The medical examiner was a friendly guy with curly black hair and glasses. We met him in his office and Nazari introduced him as Dr. Amin. The two of them were chummy, kidding each other right off the bat. From their banter I deduced that they’d known each other for a while, like a childhood thing. Amin was a couple years older. After the jokes died down, Dr Amin said, “I’m guessing you two are here regarding the dead asylum seeker, the one you called me about.”

Nazari coughed. “Right. Can we see the body?”

Dr Amin looked at me, then back at Nazari, peering over round John Lennon glasses. “Really?”

She kept up the confident bluff. “Yes. Really.”

He shrugged. “Ok then, follow me. There isn’t a hell of a lot to see.”

Neither one of us commented. Amin led us down a corridor, past the receptionist, down a stairwell and into the basement. The temperature dropped several degrees. He saw that we were shivering, “Yeah. Cold down here. Should have called ahead, I would have told you to bring a coat.”

The morgue was colder yet. It was a large room with an L-shaped stainless steel work area in the middle of it. The work surface looked like a restaurant kitchen counter and sink, except it was made for a different purpose. One side of the L was a flat, rectangular steel plane where the corpse went. The other surface was the same size, except it was divided into a deeper section, and a shallow shelf. I guessed that this was where they placed organs and whatever else they found in the corpses. Two walls were taken up by a desk, the third wall had two square refrigerator doors built in to it.

Dr. Amin wheeled a gurney over to one of the square refrigerator doors. “You sure you want to see this?”

Nazari nodded. Amin opened the door, which made a sucking sound as the seals released. The corpse was in a translucent gray bag made of an expensive-looking polymer. The body was on a shelf that slid out on well-greased bearings to the gurney. Dr Amin rolled the gurney over to us, then went back to close the refrigerator door. I looked at Nazari meaningfully, she looked back at me. Amin saw the look. He wasn’t smiling. He said, “What is it?”

Nazari said, “Maybe you and Keeler should step out for a minute and grab a cup of coffee.”

Dr Amin’s face aged a couple of years. “How’s that?”

She didn’t say anything, she just looked at him, like staring him down. Whatever the relationship was between these two, it ran deep. I looked at the floor. I studied the tiles and the way they were put together. Meanwhile, I figured there were significant looks and maybe eyebrows raised. Maybe words were mouthed, I wouldn’t know. It wasn’t my business. There was no sound.