Credit goes to my beta, KayValo87, for catching the errors that you don't see. Fault goes to me for the ones you do find, if you find them.
Thank you, Grid Gypsy, for your review.
Disclaimer: I shouldn't need one. If I owned Forever, I would be busy searching for a network to air it.
Lucas Wahl met Henry as he was getting out of the ambulance with the bodies of the US marshals.
"Hi. You may not want to go in there right now. There's like some CIA assassin prowling around the morgue and I swear I had nothing to do with it. I mean, there were those songs I downloaded on the office computer a few weeks ago, and I may have not have gotten them from a site that was completely on the up and up, but everybody does that. Is it because I downloaded them on a work computer? It was a slow day and I just needed something to listen to while I was working on my paperwork and I…"
Henry smiled as Lucas rambled. "I very much doubt that the person currently haunting our morgue is an assassin, or from the CIA. And I'm sure that your musical preferences are the least of their concerns. For now, we have some new guests to attend to."
While Lucas checked in the bodies, Henry entered the morgue to meet the mysterious lurker that had freaked out his assistant. "Good morning," he said as he held out his hand. "Are you from the FBI?"
For a fraction of a second, the man was startled. "Yes. You must be Dr. Morgan. I am to observe as you perform the autopsies."
"Might I have your name?" The doctor asked. Henry disliked anonymity among the people he worked with. It made it far too easy not to care.
"Oh, sorry. It's Quincy Cooper. Agent Quincy Cooper."
The man was tall and young, a little bit younger than Lucas. Henry's assistant had probably thought the FBI agent was an assassin because he took himself very seriously. The young man would not answer many questions, and Henry could tell that was because he wasn't often given any. He couldn't have been with the FBI for long.
"How much experience have you had in the autopsy room?" Henry was attempting to gauge how squeamish this particular agent would be when faced with his autopsy techniques.
"This is my first time. But I've been to some grisly crime scenes, so how different could it be?"
To Henry, it seemed that someone was playing a cruel joke on the man. To send him into an autopsy with no other experience than a few grisly crime scenes...this one would probably be down the hall in the bathrooms before the body was opened up. To anyone who had not taken medical training, to people who were even empathetic, an autopsy was a barbarous process that violated the body of another human being after they had died in a mysterious and equally violating way.
The timely arrival of Lucas and the bodies spared Henry the inevitable argument that would ensue if he tried to explain what the members of his team were trying to do to him. Together, the chief medical examiner and his assistant lifted them onto the tables.
"Lucas, this is Agent Quincy Cooper. He'll be observing the autopsies today because we're working with the FBI on this case. Agent Cooper, this is my assistant Lucas Wahl."
Lucas visibly relaxed and held out his hand to the agent. Quincy hesitated, not forgetting that those hands had just lifted two dead bodies onto the examination tables. But he submitted to the gesture of greeting.
"Do you know anything about our victims, Agent Cooper?"
"I know they were US Marshals."
"Yes, but—" Henry allowed himself a small sigh of exasperation "what were their names?"
"Oh, uh…" A light blush tinged the young man's cheeks pink. He fumbled with a couple of folders. "Franklin O'Neill and…uh…Maya Valdez." He gave the folders to Henry for his perusal, verifying medical records and learning more about the lives of the people he had only met after death.
Behind him, Henry heard Lucas busying about with the initial preparations for the bodies, drawing vials of blood for the tox-screen, cutting of the sodden clothing, collecting any items on the bodies in separate bins for evidence and, eventually, their next of kin. That was always the hard part, telling the family. In any law enforcement agency, it was even harder because everyone knows that the reason they died was because they did their job too well.
"Everything's ready for you, Dr. Morgan." Lucas stepped to the side, a small grin on his face as Henry unrolled the pack with his set of tools. The immortal could almost hear the young agent's eyes snap to the ten inch hunting knife.
Henry selected the more benign looking scalpel, though the history of crimes like Jack the Ripper proved that it could be a weapon just as savage. Henry made the first incision slowly, trying to spare the nerves of their guest. He was still there. The second incision met the end of the first perpendicularly. Then the third, from that point of intersection to the navel.
There was a small commotion behind the medical examiner heading in the direction of the door.
"What was that all about?"
Henry turned to see Detective Martinez standing in the doorway, holding the door that Agent Cooper had just flung open.
"I believe he was uncomfortable observing an autopsy."
"That would explain why he was turning that unhealthy shade of green. Do we have time of death on these two?"
"About four this morning," Lucas piped up. "But why would anyone want to kill a couple of US Marshals?"
"We think that someone took the witness that they were escorting to the courthouse." Jo sighed and combed her fingers through her hair. "The missing girl's name is Meredith Keegan. And she's the material witness in the Mikhail Volkov murder trial. Apparently she actually saw her boss get murdered by Volkov and hightailed it to the nearest police station. She's a smart girl; I just hope we can find her in time…"
For some reason, Henry wasn't sure if they would find the girl, but he wasn't convinced that she was dead. The only thing he had ever felt with such certainty was that Abigail would not have abandoned him.
For no other reason than faith, Henry was certain that Meredith was alive.
Guess it's a bit of a short one. Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Please review, if you would.