“Yes. How can I help you?”
“My son inside there.”
Relatives of WW 888 passengers had heard that the deceased would be brought here, but that was only partly right.
The ME’s office was the first port of call. But after it had filled to capacity, bodies were distributed to hospital morgues all over the city. When the hospitals ran out of room, the deceased had been stored in refrigerated vans parked inside a hangar at SFO.
There was no way the man standing this close to me with bunched fists could know the location of his son’s body.
I said, “I’m very sorry, sir. But the ME’s office is off-limits now. Please call this number,” I added, taking a card out of my jacket pocket and handing it to him. “Someone will let you know where to find your son and when you may claim his body.”
“You lie. This number all bullshit. I need to go inside and see him now,” he said.
I could see the four cops stationed along the breezeway that runs from the rear exit of the Hall of Justice past the ME’s office and out to the street. Could they see me?
I told the Asian man again that I was sorry and to please call the central number I had given him, but he was radiating fury, cursing me in his own language. I thought he was going to take a swing at me.
I was prepared to throw him to the ground and cuff him if he got physical, when Inspector Monty McAllister broke from the breezeway detail and came toward me. He was big. Very fit.
“You need assistance, Sergeant?” he asked as he let me pass through the cordon.
“Thanks, McAllister.”
“No problem.”
Three more men got out of the BMW and came toward us.
I kept walking. Claire was waiting for me at the ambulance bay. As I reached her, I heard shouts at my back: McAllister’s crew threatening to put the Asian men under arrest.
Claire reached out her arms to me and brought me inside. We held on to each other.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “And I never want to see anything like this again.”
CHAPTER 28
IT WAS ABOUT 6 p.m. when I followed my best friend into the morgue and saw the double row of sheet-covered gurneys lining the stainless steel–clad room.
“I’ve got sixteen decedents here, all crash victims,” Claire said. “We’re officially full up, but we took on some overflow. Got six people in there,” she said, lifting her chin toward the autopsy suite.
“How are you holding up?”
“OK, considering that this is the most exhausting night of my life. Most of these victims don’t have ID. I’ve got a three-year-old with no name. Hope I can tag him tonight.”
Dr. Germaniuk, the seasoned on-call pathologist and Claire’s backup doc, was sliding a body into a drawer and three sweaty techs were cleaning up, setting up a body for her next autopsy.
Claire called out, “Dr. G. I’m gonna take a fifteen-minute break, OK?”
“Take twenty,” he said.
I followed Claire along the hallway to her office and she shut the door behind us. She took her desk chair and I dropped down hard into the seat across from her. Claire had made this room as homey as possible, meaning only passably.
A gardenia floated in a bowl of water on her desk, a few finger paintings were under the glass desktop, and framed photos hung on the wall behind Claire: her friends in the Women’s Murder Club and snapshots of her family. Her husband, Edmund. Her two grown-up sons. Her little girl, Rosie.
My eyes got stuck on the baby.
Claire’s eyes were on me. “Talk to me,” she said.
“Richie and I were tasked with escorting kids off school buses today,” I said. “The buses came up to a side entrance to Mills-Peninsula Medical. The parents were behind police lines and crazy with fear. They couldn’t do what they wanted to do, you know? They wanted to rush the buses.