THE OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER-the city's principal morgue-is at 520 First Avenue. After getting out of his car, Chief Driscoll hesitates, unwilling to face what he knows is ahead of him. He glances at his driver, at his car with its bristling aerials, at traffic passing in the street. Finally he goes into the building.The waiting room is distinguished from other waiting rooms he knows, his dentist's for instance, principally by the boxes of Kleenex, their tongues sticking out, that stand on all the end tables, the coffee tables too. There are people on one of the sofas even now, both sniffling, an old woman and a younger one, perhaps her daughter. He flashes his shield at the receptionist, whom he does not know, goes past the snifflers and through the door at the end of the room.Downstairs is the business level of this place. He knows where he is going. He does not need a guide. His shoes ring cheerfully on the steps, and the sound seems to him obscene. To his left now is a wall of stainless steel doors to the refrigerated lockers, 126 doors, someone told him once. It takes no great imagination to visualize what lies behind them: nudes on trays with tags on their toes. Men, women, children, white, black, brown-former people of all ages and kinds, none of them personal to him. Against the opposite wall rise stacks of the cheap wooden coffins most of them will eventually be nailed into.He tries to get his thoughts off himself, off his grief, off what he is here for. This place is like a store, he tells himself. The lockers contain the inventory, so to speak. The coffins are the eventual packaging. Above the lockers, as if attesting to the freshness of the goods, a digital thermometer monitors the refrigeration inside, its figures flickering between 33 and 35 degrees. The corpses are kept just above freezing. When their turn comes in the autopsy room no one wants them to blunt any knives.Chief Driscoll is 53 years old, and if he were in uniform there would be three stars on his shoulders. In a 30,000-man department only one cop outranks him, plus the commissioner and his deputies, all of whom are civilians. Driscoll is stocky, baldish, heavier than he once was. He likes to smoke cigars. By the end of the day his clothes tend to smell of them. If a man's career is like a railroad line, then this morgue, for him, has been a regular stop for 30 years. He witnessed his first autopsy when still a patrolman. He has witnessed dozens, but the one coming up he never wanted to see.He goes through the door into the autopsy lab. White tile walls, and a row of eight stainless steel dissection tables with naked stiffs stretched out on most of them, either waiting their turn or being actively worked on by men in white coats and rubber aprons.The table he wants is the third one along. Two pathologists, one of whom he has met before, watch him approach."Gabe," says the man he knows, offering his hand, "we've been waiting for you, as your sec Excerpted from The Enemy of God by Robert Daley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
