All the King's Henchmen

by Morgan Kelley

That was interesting.

  “If you want to know more,” Melina stated, “You’ll have to talk to them. I was simply advancing my career. I didn’t like the man, but I wanted to stay on his duty for the last year of his presidency. Then I’d likely get the next president or Tiegan’s job if she left.”

  Good to know.

  It looked like they had a decent lead and they were going to run with it.

  Elizabeth would want to know all of this because it gave people motive.

  “Can I ask you something?” Noah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find time to have a private interlude with the president if he is surrounded by agents?” he asked.

  “The limo. He rides with one agent, one is in the front, and two agents run alongside if he’s doing a city visit. I was the one in the back with him. He picked me specifically to be the one.”

  Well, that man was…a planner.

  “His wife knew I was getting him off. She opened the limo once and caught him. He told her to close her mouth, and the door, and I went back to blowing him.”

  That put horrible pictures in their heads.

  Jesus.

  “Uh, thank you for your help,” Noah stated when his partner seemed to forget how to talk. He couldn’t blame him. This was…

  Ridiculous.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any pull with the vice president?” she asked. “You know…and his detail?” she asked hopefully.

  “NO!” they both said at the same time.

  “Damn.”

  They bid her farewell and headed out to their ride. Once inside, Noah began laughing his ass off.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Straights are insane.”

  He was beginning to agree.

  “She didn’t even care that she was sleeping with a married man,” Alex stated. “That takes balls or just no morals whatsoever,” he added.

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “What the hell was going on in the White House? It was like a swinger’s party.”

  “You’re familiar with those?” Noah teased.

  “I wish. No one’s driven this car fast in quite a while,” he admitted.

  “I have a friend if you’re feeling like…”

  Alex stopped him.

  He wasn’t so desperate he’d go gay, or let Noah set him up. That told him he needed to get a girl and soon. The next stop was a well-dressed gay man hooking him up with his friend.

  “NO.”

  Noah laughed.

  “Let’s head in. The boss lady is going to want to know what we’ve found, and it’s probably good we handled this interview.”

  “Why? I feel dirty,” Alex stated, “and not in a good way either.”

  Noah grinned.

  “Because she would have bitch slapped the stupid out of that agent.”

  Yeah, she really would.

  And honestly, Alex couldn’t blame her.

  * * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *

  FBI

  Hoover Building

  Ten A.M

  When they arrived back at the office, there was nothing unusual happening. The agents were going in and out, and they were going about their normal days. That was the best thing she’d seen yet today.

  Why?

  This told her that the news of the president’s demise was still under wraps.

  GOOD.

  That was the ONLY thing that made her happy at that point. The case was going to be a bitch, and they were already working against a clock.

  The media clock.

  Heading into Autopsy One, she entered her clearance code and the doors unlocked. As she headed in, she found her team working on the dead man, the man’s scraps of clothing, and whatever else came with him—which was almost nothing.

  “How’s tricks?” she asked, carrying a takeout container for her ME.

  “We’re not done yet,” Chris said, as he stood there watching Doctor Duncan. She was elbow deep in the man’s guts, and that was EXACTLY why Elizabeth was there.

  This wasn’t her first day at the rodeo.

  She knew how long it took to do an autopsy, and with a new ME…yeah, she’d planned this perfectly. When you wanted to surprise someone, you made a sneak attack.

  “Oh, really?” she asked, smiling like a cat about to pounce on a very slow, unsuspecting mouse.

  “Sweetness,” he warned, knowing that tone. He’d heard it countless times before.

  Instead of saying anything, Elizabeth gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “I brought you a snack,” she stated.

  “That wouldn’t happen to be a slice of chocolate cake from my favorite bakery, now would it?” he asked.

  “Of course it is.”

  She popped the container open to show him her offering. The look on his face said it all.

  “That looks like fruit,” he stated.

  Oh, it was.

  She was buried in case—not batshit insane. She wasn’t filling his body with sugar and carbs.

  Yeah, no.

  “Close your eyes and pretend. I’m willing to bet it tastes the same.”

  He laughed.

  Chris called bullshit on that, and she knew it without him even having to say it.

  “Thank you, honey.”

  She placed it on the table and headed toward the body—ready to do the dance. They’d done this before, so he shouldn’t be surprised at her tactics.

  At all.

  “Well, he looks worse with his guts all over the place. Who would have thought pulverized face could get even grosser?”

  Certainly not her.

  That was for damn sure.

  “Doctor Duncan has yet to refine her style,” he said, making an excuse for her less than tidy skills. “Although, she’s excellent at finding things.”

  “Well, then let’s take the good doctor for a spin, shall we?” she asked.

  Chris had warned his new backup ME that the first few weeks working with Elizabeth would be the hardest. Hopefully, she kept that in mind.

  Now it was going to be about seeing if the woman was ready for quite possibly the hardest damn job she’d ever do in her life. Honestly, he hoped that Dalia could handle it. She had been the best qualified out of everyone he’d interviewed. Plus, she was laid-back enough to handle it.

