206 BONES Read Free

from Montreal, I was no longer in the mood for teasing.
     
Though generally cheerful, Ryan is not a good traveler, even when the aviation gods are smiling. Yesterday they’d been grumpy as hell.
     
Instead of two hours, our flight from Pierre-Elliot Trudeau International to O’Hare had taken six. First a weather delay. Then a mechanical complication. Then the crew went illegal for dancing naked on the tarmac. Or some such. Annoyed and frustrated, Ryan had passed the time nitpicking everything I said. His idea of jolly good banter.
     
Several moments passed.
     
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
     
Ryan was pushing to his feet when the door opened and Christopher Corcoran entered, dressed in lab coat, jeans, and sneakers. With his paleskin, green eyes, red hair, and freckles, Corcoran was a walking Irish cliché. And decidedly nervous.
     
“I’m really sorry for the delay. This missing body thing turned into an Italian opera.”
     
“I hate it when corpses go walkabout.” The old Ryan wit.
     
Corcoran gave a mirthless smile. “Especially when the decedent’s under your care.”
     
“It was your case?” I asked.
     
Corcoran nodded. As I looked at him, a million memories flooded my mind. A scrawny kid, all spindly limbs and wild carrot hair. Wrought-iron desks floor-bolted in long straight rows. Impromptu street games on hot summer nights. Interminable Masses on hard wooden pews.
     
As kids, Corcoran and I were back-fence neighbors in a South Side neighborhood called Beverly, and card-carrying members at St. Margaret’s of Scotland. Keep in mind that Chicago Catholics map people by parishes, not geography. An oddity, but there you have it.
     
When I was eight, my father and baby brother died, and my family relocated to North Carolina. Corcoran stayed put. We lost touch, of course. I grew up, attended the University of Illinois, then graduate school at Northwestern. He studied at Michigan, undergrad through med school, then completed specialty training in pathology. It was forensics that brought us back into contact.
     
Reconnection occurred in ’92 through a case involving a baby in a suitcase. By then Corcoran had married, returned to Chicago, and purchased a house on Longwood Drive. Though a little farther east and a lot upmarket, Corcoran had returned to the old spawning ground.
     
“Turns out it was here all along.” Corcoran’s voice brought me back. “The guy was so scrawny he got hidden behind an obese woman on an upper gurney shelf. The techs just missed him.”
     
“Happy ending,” Ryan said.
     
Corcoran snorted. “Tell that to Walczak.”
     
It was said of Stanley Walczak that only his ego surpassed his ambition in raw tonnage. His cunning was fierce too. Upon the resignation of the previous ME nine months earlier, having forged a complex web of political connections, to the surprise of few, and the dismay of many, Walczak had called in his chits and been appointed Cook County Medical Examiner.
     
“Walczak is pissed?” I asked.
     
“The man detests bad publicity. And inefficiency.” Corcoran sighed.“We handle roughly twenty pickups a day here. Between yesterday and this morning the staff had to phone over sixty funeral homes to see if a delivery had been made to the wrong place. Four techs and three investigators had to be pulled off their normal duties to help check toe tags. It took three sweeps to finally locate the guy. Hell, we’ve got half a cooler set aside just for long-term unknowns.”
     
“Mistakes happen.” I tried to sound encouraging.
     
“Here, misplacing a body is not considered a career-enhancing move.”
     
“You’re a fantastic pathologist. Walczak’s lucky to have you.”
     
“In his view, I should have been on top of the situation sooner.”
     
“You expect fallout?” Ryan asked.
     
“The family’s probably lawyer-shopping as we speak. Nothing like a few bucks to assuage unbearable anguish, even when there is no injury. It’s the American way.”
     
Corcoran circled the table and we