Page 42 of Unnatural Death

“We’ve got a special kind of bug repellent. Otherwise, it would have hit us already. And then there’s our friendly zapper that I told you about.” Lucy makes another selection on a menu. “You’re about to be the property of the U.S. government. Bye-bye, birdie.”

CHAPTER 16

INSTANTLY, THE DRONE HAS vanished from my side window. The flashing red target on the display has been replaced by an X, and we begin circling my parking lot.

“Where did it go?” Marino asks. “You vaporize it? What did you do?”

“As simple as yanking a plug out of the wall.” Lucy lines up the landing zone near the REMOTE’s semi-trailer against the fence. “Looks like our invasive visitor fell out of the sky, setting down hard a couple blocks from here on top of a Catholic church. A good thing since it’s going to need last rites, as will the asshole who was flying it. Can’t wait to take a look at it in our lab.”

“How are you going to recover it?” Marino asks.

“As we speak it’s in the process,” she says as we’re coming in to land. “Now I need to pay attention.”

“Glad to know you weren’t doing it before.”

Fabian and Wyatt are waiting next to the refrigerated tractor-trailer where stretchers and surgical carts shine like polished silver in the sun. Four uniformed Secret Service officers stand guard, their black Tahoe SUVs parked nearby. People shield their faces from our rotor wash as we hover-taxi in, traffic cones rolling and skittering. I barely feel the skids touch down, then the helicopter’s weight settles, the engines cut to flight idle.

I can sense Fabian’s excitement as I watch him out my window, and I’m tired of being the bad mother. Once again, I’m about to disappoint him. It’s simply not possible for him to assist me inside the REMOTE. The autopsies will be done in isolation, no staff allowed except Marino. The only spectators are those the Secret Service decides, and I think about Fabian’s and my conversation early this morning.

The best remedy is to keep him busy with something that he feels matters, and I know just the thing he can do to be helpful. Lucy finishes the shutdown, and we open our doors as he pushes a stretcher across the tarmac, the noise reminding me of roller skating. I climb down from the cockpit, and Wyatt is waiting.

“How are you doing?” I ask him. “You must be exhausted.”

“Wyatt’s like the walking dead,” Fabian volunteers as he trots back for the second stretcher. “As usual, Tina never fails to be a C-U-Next-Tuesday no matter what day of the week it is!”

“I won’t lie,” Wyatt says to me. “This is getting old.”

“I’m very sorry Tina left you and all of us in the lurch, and not for the first time. You should have headed home anyway or taken a nap in the on-call room.”

“I couldn’t do that, Chief.” He stares at the body pouches in their rescue baskets lashed to the skids. “It’s a good thing we’ve got police everywhere. But someone from our office has to protect our interests. No way I was going to leave. Especially with the devil sticking her nose into everything.”

He shows me a string of text messages on his phone from Maggie Cutbush. She’s demanding information about what’s going on at my office, and he’s wise not to answer.

“I’m sorry she’s harassing you. I’m sorry for all of this,” I reply. “You’re always getting the short end of the stick because you’re a responsible and unselfish person, Wyatt. You care.”

Former military, he’s in his early sixties with bad knees and his phobias of the morgue. But he doesn’t abandon his post, complain or make excuses for the most part. He’ll pass out from pain and fatigue before walking off the job or letting me down. Certain parties use this to their advantage, knowing he’ll cover for them when they don’t show up.

“I’m glad you’re still here, because I don’t know what we’d do. Thank you for staying. I’m sorry Tina didn’t give more advance notice.” My diplomatic way of letting him know I’m aware that she screwed us.

No doubt she’ll be out of work the rest of the week, if not longer. She’ll be on paid sick leave, waiting for at least two negative test results. This has been going on in one form or fashion since I moved back to Virginia early in the pandemic. What I’d like to do is fire her. But I’d be in for a world of trouble with the Department of Labor, and that’s what she counts on.

“I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.” Anger shows on Wyatt’s tired face.

“You have every right to be upset,” I reply.

“She gets paid while I’m here covering for her bad behavior. Not sure you know, but Tina’s been escorting Maggie Cutbush to her car as if she’s got her own security detail,” Wyatt then offers.

“How long has this been going on?” Marino carefully lifts the banker’s box out of the back cabin.

“A few weeks,” Wyatt says. “That’s not a good thing when there’s only one of us on duty at a time.”

“It’s not a good thing for any reason I can think of,” I reply, and Maggie may not work in my office, but she’s anything but gone.

“Like I said, she’s asking questions that are none of her business,” Wyatt replies, and I detect helicopters in the distance, probably the media. “She wants to know what you’re doing.” He again eyes the rescue baskets with their pouched bodies.

“She’s been pestering me too.” Fabian rolls up a second stretcher. “Claiming she’s got a right to the details since she’s in charge of the Commonwealth’s safety.”

“She’s certainly not in charge, and the Department of Emergency Prevention isn’t an enforcement agency,” I clarify. “Their focus is compiling statistics and they have no legal right to medical examiner records. The less said to Maggie and her staff the better.”

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