When they reached the morgue, Phil Kinny was waiting with his assistants. Brett and Diego were in the autopsy room where the coffin was opened, while Henry Nicholson, who had asked to accompany them and hear their findings, waited outside.
There was no body in the coffin, only a sack of sand. The only indications that a person had once lain there were a few strands of hair and a couple of fiber strands, and the satin lining still bore the impression of a body.
But the coffin held no occupant.
When Henry Nicholson heard the news he lost his cool completely. “No! No!” he shouted. When he ran toward the autopsy room, determined to see for himself, Diego and Brett had to scramble to catch him. The man moaned incoherently, tears dampening his eyes as he sank to the ground.
“My father is not a zombie!” he screamed. “My father is not a zombie!”
In the end, though unaccustomed to dealing with the living, the ME gave him a sedative.
Henry sat quietly after that, only speaking again when the agents dropped him off at his house. Before he got out of the car he stared straight at Brett. “My father is not a killer,” he insisted softly.
And Brett could only tell him, “There’s something else going on here, because I don’t believe that your father is a killer, either.”
*
Brett Cody and Matt Bosworth had obviously gotten on well during their past acquaintance, Lara reflected as she watched them laughing over old times. And seeing Brett joking around that way, he suddenly seemed more human to her. Though if she were being honest, she had to admit that the process had begun even before Meg and Matt had arrived just after one in the morning.
Brett and Diego had suggested that she get some sleep, but she had known there was no way in hell she could sleep, not to mention if she wasn’t there to let Meg and Matt through the gate, they would have to wake Grady, and that didn’t seem fair.
And so they had sat in the lounge area, and she had done her best to explain why she’d ended up in Florida after what had happened to her when she had quit her job with Congressman Walker and the ordeal she’d been through before heading south. In turn, they had told her more about the Greater Miami area, the violent drug wars that had gone on during the eighties, and how they were doing their best to prevent anything like that happening again.
“Things have changed over the years,” Brett explained to her. “Our offices across the country have hundreds of agents working on cyber crime, things like identity theft that take place without violence on the internet. But there are also always going to be those who are still into real-world criminal enterprises like drug smuggling and—especially here—stealing everything a refugee has, promising to get him to these shores. Some of them even make good on their promises, but others have no intention of risking being caught with illegal human cargo. They leave their trusting victims at sea.”
“And then there are crimes like this,” Diego said. “Senseless crimes—like the murder of Maria Gomez, who never killed anything bigger than a palmetto bug in her whole life.”
“Even Miguel only got caught up in it because he was afraid not to,” Brett added.
“And now there’s Arnold Wilhelm, a retired war vet, harming no one,” Diego added.
It was right around then that Meg had called; the room had gone oddly silent for a minute, and Lara had jumped when her phone rang. Now she realized that Matt and Brett knew each other better than she’d expected, and all four agents shared an easy camaraderie that she found herself envying. Between them, Brett and Diego quickly brought Matt and Meg up to speed.
As they spoke, Brett checked his emails and informed them that there would be a task force meeting including key state, county and city officers the next day. By then the exhumation would be complete, and hopefully Phil Kinny would be ready to tell them more about Miguel Gomez’s death. Matt told him that they had been assigned to the case through the director’s office and told to follow Brett’s lead as agent in charge.
Brett smiled and shrugged at that. “Your unit does as it chooses, I guess.”
“We aren’t here to step on toes,” Matt said.
“You would be welcome to stomp all over my entire body if it got us some answers,” Brett assured him.
It was nearly 2:00 a.m. when they finished talking. With Matt and Meg staying at the facility, it was overcrowded as far as sleeping arrangements went. Since Brett and Diego had an early appointment at the cemetery, Matt and Lara escorted them to the gate, and she made sure to lock up and set the alarm once they were gone.
As they headed back in, Matt paused on the walkway, looking around. “Interesting,” he said.
“What’s that?”