Dr. Victor Corvo did not hurry.
In legal medicine, haste was the hallmark of an amateur. Whether facing an enraged prosecutor, an armed contractor, or a ten-foot automaton with a rotary drill, the protocol never changed. You produced the documentation, stated the statutory authority, and let the bureaucracy swallow itself whole.
Corvo reached into his black leather Gladstone bag, his long fingers moving with surgical calm.
He bypassed the curved scalpel handles, the bone chisels, and the amber bottles of formaldehyde, settling on a stiff sheaf of heavy cardstock in the side sleeve. He drew out a single rectangular tag, nine inches by four, printed in vivid canary yellow with bold diagonal hazard chevrons along the borders.
Form Morgue-Zero-Nine.
“A magnificent document, Mr. Vance,” Corvo said, his velvet baritone unruffled by the howling salt wind. “Issued under the direct authority of the New Marrow Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
In my thirty years of clinical practice, I have watched this single slip of paper bring three municipal highway contractors to tears and halt the construction of two downtown shopping malls. I believe it will suffice for an offshore mud foreman.”
The Mud-Boss’s three-cone tungsten drill whined three feet from Corvo’s chest, throwing cold sparks against the fabric of his dark wool coat.
