David Chan was very curious about what might be up at the morgue. So much so that he used his light to blaze through traffic out to Mapunapuna. You were instructed never to use it just to use it, but in his mind, Chan saw this as an emergency.
When he arrived, he could see his hunch had been correct. A half-dozen police cruisers were on site, and there was an ambulance. This wouldn’t be all that odd, except that this one’s lights were flashing, a sure sign that it was picking someone up, not dropping a body off.
“What’s up, boss?” Chan said, approaching the captain.
“Well,” said Kauhane, “this isn’t actually why I called you. It’s Hank Lee.”
“Hank? What?”
“He’s been shot.”
“Oh my God.” Chan ran inside. Two medics were working on Lee. Chan breathed a partial sigh of relief for the coroner’s still being alive. But the possibility of losing his longtime friend crushed him.
“Charlie,” Chan said to one of the medics. “How is he?”
“It’s touch and go, David. We brought him back, but we’ve got to stabilize him and get him to Queen’s ASAP.”
“Let’s try it now,” said the Kama, the other medic.
The two men lifted Hank Lee onto a gurney and rushed him out the door. Kauhane had come to Chan’s side.
“Del,” said Chan, “If this wasn’t what you called me about, what was the strange thing you mentioned?”
“Well, Hank called me and said that a body had just come in. He said I’d have to see it for myself, that it was quote unbelievable unquote.”
“That’s it,” said Chan. “An unbelievable body? That’s all he’d tell you?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“I wonder if it had anything to do with Sean Daniel?” said Chan.
Kauhane shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, let’s see who’s here. Maybe we can figure it out for ourselves.”
“The most recent body’d be on one of the tables, right?” said Chan.
There were three tables and two bodies.
“Probably,” said Kathy Sakaguchi, coming through the entrance. Brushing away tears, she asked, “What are you looking for?”
Kauhane said, “We don’t know, actually. Hank had called me, said a body had come in that was strange in some way, that I wouldn’t believe what he saw and had to come see it for myself.”
“Huh,” she said. “Whatever that meant, maybe it was strange enough for some jerk to shoot him.”
She walked to the first table. The body was a male in his late teens or early twenties. “He’s uncovered,” she said. “Hank might have been getting ready to work on him. After examining the body from head to foot, she said, “Nothing strange about this one that I can tell.”
The second body was covered with a sheet. She pulled it off, revealing the body of a middle-aged woman. Again she examined it from top to bottom.
“I don’t see anything odd about this one either,” she said.
“Let’s check the refrigerator,” said Chan.
“Okay, but I don’t see any cards on the doors. I don’t think there are any bodies in there right now.”
The three went to the bank of refrigeration units and began rolling them open. Sure enough, the two bodies on the table were the only ones in the morgue.
“And you’re sure there’s nothing strange about these two,” said Kauhane.
“Pretty sure,” she said. “Hank hasn’t begun autopsies on either of them, so I don’t think he was saying there was something inside the bodies. I don’t know. Do you see anything odd about them that I might be missing?”
Chan and Kauhane both looked over the bodies carefully. They saw nothing that set off any bells.
“How about this,” said Chan. “This third table, there’s no body. What if whoever came in here and shot Hank wanted that one? What if they took the body that was on this third table?”
Lanning Lee 