  You had to be.

  Elizabeth drove her team like she stole it—straight down a bumpy road and right off a cliff.

  It was do or die.

  This would be her chance to impress her or piss her off. Chris couldn’t help her. So, he pulled off his gloves, washed his hands, and hopped onto a counter to make nice with his faux chocolate cake.

  Inside the lid, which had been hidden before, he saw it. She’d drawn a heart and wrote ‘I love you’.

  His heart skipped.

  Yeah, he loved her too.

  “Be gentle,” he stated. “She’s not up to Elizabeth speed quite yet.”

  EVERYONE laughed, but the new doctor.

  NO ONE was ever up to Elizabeth speed and most of them had worked there for years. The only people who had ever gotten to that point were Chris, Christina, and Tony.

  “TOD?” Elizabeth asked, sipping some coffee she absconded from Chris’s morgue pot. She was glad they were back on the coffee.

  It had been a bitch giving it up.

  And made her cranky.

  “Around ten Sunday night,” she stated. “BUT that could be off.”

  “Explain,” she said, giving the woman the benefit of the doubt.

  “Well, they moved the body. They could have refrigerated him or put him somewhere warm. If they did, that’s going to greatly alter my findings.”

  She was good with that.

  Elizabeth knew that they had found him in the hotel room before midnight and that he’d gone up around ten. That was a two-hour window. While she liked more specifics, she didn’t get to see where he died or where he’d been housed.

  Doctor Duncan wa
s right.

  That would alter it.

  This might be all she could get, and Elizabeth would have to deal with it.

  “COD?” she inquired, hitting up all of the major questions she asked when she was working a case.

  They started easy and eventually got much harder. The whole time, Chris was sitting there in his scrubs, watching her. Yeah, she knew that look.

  He was the mother hen while training someone. She was the fox waiting to get her meal.

  “Well, his face is missing.”

  Everyone looked up.

  “Oh, we have a sarcastic one,” Christina said. “This should be fast and bloody.”

  Chris watched her work. He’d seen this go down a few times. He wasn’t the ONLY ME she’d worked with. Elizabeth didn’t like sarcasm unless she was the one giving it out. Well, that wasn’t true. She loved it. She loved the irony of it. It was just not good when she was asking questions about a body.

  With her, timing was key.

  He opened his mouth, and she pointed.

  “Sink or swim, Christopher.”

  He got it.

  Dalia had waded into the deep end, and there was a very dangerous shark there.

  “So, we’ll play this your way, Doctor. He has no face. So, the face fairy came and took it back. Is that your final answer?”

  “Well, no,” she stated. “I meant…”

  “Then he misplaced it while he was getting ready to jump someone.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “Oh, he didn’t pay his bill, and his face was repo’d by the face police.”

  She was flustered.

  Everyone watched.

  There were beads of sweat on her upper lip, and she wiped them away with her sleeve.

  “Doctor Leonard, do the job,” Elizabeth stated, done with all of this.

  He put the fruit down, hopped off of the counter, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

  At the same time, Harmony and Max headed in, and they were just in time for the Elizabeth show.

  “Give us a moment. I’m de-sarcasming the newbie. It should only take a few seconds.”

  Oh, boy.

  They kept quiet. Elizabeth was about to have newbie for lunch.

  “Christopher?”

  “COD is blunt force trauma to the face and upper torso. He was struck approximately twenty times, and it ended up cracking his skull and led to massive cranial bleeding. I’m calling TOD as ten at night, and COD as that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What was the weapon?” she asked, as the new ME backed up and Chris dug into the boss and employee show. He held a ruler by the dead man’s head.

  “Well, I didn’t see the crime scene, but I’m going to say something cylindrical and long. Not as long as a bat, but close. There are no shards of wood embedded in the wounds, so that’s out. Since it’s not wood splinters, I say go with metal.”

  Good to know.

  Max cleared his throat.

  “Clyde Adkins saw the scene. He told us there was a lamp beside the body.”

  Before he could give anything else away, she wanted Chris to show the newbie what would be expected of her if she were to stay on that team.

  Chris needed backup, and she would have to be just as good as him, and all of the while on the fly. She didn’t have fifteen years to break in a new ME. She was getting old.

  As was the woman’s ill-timed sarcasm.

  “What else can you tell me, Doctor Leonard, that will be pertinent to the case?”

  Chris continued on.

  “He had something over his head at the time. Look at the markings on the flesh. There’s a pattern. I’m going to say he had material over him.”

  He’d called it earlier when he first saw the body, but now, under the magnifier, he could really see it.

  “Like?” she asked.

  “A blanket, pillowcase, or jacket. Whoever did this covered him as they beat the stuffing out of him.”

  She glanced over at her newbie investigator.

  “Max, is that true?” she asked, figuring that the agent had described the scene.

  “It is. Do you want to know what it was?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a pillowcase.”

  “How did he know that?” Dalia asked—meaning Chris. “We are supposed to work on pure fact, and that’s…”

  “Guessing?” she asked. “I doubt it. I’ve ridden this ride with Chris for over fifteen years. He doesn’t guess, do you?” she asked.

