When the District’s one and only public hospital, DC General, closed after two hundred years of community service, it became the temporary headquarters of the Chief Medical Examiner and labs. Deputy Medical Examiner Harriet Zachman greeted them, her hands full of reports she plonked on her desk. The one on the top was a Report of Investigation concerning a thirteen-year-old boy.
Zachman scrunched her nose while glancing at the report as if it were a personal offense. “I’ll be glad when we move into the Consolidated Forensic Lab. Right now, it’s more work we don’t need.”
She led them to the refrigerated body storage rooms. “Guess every step is one in the right direction. Especially after the problems in the ’90s.”
Some of that went all the way back to when Drayco was a grad student. The
