Black Widow (28 page)

Bria gave them all sharp nods and tight smiles before moving on. I followed about fifteen feet behind her, and the only reason the cops looked at me was to leer at my legs. But I fixed my face into a frown, as though I were deep in thought about something, ignored their stares, and hurried on.

Finally, Bria reached an elevator and stepped inside.

“Hold the elevator, please,” I called out.

She nodded and held her hand out, so that the doors wouldn't close and I could step inside with her. When the doors slid shut, she murmured out of the side of her mouth.

“Well, that was easier than I'd thought it would be.”

“Don't jinx us just yet.”

She snorted, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

After a couple of stops, the doors finally pinged open in the basement. This wasn't the cops' domain, though.

It was the coroner's.

From what Madeline had said last night, the coroner would be doing my supposed autopsy first thing this morning. I wasn't sure how he would try to go about identifying my supposed body. It wasn't like I'd left dental records and DNA samples just lying around for anyone to find. But I definitely didn't want him telling Madeline that the burned body
wasn't
me. That would ruin everything else I had planned.

Bria and I stepped out of the elevator. Unlike the main floor, this one was deserted, so we walked together down the long corridor until we reached the glass door that led into the coroner's office. We entered and found ourselves
in a small waiting area with padded chairs along the walls, dusty plastic palm trees in the corners, and several large boxes of tissues lined up on a glass coffee table in the middle of the room.

Bria went to the back of the waiting room and swiped her police ID through a scanner attached to the wall. Another door—this one made out of thick, frosted glass—buzzed open.

We stepped through to the other side and found ourselves in a room made largely out of metal. Stainless-steel vaults fronted with doors lined two of the walls, looking like gym lockers, although they held dead bodies instead of sweatpants and dirty socks. A series of long metal tables took up the center of the room, and several drains were set into the floor. The air was cool against my skin, and the faint antiseptic stench that permeated everything reminded me of Beauregard Benson. My stomach turned over at the memory of the vamp's lab and the torture I'd endured there, but I forced myself to focus on the man standing next to one of the tables.

The coroner was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt under bright blue scrubs that brought out his dark hazel eyes and ebony skin. His black hair was cropped close to his skull, and a small black goatee clung to his chin. I'd seen him many times over the past year, the most recently being at the Bone Mountain Nature Preserve, back when his office was dealing with all the bodies that had been found at Harley Grimes's remote camp. The coroner had given me a jaunty wave back then. I hoped that he would be even more accommodating today. But what I'd brought along in my briefcase should help with that.

A badly burned body lay on the metal table before him. It looked exactly as I remembered it from the Pork Pit—a charred husk with dull bits of teeth and bones gleaming here and there. I breathed in, and the scent of smoke and ash drifted over to me, making my chest clench.

The coroner had gotten an even earlier start than I'd expected. I couldn't tell how far along into the autopsy he was, but he'd already started making notes, judging from the clipboard and pen that were lying on another, smaller table.

He looked up at the sound of the door's buzzing open. A faint wince creased his face as he spotted Bria, and he stepped in front of the table, as if he wanted to shield her from the sight of the burned body.

“Oh, Bria,” he said in a quiet, sympathetic voice. “I thought that I might see you here today. But . . . later. Much later. After I was . . . finished.”

Bria glanced at me, and I nodded. The coroner frowned as he studied me, as if I seemed familiar but he couldn't quite place me. I stared back at him, completely calm, as if I had nothing at all to hide, even though my heart started thumping a little louder and faster in my chest.

But my disguise must have fooled him because he turned back to Bria. “You shouldn't be here. Most people would find it very . . . upsetting. If you'd like, you can wait outside with your friend. I have to warn you that I will probably be quite a while, though. Given the . . . state of the remains.”

He kept his voice low and gentle. He was trying to spare her from the horror of seeing the charred body of her supposedly dead sister and then watching as that body was sliced open and examined from head to toe.

“But I'll take good care of her,” he continued. “I promise. Just like I always do.”

Bria gave him a thin, brittle smile, playing her part well. “Thanks for your concern, Ryan. I appreciate it. Really, I do. But I'm fine. This isn't my first body or autopsy.”

“I really don't think that you should be here for this, Bria. There are some things you just can't unsee.”

She nodded. “And I agree with you one hundred percent. But I needed to talk to you.”

He frowned. “About what?”

That was my cue. I stepped forward, put my briefcase on another table, and popped open the top. I reached inside and drew out a fat envelope, which I passed over to Bria.

She put the envelope on the table next to the coroner's clipboard, then stepped back. “We all know that's my sister. Nothing's going to change that, especially not waiting days for the results to come back on all the tests you like to run. Do the autopsy and the tests if you like, but I want you to go ahead, make a positive ID, and declare that that body is my sister, Gin Blanco.”

Ryan's eyes narrowed, his face tightened, and he studied my sister in a new light. “I don't take bribes, Bria. Everybody else around here does, but not me. Not for any reason. I didn't think you were like that either.”

“And I thought that you might make an exception this one time. Please, Ryan. We're friends. I really need you to do this for me. I just want to bury my sister as quickly as possible. That's all.”

That wasn't all, not by a long shot, and he could tell that she was lying. He stared at her, obviously torn between
giving in to her plea and telling her where to stick that envelope of cash. From what Bria had told me, the two of them respected each other and had a great working relationship, but he was also an honest man, one of the few good ones in the entire building.

I didn't like using him this way, asking him to do something so underhanded, something that went against his beliefs, but I didn't have a choice. Not if I wanted time to plot against Madeline. But just because I wanted to get her didn't mean that I was going to hurt innocent people to do it. If the coroner wouldn't do what we wanted, then so be it. We'd figure out another way.