  He pulled a long white fiber out of the pulverized flesh and held it up for everyone to see.

  “It looks like cotton,” he said, passing it off to Christina. She immediately put it under a microscope and checked it for him. Then, the look on her face said it all.

  Chris was going to be right.

  “It has the composition of a cotton thread. I’ll know definitively by tonight, but I’m willing to say that he’s likely right.”

  “Thank you,” she stated. “Anything else, Christopher?” she asked.

  “He has a few broken ribs. The first seven sets of ribs, called the true ribs, have fractures.”

  “How could that happen?” she asked.

  “I would venture to say he was on his back, and someone stomped on his torso, pressing his ribs into the ground. They’re broken on the sides. They require extreme pressure to break them.”

  “Like a body?”

  “Yes. Someone did it.”

  Dalia shook her head.

  “That’s something an anthropologist would have to determine. Not me.”

  “Oh, well, I have bad news for you, Doctor Duncan. Do you see an anthropologist in the room? We’re down ours. He’s working another case with the rest of our team. In his absence, guess who helps me with that?”

  She stared at her.

  “Christopher does. Why? We’ve all had to pick up a few things along the way. While I don’t expect you to do more than your job, out of the gate, I do expect you to try to learn. We are a teaching unit. Doctor Leonard wrote the manuals you’ll use. Doctor Leonard wrote the procedures. He’s the gold standard. If you get to half of his skill, I’ll be happy.”

  She moved closer.

  “Sarcasm, while appreciated, is NOT welcome during an autopsy when I need information. Learn it. I have a very short fuse for people who can’t keep up. Everyone in this room is the best. I don’t work with hacks.”

  The woman said nothing.

  “Now, finish up. Team, into the office. I want an update. Christopher, join us. We may need your professional advice. Christina, if you have trace, get ready with it.”

  She nodded and pointed at her team.

  “Double time. You heard the boss lady. Get it done ASAP!”

  They all worked.

  Chris pulled off his gloves and washed his hands again. He grabbed his cane and takeout container. When he got into the morgue office, he sat beside Elizabeth.

  “You took it easy on her,” Chris stated. “She didn’t cry like the others have before.”

  She laughed.

  “I like her. She reminds me of a little of you, and a little of Tony when you both started. She’s got the brains, but will she have the drive? That’s what I need to see.”

  He got it.

  “She does kind of remind me of Tony. If she pulls out bugs…?”

  She snorted.

  “I’ll fire her ass so fast that her head will spin. No one is allowed to munch on beetles in that room but Tony. He’s too old for me to break him of it. I should have shut that down years ago.”

  Chris agreed there.

  Once everyone was in the room, Elizabeth got down to business.

  “Okay, we are still missing Curly and Larry, so I’ll call them. They’ll give us what they have over the phone. I have to meet with Ethan in twenty minutes for a profile.”

  She motioned to Callen, and he pulled out his phone to dial Alex.

  “Yo, I know why she’s having you call. We’re
on our way in.”

  “We’re all here for an update. I need to do this all at once,” she stated.

  “I have you on speaker, so feel free to start. We can do it over the phone.”

  “What did you find?” she asked Max and Harmony.

  Harmony jumped in, both feet, and got ready to share what they’d found out. In the back of her mind, she was trying to figure out what to do about her situation.

  Max wasn’t saying anything, but she didn’t know how long that was going to last.

  “We have good news and bad news.”

  She hated this game, but she’d play along. Harmony wasn’t an agent. She had to give her some leeway. Had Max said it, she’d be riding his ass too.

  It would be newbie-neutering day at the office.

  “Okay, give me the good news. I like a happy moment right before being kicked in the balls by reality.”

  Well, ask and she shall receive.

  “He had a penchant for hookers. Clyde Adkins gave us two names. He was the happy hooker deliverer. That part of what we’ve heard is true.”

  Well, that was good news. At least there was a direction to take this whole thing in, so that made her happy.

  Names were a plus.

  This was good news.

  “And they are?”

  “We have a Ginger Snap, and a Black Magica,” Max offered, reading the names from the paper.

  “Don’t go there, Alex,” Elizabeth warned before the man could say anything over the phone.

  “You are no fun. You can tell you’re a mother. You can’t even see me, and you knew.”

  She was aware.

  “I have eyes in the back of my damn head. I know what you are capable of, and you’re predictable—even after all of these years.”

  She pointed at her husband.

  “Can you run those two street names? I want to figure out who they are, so we can add them to the interviews.”

  “Do you think a hooker got into the hotel and killed him?” Harmony asked.

  “I don’t have a clue yet. We’re on day one of the suspects. I do want to talk to them to ask three very important questions.”

  “And they are?” she asked, trying to learn.

  “Did the president mention anyone who might want to beat his face in with a lamp, was one of them the person who he was meeting Sunday night, and why the hell they’d let that asshole touch them with his dick? Surely, there is NOT enough money in the world.”