Page 18 of Red Rooster

Lanny was strong, but Nikita was something else entirely.

“One more shot,” the Russian said, calmly, “and then we go.”

Lanny started to protest and the hand tightened a fraction; he felt the bones in his forearm shift under the force of that grip, and he nodded. “Yeah. Alright.”

The bartender came to pour him another round.

~*~

“Where’s your partner?” Captain Abbot asked.

Trina managed to keep her expression casual when she said, “He’s sick.”

“Yeah. Bourbon’ll do that to you.”

“He has food poisoning, I think.”

“Sure.” The captain gave a dismissive head shake and opened the file that sat before him on his desk blotter. “As soon as he sobers up, he needs to get his ass in here. This disappearing body shit?” He lifted his head and glanced first at Trina, then at Dr. Harvey, who sat in the visitor chair beside her. “It’s a fucking PR nightmare.”

“Sir,” Trina said.

Harvey cleared her throat delicately. “Actually, sir, I’m not sure ‘bodies’ is the right way of putting it.” When he stared at her, she continued: “Both of them got up off the slab and walked out of the morgue. The corpses weren’t stolen – they weren’t even corpses.”

“But you pronounced them both dead at the scene.”

“I did,” she said with a sigh.

“And why did you do that?”

“No pulse, no respiration, no response to stimuli. Liver temps.”

Trina winced when she thought about the thermometer piercing flesh that wasn’t, in fact, dead.

“So explain to me how they got up and walked,” the captain said.

“We have it on camera, sir,” Trina chimed in, drawing his jowly glare. “We’re thinking that there must have been some sort of drug involved. Something that lowered their heartrates and their body temperatures and made them seem dead.”

He grunted. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Do you have any better theories?” she countered. Respectfully – she hoped.

His brows dropped low over his eyes and he exhaled in an unhappy rush. He didn’t reprimand her, though; swiveled his chair back toward the computer and sighed. “Fuck it. Whatever it is, we need it cleared up before the press conference.”

“Press conference?” Trina and Harvey asked at the same time. Trina glanced over and saw her own mounting panic reflected in the ME’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Captain Abbot said with another angry grunt. When he got worked up, the man sounded like a water buffalo. “The commissioner wants to ‘get in front of the panic.’ Whatever the fuck that means. Goddamn mayor’s gonna be there and everything.”

“The mayor?” Trina asked. “Really?”

“The asshole himself.”

Trina swapped another look with Harvey.

“Will you need us there?” Harvey asked.

“Nah.” The captain waved at them, his usual dismissal. “But figure this shit out, yeah?”

“Yes, sir,” they chorused, and escaped out into the bullpen.