Harlan Coben - Drop Shot

"So am I," Myron said.

"Maybe. But sometimes the innocent get hurt in your little crusades."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just leave him alone."

"And why so defensive?" Myron continued. "I just want to ask him a couple of questions."

Silence. Esperanza didn't look up.

Myron continued, "Unless he did something he shouldn't have."

"Don't matter," Jake said.

"Even if he-"

"Even if. Good-bye, Myron."

The phone went dead. Myron stared at it a second. "That was bizarre."

"Uh-huh." Esperanza still stared at her computer screen. "Messages on your desk. Lots of them."

"Have you seen Win?"

Esperanza shook her head.

''Pavel Menansi is dead," Myron said. "Someone murdered him last night."

"The guy who molested Valerie Simpson?"

"Yep."

"Gee, I'm so brokenhearted. I hope I don't lose too much sleep." Esperanza finally flicked a glance away from the screen. "Did you know he was on that party list you gave me?"

"Yeah. You find any other interesting names?"

She almost smiled. "One."

"Who?"

"Think puppy dog," Esperanza said.

Myron shook his head.

"Think Nike," she continued. "Think Duane's contact with Nike."

Myron froze. "Ned Tunwell?"

"Correct answer." Everyone in Myron's life was a game show host. "Listed as E. Tunwell on the list. His real name is Edward. So I did a little digging. Guess who first signed Valerie Simpson to a Nike deal."

"Ned Tunwell."

"And guess who had plenty of egg on his face when her career took a nosedive."

"Ned Tunwell."

"Wow," she said dryly, "it's like you're clairvoyant." She lowered her eyes back to her computer screen and started typing.

Myron waited. Then: "Anything else?"

"Just a very unsubstantiated rumor."

"What?"

"The usual in a situation like this," Esperanza said, her eyes still on the screen. "That Ned Tunwell and Valerie Simpson were more than friends."

"Get Ned on the phone," Myron said. "Tell him I need-"

"I already made the appointment," she said. "He'll be here at seven tonight."

Dr. Amanda West now worked as chief pathologist at St. Joseph Medical Center in Doylestown, not too far from Philadelphia. Myron pulled into the hospital parking lot. On the radio was the classic Doobie Brothers song "China Grove." Myron sang along with the chorus, which basically consisted of saying "Oh, Oh, China Grove" repeatedly. Myron sang it louder now, wondering – not for the first time – what a "China Grove" actually was.

As he took a parking ticket from the attendant the car phone rang.

"Jessica is hidden," Win said.

"Thanks."

"See you at the match tomorrow."

Click. Abrupt, even for Win.

Inside Myron asked the receptionist where the morgue was. The receptionist looked at him like he was nuts and said, "The basement, of course."

"Oh, right. Like on Quincy ."

He took the elevator down a level. No one was around. He found a door marked MORGUE, and again using his powers of deductive reasoning, quickly realized that this was probably the morgue. Myron the Medium. He braced himself and knocked.

A friendly female voice chimed, "Come in."

The room was tiny and smelled like Janitor-in-a-Drum. The decor theme was metal. Two desks facing each other, both metal, took up half the room. Metal bookshelves. Metal chairs. Lots of stainless steel trays and bins all over the place. No blood in them. No organs. All shiny and clean. Myron had indeed seen plenty of violence, but the sight of blood still made him queasy once the danger passed. He didn't like violence, no matter what he'd told Jessica before. He was good at it, no denying that, but he did not like it. Yes, violence was the closest modern man came to his true primitive self, the closest he came to the intended state of nature, to the Lockean ideal, if you will. And yes, violence was the ultimate test of man, a test of both physical strength and animalistic cunning. But it was still sickening. Man had – in theory anyway – evolved for a reason. In the final analysis, violence was indeed a rush. But so was skydiving without a parachute.

"Can I help you?" the friendly voiced woman asked.

"I'm looking for Dr. West," he said.

"You found her." She stood and extended her hand. "You must be Myron Bolitar."

Amanda West smiled a bright, clear smile, which illuminated even this room. She was blond and perky with a cute little upturned nose – the complete opposite of what he'd expected. Not to be stereotyping, but she seemed a tad too sunny, too upbeat, for someone handling rotting corpses all day. He tried to picture her cheerful face splitting open a dead body with a Y-incision. The picture wouldn't hold.

"You wanted to know about Curtis Yeller?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Been waiting six years for someone to ask," she said. "Come on in. There's more room in the back."

She opened a door behind her. "You squeamish?"

"Uh, no." Mr. Tough-guy.

Amanda West smiled again. "There's nothing to see really. Just that some people get freaked out by all the drawers."

He entered the room. The drawers. There was a wall of huge drawers. Floor to ceiling. Five drawers up. Eight across. That equals forty drawers. Mr. Multiplication Tables. Forty dead bodies could fit in here. Forty dead rotting corpses that used to have lives and families, that used to love and be loved, that once cared and struggled and dreamed. Freaked out? By a bunch of drawers? Surely you jest.

"Jake said you remembered Curtis Yeller," he said.

"Sure. It was my biggest case."

"Pardon me if I sound out of line," Myron said, "but

you look awfully young to have been an M.E. six years

ago."

"You're not out of line," she said, still smiling sweetly. Myron smiled back with equal sweetness. "I had just finished my residency and worked there two nights a week. The chief M.E. was with the corpse of Alexander Cross. Both bodies came in nearly the same time. So I did the prelim on Curtis Yeller. I didn't get the chance to do anything resembling a full autopsy – not that I needed one to know how he was killed."

"How was he killed?"

"Bullet wound. He was shot twice. Once in the lower left rib cage" – she leaned to the side and pointed at her own – "and once in the face."

"Did you know which was one fatal?"

"The shot to the ribs didn't do much damage," she said. Amanda West was, Myron decided, cute. She tilted her head a lot when she talked. Jess did that too. "But the bullet in Yeller's head ripped off his face like it was Silly Putty. There was no nose. Both cheekbones were barely splinters. It was a mess. The shot was at very close range. I didn't get a chance to run all the tests, but I'd say the gun was either pressed against his face or no more than a foot away."

Myron almost took a step back "Are you saying a cop shot him in the face at point-blank range?"

Water dripped into a stainless steel sink, echoing in the room. "I'm just giving you the facts," Amanda West said steadily. "You draw your own conclusions."

"Who else knows about this?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. It was a zoo in there that night. I usually worked alone, but there must have been half a dozen other guys with me on this one. None of them worked for the coroner's office."

"Who were they?"

"Cops and government guys," she replied.

"Government guys?"

She nodded. "That's what I was told. They worked for Senator Cross. Secret service or something like that. They confiscated everything – tissue samples, the slugs I extracted, everything. They told me it was a matter of national security. The whole night was crazy. Yeller's mother even managed to get in the room once. She started screaming at me."