“Oh, I hear ya,” said Linkletter, oblivious. “It’s not like a Road Runner cartoon, is it? You don’t go straight through the wall leaving a perfect cutout of your body. Not even at seventy-five miles per hour.” He turned to the splotched wall, then back to his colleagues with a grin. “Am I right?”
“How about just giving us a briefing,” said Heat.
“What’s the fun in that?”
Even Randall Feller, Mr. Gallows Humor, had had enough. “Linkletter. Save it for open-mic night at Governor’s.”
It took the sober glowers of three cops and one investigative journalist to get Linkletter down to business. “Victim was not wearing a restraint and became a projectile, ejected from the front driver’s seat of the vehicle upon high-speed impact with the fortified concrete barrier. Preliminary cause of death: blunt impact injuries of head and torso. Temp, lividity, plus the degree of congealing and dryness at the edge of the blood spatters all lead me to estimate the postmortem interval at twenty-four to twenty-eight hours.”
“This happened yesterday?” asked Heat.
“Twenty-four to twenty-eight hours. Am I not being clear?”
“Do you have positive ID of the victim?” asked Ochoa.
“We are unable to confirm anything other than race and gender.” The ME indicated the bloodstained gnarl of clothing and flesh fused with the crumpled hood. “Lower body is still largely discernable, therefore, male.”
“What about driver’s license, wallet?” asked Heat.
He let out a petulant sigh. “First you reject my pleasantries and press for my report. Now you interrupt by pestering me with questions.” A photographer from his team flashed a picture of the victim. Linkletter whirled to face him. “Mr. Roe. Cease photography.”
“Proceed,” Heat said, politely, but vowing never to work a death scene in his jurisdiction again.
“In his wallet, a New York State driver’s license for: Lobbrecht, Frederick van; male; cauc; brown over hazel; age thirty-eight. DL photo and name matches the Forenetics laminated ID retrieved from the victim’s tissue, identifying him as a ‘crash reconstruction expert.’ Am I the only one thinking, ‘No shit?’” Linkletter cackled his strangled-goose laugh again, but when he saw the stone faces of Easter Island staring back at him, the medical examiner continued, “Given the catastrophic trauma to the head and upper body, positive ID will involve fingerprints. Failing any record of those, we’ll go for dental records or a chest X-ray, assuming he has one in his medical files. Of course there’s DNA, but you’re looking at time and taxpayer moola.”
“I’m good for now,” said Heat, eager to put space between herself and the annoying ME.
“Oh, sure,” he called out as they walked away, “now that you’re a captain, you’re too big to slum with the grunts in the field.”
“E-mail me your report,” was all she said in reply and without even turning to him as she moved off.
“What an asshole,” said Feller.
Ochoa added, “Dealing with dead people’s the perfect job for that guy.”
“Not even,” said Rook. “No corpse-side manner.”
“You’re back.” Heat smiled warmly and gave his forearm a squeeze. “Welcome.”
“I told you I was fine.”
“Yeah, and you looked it,” said Ochoa. “Get any on your shoes?”
Heat and her crew met at the other end of the hangar with their counterparts from the One-Two-One to piece together what they could about the crash. “A couple of things I don’t understand already,” she said, kicking things off, “besides wondering how something like this could happen in the first place. First, how could it go unnoticed for a full day?” Nikki scanned the cavernous space and added, “I mean, where is everyone?”
One of the Staten Island detectives said, “This facility is sort of like a football stadium. Nobody’s really around unless there’s a game.”