He clears his throat. “There has been a break in a case. The morgue director will be quite helpful and will answer any questions you may have. Again, I apologize to leave you to this task, but it must be done before you fly home tomorrow.”

“Of course. Thanks.” I hang up, already reaching toward the brass handles of the door. Interesting that he said a case and not our or your case—bad sign number two, and it’s not even 9:00 a.m.

“Bonjour,” a raspy voice rings out. A middle-aged security guard stands to greet me in the empty lobby. Crumbs tumble down the straining buttons of his shirt; a pastry wrapper peeks from the trash bin beside him. I search among the limited French phrases I know by heart.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” I reply. “Parlez-vous anglais?”

The security guard breaks into a goofy grin. “Leetle bit.”

Another try. “I need . . . directeur de la morgue.”

He straightens, shoulders back, chin up. “Suivez-moi.” With an open palm, he motions for me to pass through the security gate. A large, leafy plant I can’t identify decorates one corner of the lobby, and a wide billboard lists the building’s office numbers beside names. High-vaulted stone ceilings give the appearance of a courthouse or an old manor, but for the antiseptic smell carrying from the air ducts. Uncomfortable memories of being treated for lice by the school nurse pop into my head.

The security guard leads me down a narrow hallway lit by dim panels above. We pass more than one corridor, and I resist imagining where they go, what secrets they hold, what procedures are performed farther in.

We come to a door with a plaque fixed beside it: DIRECTEUR DE MORGUE. My escort opens the door without knocking. An older man, around what would have been my dad’s age—late fifties—sits behind a broad cherrywood desk, papers stacked in bunches before him. Rows of filing cabinets line one side of the office and remind me of a game I played with my dad as a kid—Where does the virus hide? He would label his filing cabinets (hands, feet, nose, eyes, mouth), and I’d have to locate the virus—a travel pack of tissues—before it infected the rest of the body. Angela always wanted to play, too, but my seven-year-old self, jealous of the attention she got showing off what she’d learned in dance class, would never allow it.

The room stretches wide, with no windows to provide a sense of the time of day. The security guard rattles off something in French, then leaves us with a smile.

The director nods to me. “Asseyez-vous.”

I slide onto an aluminum folding chair. Though the temperature crept up an extra five degrees today, a sweater would be handy in the sudden winter of this building.