwich. I took a big gulp of hideous coffee, my stomach shuddered, and we stepped into what Gene affectionately referred to as “The Fridge.”
    As we walked along walls of stainless steel that looked like the fronts of huge filing cabinets, I asked Caz, “What the hell am I doing here, honey? I already told you I didn’t kill anybody.”
    “Have some more coffee,” she said flatly. Her tone quieted me down.
    The filing cabinets were, of course, cadaver preservation units. They don’t slip you on a slab anymore like in the old marble motels—now they throw you in a chilled chest-of-drawers. On the front of each three-foot square steel door was a pull handle and a small slot for a card with the name of the body and the date it was brought in. By the time we had passed the third grid, most of the bodies seemed to be members of the Doe family. Caz and Gene stopped suddenly, and