Here’s a new episode in the new series, FIRST CHAPTERS. It’s the first exciting chapters in each book in the Micah Reed series! Expect a new one each week.
To get this book, click here. To see all posts in the First Chapter series, click here.
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PROLOGUE
Danny Garaffalo shed his latex gloves and sunk into the chair in the tiny break room at the rear of the morgue. Back aching. He’d been on his feet for nearly three straight hours, bagging and tagging. But that’s what happened when they didn’t double-check vacation time requests, leaving him the only forensic tech—out of three—in the Genesee County Mortuary for this entire week. He’d always thought late shift would be the slow shift. Not so much.
Danny pondered his half-eaten hoagie, nestled in the waxed paper next to his laptop, and decided his stomach wasn’t up to the task of finishing it. Maybe later.
The screen saver sent swirling colors and patterns across his laptop, lulling him into drowsiness. Danny wondered how long he could sit here, letting his unfinished tasks languish until the guilt of laziness would strike him. Those forms weren’t going to complete themselves.
Before he could find his answer, the door at the far end of the room opened. Lights bounced off a dozen stainless steel surfaces. Those harsh and buzzing fluorescents. The latch shut with a clack and in front of the door now stood a rotund black woman with tidy rows of gray braids clenched to the top of her head. Despite the severe hair, she wore a kind and wrinkly smile, with black eyes like marbles. Looked mid-fifties, maybe. Sixty, tops. She was also wearing a red visitor badge around her neck.
Visitors at this time of night meant someone official. Most families of the deceased came during the day when the medical examiner was present. Danny got to his feet, trying not to grunt from the aches in his back and legs. “Hello.”
She stretched, grimacing. “Always think the flight to here from DC is going to be a hop and a skip, but it ends up feeling like I’ve been pushing a boulder up a hill all day.”
“If you flew into Detroit, I can understand. It’s hell getting out of that airport. I fly in and out of Bishop when I can.”
She grinned, and a rollercoaster of weird silence followed. Obviously, she wasn’t here to talk about airport convenience.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
She dug into her purse and flipped open an ID. Department of Justice. “Are you the medical examiner?”
He eyed the badge. “I’m just a tech, Mrs—”
“Please, call me Anita.”
“Well, Anita, the examiner leaves around five most days, or after noon on Friday, if she’s had a wet lunch.”
Danny felt stupid for saying that, but Anita smiled politely. He cleared his throat. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She put away the ID and adopted a serious face. “I’m with Missing and Unidentified Persons. You have a John Doe I’d like to see.”
Danny didn’t know if he was supposed to do that, but he supposed a DOJ badge gave her the right to do whatever she wanted. He didn’t mind, though, because this Anita woman seemed on the level. Had a kind of folksy air about her. Like someone’s grandmother, baking pies and setting tea in the sun to brew.
“You flew from DC to check out a body? We could have sent you the paperwork, if that’s what you wanted.”
“Thank you, but I would like to see him personally.”
Danny’s stomach yawned. He suddenly decided he wanted that hoagie, after all. “Sure, Anita, that’s no problem. Do you have a reference number?”
She handed him a folded piece of paper with the number on it, and he escorted her to his workstation. He tried to log into the system, but for some reason, she was making him nervous, and he fat-fingered his password a couple of times. Felt a little weird as she watched over his shoulder. Maybe she wasn’t technically supposed to see this without a written request, but Danny made the executive decision. If they were going to leave him here alone, that meant he was in charge.
“Got it. He’s right over here,” Danny said as he pointed at Cold Chamber C. He guided her back through the maze of steel gurneys and opened the door. A fog of wet and frigid steam rushed out, quickly dissolving into the air. “This one’s been here a while. We were about to get rid of him. Transfer to a bigger facility.”
“I’m here just in time?”
Danny nodded. “You sure are. Chamber D is unusable because of the power outage last month. Capacity issues.”
“I understand,” she said. “Have the police concluded their investigation?”
“Cops haven’t been by yet at all.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that normal? He’s been here for days.”
Danny emitted a little chuckle. “You don’t know Genesee County.”
The body was on top of a steel gurney in the back left of the chamber, wrapped in a white bag. He put a hand on the bag, then paused before rolling it back. “I should warn you, Anita. His face is intact, but the rest of him is… I don’t know how else to say it. He’s in rough shape. Your John Doe was torn to pieces. Burned, cut, shot, the whole nine yards. I haven’t seen too many chewed up this bad before.”
Anita smiled her kind and toothy smile. “I’ve been doing this a long time, dear. I don’t think you’ll be able to shock me.”
He wasn’t sure about that. But one way or the other, they would both know in a moment. Danny peeled back the bag over John Doe’s face. Tried his best to hide the mass of meat that constituted the body from the neck down. Maybe she could handle it, but he didn’t want to have to see it again.
He got an eyeful of the charred flesh around the neckline, and he changed his mind about his half-eaten hoagie. Wasn’t often that a body could make his stomach squirm.
Anita bent over, her face scrunched up in concentration. Dark eyes flittered over the man’s features. The body she was examining was approximately thirty, with brown hair and brown eyes. Caucasian. Good-looking guy, or, at least, he had been before someone had drained the life out of him.
Anita took a business card from her purse and slipped it into Danny’s shirt pocket. “If the police do get off their butts and come by to investigate, please call me.”
“No problem. I can do that.”
She then sighed as she slipped a cellphone from her pocket.
“Bad news?” Danny said.
“Not so much for me, but for someone else, yes. I was really hoping I was wrong about this one.” She dialed a number and lifted the phone to her ear. Gave Danny a glance before the call connected. “Frank? It’s your little sister… yes, yes, but that’s not what I called you for. I’m in Michigan. Flint, exactly. That young man who works for you, what’s his name? The one you introduced me to last Christmas.”
Danny crossed his arms, intrigued. So this woman had some personal connection to this body. It had seemed strange for someone in the DOJ to come all the way from Washington to identify some random John Doe. But the more Danny thought about it, the more he understood how everything lined up. The way this kid was torn to pieces, it had to be a mafia killing or something like that. Terrorist, maybe. Or perhaps the government themselves had done it. Wouldn’t have surprised Danny one bit.
“Right,” she said into the phone. “Micah Reed, that was his name. Something caught my eye on a standard MUP search yesterday, and I came out here to Flint to examine it.”
She paused, nodding as she listened. Her fingers gripped the edge of the gurney as she pursed her lips.
“That’s the thing, Frank. I know this will be hard for you to hear, but I’m staring at Micah’s dead body in a morgue right now.”
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