Part II, Chapterlets 3.2 & 4

3.2
The coroner slaps the light back on before he is fully into the room. He moves to the side of the body at a trot. He puts gloves on, latex snapping against his wrists. He feels the sides of the head again. There. He had almost made it to the break room before it even registered.
He turns the head slightly, so that the sinistral aspect of the skull is uppermost. He moves his thumbs and forefingers carefully, slowly parting the thick hair covering the scalp. He clucks his tongue. There is a shallow, bloody groove running for six centimeters along the side of the head, terminating behind the left ear. No one saw it, hidden as it was by the hair. The state of the wound makes it seem to have been made at a time consistent with the injuries prior to time of death.
He taps the mike switch with his left foot and makes a note. He tugs off the gloves again, grabs a clipboard, and heads out to the hall way, the hydraulic door hissing as it jerks halfway open. He waits for it to glide the rest of the way before he steps out. Not just two altercations, then, but two attempts on the boy’s life. One simply more successful than the other. He follows the receding reflection of the overhead light along the basement corridor, heading for the elevator. He tongues a cut on the roof of his mouth, trying to remember who works the night desk over in Homicide.

4.
Bones rolled over and spat out the blood that had almost made him throw up in his sleep. He hacked up small bits of bile and spit those out, too. Then, he realized that his arms and legs were burning, little picks and pins of fire from the blood finally reaching his extremities again. He was no longer cold. So, he was inside somewhere.
His face and head were pounding. He reached up behind his left ear, remembering the blue arc of light that had connected him, however briefly, with the superstructure of his life. His hair felt cold and tacky. Blood. He shuddered. Tino—or somebody—had shot him in the head. And fucked it up. Suddenly, the room seemed all angles, high and away somewhere.
He tried to push up to his knees and nearly fell. Realizing he was inside was one thing, but now he forced himself to think about exactly what was going on. He was halfway up on his knees, balanced inelegantly on a desk. He winced as he saw the blood and flecks of filth and dark spittle he had sprayed onto the leather blotter pad in front of him.
He was in an office, dark wood paneling all around. He got to his feet slowly and tried to stretch. The blood moved to his brain in a flood that left him tingling and ragged as the lights dimmed further and came back up. He winced as his head began pounding some more.
Someone was watching him from the leather armchair in the corner of the room. He should have been startled, but he wasn’t. Perhaps it was the shock setting in, but he was more fixated on the eyes that stared out at him from the armchair than frightened of them.
As he refocused, Bones could see that it was in his interest to look only at the eyes. The rest of the face might have made him throw up. He wasn’t normally prone to it, but with his stomach still twisting because of the blood trickling down the back of his throat he didn’t know if he could help himself.
The skin of the watcher’s face was slick and pinkly gleaming on the brows and the bridge of the nose. Bones decided it was a very old man. The face was a mass of half-healed scar tissue. He concentrated on the eyes. The whites were yellow. There seemed to be a trace of an epicanthic fold in the corners. Certainty shot through him, giving him violent shakes that came near to making him black out.
It wasn’t until he managed to open his mouth that he realized his jaw was clenched so tight that he could feel the roots of his loosened teeth moving in little twitching jerks in his gums. Bones forced a quaking breath and licked his lips. He tried to smile. The eyes seemed to return the sentiment.
As his knees gave out and he moved quickly back into sleep, Bones managed to say this by way of greeting: “Fucking Henry Lee.”