“No one will question your findings,” Bria continued, trying to convince him. “My sister went into her restaurant, and she never came back out again. Dozens of witnesses support that.”

“But she's a powerful elemental. If anyone could have survived the fire, it would have been Gin Blanco . . .” Ryan's voice trailed off, and I could almost see the wheels spinning as he thought about the implication of declaring me dead. “But you actually . . .
want
this body to be your sister. Why would you want something like that to be true?”

Bria must have been taking acting lessons from Finn because she pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she were fighting back tears. “Because it
is
her. You've heard all the rumors about Gin and Dobson and the bull pen.”

Ryan winced again.

Bria dropped her hand from her face and stared him down. “I can't do anything about all of that, but I can do this one last thing for my sister. I want you to expedite things so I can bury her as soon as possible. That's what she
would have wanted. Not this . . .
circus
. Besides, I know that you're getting . . . pressure to perform the autopsy so you can give your findings to certain . . . interested individuals.”

For a moment, I almost thought she had him, but her last, not-so-veiled reference to Madeline hardened his resolve.

He straightened up and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don't hurry my work, and I certainly don't falsify it.”

Bria's lips tightened into a thin line. She opened her mouth to argue with him, but he held up his hand, cutting her off.

“But your sister . . . helped me once. Did a . . . favor for my family. At least, I think that she did. So I'll go ahead with the autopsy. I'll say what you want me to, Bria. Giving myself enough wiggle room to backtrack later, of course.”

She nodded at him. “Of course.”

Bria looked at me, obviously wanting us to leave before he changed his mind, but I wasn't quite ready to go yet.

“Actually, I have something for Dr. Colson,” I said. “Something that might answer some of his questions. About Ms. Blanco.”

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out several old newspaper articles that I'd had Silvio look up online and print out for me. Puzzled, Bria took the papers from me and handed them over to the coroner.

At first, he frowned, but as he read the sheets and the words sank in, his eyes widened, and his mouth silently dropped open into an O. Then he came to the last sheet, which featured a news photo of a grief-stricken young man clutching the bloodstained body of his kid brother to his chest.

His fingers dug into the paper, crumpling the edges, and his head snapped in my direction. “Where did you get . . . how did you
know
 . . .”

“Several years ago, your younger brother Roy was murdered,” I said. “Shot by some gangbangers during a robbery of your parents' grocery store. The police did very little to investigate the crime, but the perpetrators were found soon after, all of them with their throats cut.”

Bria sucked in a breath. She knew that I'd killed them. And now, so did Dr. Ryan Colson.

“Given your job here, I'm sure that you've seen that particular injury, made with the same sort of blade, more than once over the years,” I continued in a calm voice. “Not only that, but the police officer responsible for investigating the crime, the one who had done such a shitty job of it, was also found dead around that same time. Also with her throat cut, although she was buried in a bombed-out warehouse. A few weeks later, your parents received an anonymous donation, enough to help them get their store up and running again.”

Colson's fingers tightened on the papers, making them crackle. I wasn't telling him anything that he hadn't already guessed, but he deserved to hear it from me.

“Of course, none of this brought your brother back, and none of it lessened the pain of his loss. There are some things you just can't unsee,” I said in a soft voice. “Just like you said. But if it helped at all, well, I think Ms. Blanco would have liked knowing that.”

Colson carefully smoothed out the papers in his hand, then raised his eyes to mine. I met his questioning, searching gaze with a steady one of my own. After a moment,
his gaze flicked to Bria, then back to me again, as he mentally compared the two of us. He was a smart guy, and I knew that he'd figured out who I really was underneath the blond wig and glasses.

“It did help,” he said in a quiet voice. “As much as anything could. Thank you for answering my . . . questions.”

I tipped my head at him. “You're welcome.”

Bria stepped up and held out her hand. Colson shook it, but he kept looking at me the whole time.

“Thank you, Ryan,” she said, dropping her hand back down to her side. “You don't know how much this means to me.”

A faint grin lifted his lips. “Oh, I'm sure that I'll find out sooner or later. I usually do when Ms. Blanco is involved.” He grabbed the envelope full of cash and tossed it over to her. “You can keep that, though. I don't want it.”

Bria opened her mouth to protest, but I shook my head at her. We were still on thin ice, and I didn't want him to change his mind about helping us.

“Well, then,” she said. “We'll leave you to it.”

Colson moved over to the desk in the corner and started pulling on a pair of latex gloves, purposefully ignoring us. I snapped my briefcase shut and jerked my head at Bria. She slid the envelope full of cash into her back pocket, and we walked over to the door. I pulled it open, letting her step through first as I glanced back over my shoulder.

Colson was still standing at the desk, but he'd put his gloved, fisted hands down on the metal, as if he were propping himself up. His gaze was locked on a framed photo sitting on the corner of the desk—one of two boys laughing and sitting on a stoop in front of a store.

He realized that I was watching him. After a moment, he tipped his head at me. I returned the gesture, then let the door swing shut behind me.

*  *  *

We stepped back out into the front room.

Bria waited until the door had shut behind us before she turned to me. “Ryan told me once about his brother's murder. He said that it was one of the reasons he decided to become a coroner. So he could help find answers for people about what happened to their loved ones. Give them some closure.”

“I can understand that.”

“I can't believe that he agreed to help us,” she said. “I never thought he would, but then I didn't know that you'd killed the people who'd murdered his brother. Was that your backup plan if he'd said no? Reminding him of that?”

I shrugged. “Someone that you helped returned the favor to me when Dobson was searching the Pork Pit. That got me thinking about Colson. He's always been respectful to me whenever we've crossed paths. I wondered why, and then I remembered this particular job that Fletcher had sent me on. That's why I brought the newspaper clippings.”