Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Department security had been beefed up since the O.J. trial had brought to light evidentiary chain-of-custody weaknesses. Winding down the corridors, Nate greeted the sets of guards by name, finally ending up in the doorway of one of the wide, cool autopsy rooms. Eddie stood hunched over a corpse, his wet latex gloves pulling up into view, gripping a pair of angled scissors. A soft little man with a nervous laugh, he inexplicably referred to all the corpses as “Jonesy.”

“Mr. Overbay. Heh. Serving another death notification tonight? They’re keeping you as busy as me. Heh.”

The understaffed department processed over twenty thousand autopsies a year, and even so a crushing backlog waited in the wings. They were running out of space quicker than a state jail, the main lab and crypts jammed to capacity. Some years back there’d been a big stir when rats had gotten into the refrigerated annex behind the main building and chewed up the inert inhabitants.

“Yeah. Must be a full moon.” The chill tightened Nate’s arms, raised the hairs at his nape. “Did you work on Danny Urban?”

“Nine mil above the right eyebrow. A hit man. Heh. That got Jonesy fast-tracked.”

“Anything unusual about him?”

“Guy had a whole damn armory in his closet, a real gear queer. Cops took assault rifles and no foolin’ C4 into evidence. Not yer average Jonesy.” Eddie glanced up. “You give ’em all the treatment, don’t you? Sit and hold their hands. Read the reports. Even a hit man. Heh. I guess if it helps you with the next of kin. Not their fault, I suppose.”

Nate mustered a flat smile in response, glad to find Eddie focused again on his work. “Where’d you store him?”

“Dunno. Check the computer. I’m logged in. I’d do it myself, but”-he shrugged, gloves buried to the wrists in the Y incision-“got my hands full.”

Nate checked the computer, then found his way to the appropriate crypt. A security guard unlocked for him the thick metal door, which released a waft of cold, medicinal air as it yawned open. The corpses were not stored in metal drawers but slotted in plain sight on trays that lined the walls like bunk beds on a submarine. Full to the rafters. Nate moved among the scattered morgue gurneys that accommodated the overflow, checking tags attached to body bags or to the flesh itself. A short ways in, he found Urban’s gurney and nodded a thank-you at the guard, who left him alone with the body, as was their arrangement.

When Nate unzipped the body bag, it exhaled a puff of sweet rot and ethanol. As the vinyl fell away, Urban’s face emerged, cold and firm. The ridiculousness of the task struck Nate. But he hadn’t known where else to start.

“What’s your safe-deposit-box number?” he asked Urban.

The unblinking eyes stared up at him.

Nate searched the corpse, taking his time. Hairline, toes, shoulders. One ankle was swollen and discolored; Urban had probably twisted it in the shoot-out. Nate didn’t know what precisely he was looking for and discovered nothing of interest. Giving up, he sat beside the corpse and, more from habit than anything, took the intact hand in his own weakened grip. Alone with the dead, he considered the enormity of the job before him. A little more than four days to break into a safe-deposit box for which he had no number, to retrieve he knew not what. If he didn’t figure something out, Cielle would be next on that slab. So much to accomplish before he could rest.

As he rose despondently, Urban’s cool hand slid from his and he felt a slight rub on the finger. He turned over the hand, examining the white flesh. A thin seam of something sticky across the pad of the index finger. And a bit more under the nail. Adhesive?

The heavy door boomed back into place behind him when he exited the crypt, and he grabbed a few lungfuls of moderately fresher air as he crossed to the autopsy room. “There’s something sticky on Urban’s hand. Did you identify it?”

“I remember something,” Eddie said. “Turned out to be insignificant. Report’s on my desk, though, you wanna take a look.”

The file was there in Eddie’s tray, fifth down in a towering stack. Eddie had run the substance found beneath Urban’s nail, the lab identifying it as duct-tape adhesive. Stuck to the adhesive was a strand of white carpet matching that in Urban’s bedroom, where he was found.

Chewing his lip, Nate stared at the result, trying to figure out some way to make it relevant. Then he jotted down Urban’s address and headed for the exit.

The sky above the row of town houses had turned charcoal by the time Nate arrived at Danny Urban’s Van Nuys address. A shoe-box-size package waited on the porch, the orange-and-blue FedEx label frayed from transport. He toed it. Surprisingly heavy, it gave off a clank, its contents shifting. Behind a crisscross of crime-scene tape, the front door was locked. Judging from the way the door jiggled beneath Nate’s hand, however, it was not dead-bolted. He took a step back, looked in either direction, then kicked the door in. Ducking through the tape, he entered, reached back for the FedEx box, and eased the door shut behind him in the damaged frame. Then he clicked on the flashlight he kept stored in the cargo space of his Jeep.

The bullet holes pockmarking the entry wall addressed a question that had been lingering in a corner of Nate’s mind: Why hadn’t Shevchenko’s men tortured Danny Urban to force him to give up the number of his safe-deposit box? Answer: They hadn’t had a chance to. That’s the problem with trying to knock off hit men. They know how to shoot back.

Squatting, Nate opened the FedEx box, yanking and tearing until the cardboard gave way. When he glanced inside, the contents set his head ringing, and he glanced away and then back as if hoping to find something else there. Nested in the U of a curled hunting catalog were maybe twenty lock-blade knives. They looked so ordinary resting there, but Nate knew what they represented. Urban, stocking up for future jobs.

He left the box on the floor. The narrow flashlight beam restricted his view, so he progressed slowly, each movement a stomach-churning reveal. The town house’s interior told the story of the assault. Bloodstains on the counter in the kitchen, where the fingers of Urban’s left hand had been shot off. He must have had a weapon within reach when they’d burst in, for he’d returned fire quickly, punching divots into the entry wall and shattering a hanging mirror. Cupboards and drawers tossed, Shevchenko’s men turning the place upside down in their search. Bloody handprint on the wall halfway up the stairs. Cabinets knocked open in the hall off the landing, side table shattered by bullets. Bedroom door ajar, painted with a stroke of red. And then the cluttered master suite, covered with porn DVDs, Soldier of Fortune magazines, and faux-antique furniture. Nate stepped over a fallen chair, taking in the lush white carpet marred with more handprints and finally matted down where Urban’s head had landed once the triggerman-probably Misha-had caught up to him.

Tufts of foam poked through slashes in the mattress. A letter desk in the corner had been searched. The drawers were empty, half pulled out, papers rifled through by the Ukrainians or the cops or both.

Nate squatted over the amoeba of blood, which had hardened to rust in the thick carpet. Thinking about that white strand recovered from the duct-tape adhesive beneath Urban’s nail, he looked at the handprint smudges leading from the door at intervals. Urban had been dragging himself to safety. Nate pictured him wounded and desperate, clawing forward with a hand and a half, bathed in sweat as footsteps grew loud behind him. If they’d done this to a hardened hit man, what chance did Nate have against them?