A Fresh Start (Book 6 Arrow/SPN Series)

Instincts

He managed to get himself mostly under control by the time we got to the ME's office. "You good? I didn't think it was that funny."

He snorted, chuckled a few more times then stopped smiling. "Yeah, I'm good."

"Well, let's see what he's hiding." We parked, got out and opened the doors to the place. Morgues, like liquor stores, all start to look the same after a few years. I guess there's only so many ways you can configure a place around holding dead bodies. The people that work at a morgue usually aren't too much into interior design and the people the work on tend not to complain about the wall color, being dead and all.

Whoever worked in this one must be an outdoorsy type even though they work in a basement, there were a few potted plants scattered around and a vase of fake flowers. I thought that made it feel like a funeral home, not liven the place up but who am I to judge.

We rounded a corner and heard a rather cranky female voice. I ducked back around the corner, Roy followed me and we waited. Eavesdropping usually pays off.

"I don't know why he had to go. He just called, said he had a family emergency and was gone before I even got here. I checked the video logs since he's always too lazy to log visitors in the book and some tall guy in a suit, probably a fed was here right before he bailed. No! Of course there's no record! God I hope they don't come back around. I don't know what happened to the guy. He used to be on top of things, now he's never here, misses shit and makes my life a living hell. Yeah, okay. I'll try to be home for dinner. Love you too."

Roy's eyebrows were up when he looked at me, I gave him a quick nod and walked around the corner. She had her back to the hallway, black hair tied up in a bun, the usual white coat on, was in fitted slacks that showed off her legs and was barely five feet tall. "Excuse us ma'am. We're with the FBI and have some questions."

She turned around, her face was average looking and aggravated, "Of course you are. As if I don't have enough crap to deal with today. What do you need?"

I gave her a quick smile, which just seemed to irritate her more so I went back to business face, "We'd like to look at the bodies of Simon Harris and Teresa Spencer if we could. My partner was here earlier and noticed some irregularities between the autopsy photos and the bodies."

"Not surprising, Jim did those two and he's been slacking lately. I'm Susan, and you are?"

She didn't take too long to throw him under the bus, she must really hate the poor guy. "Agents Ragsdale and Henderson." We flashed her our badges, she nodded, led us to the storage units and pulled open two drawers.

"Here you go. Let me grab the files and we can straighten this out." She walked away.

Simon was closest to us so I started with him. "Yeah, those aren't vamp bites at all. Damn." He had an incision, not knife wounds but a surgical style cut over where his kidney would be which stood out in pretty obvious contrast to the bites and tears all over the rest of him. "Someone worked damn hard to make sure this looked natural but Sam's right, nothing on him looks like a mountain lion had him for lunch. There'd be a lot less left of him if that was the case. Let's look at Teresa." Roy was starting to look a little green but he stayed didn't back down. Teresa was more of the same but she the incision was closer to her liver.

A file drawer slammed shut and I could hear Susan walking back and judging from the sounds of her footsteps she was not too happy. I looked up from Teresa's body and knew exactly was going to come out of her mouth. She didn't have any folders in her hand and was trying to keep the fear of future unemployment off her face. "I'm sorry Agents, the files don't seem to be here."

"Really? Not even in your computers? How about the files from the other bodies that came in like this earlier this month?"

She shook her head but her eyes widened. "These two aren't in the system, let me check the others."