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.”