The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online Page A

the file identifier on the folder he was carrying. And it’s gone. No sign of it.”
    â€œAeon has our core file?”
    â€œSo it seems,” he said.
    The Navy Yard is a big place, but its coroner’s unit a very small one, with facilities for three cadavers. It’s not refrigerated, because it’s intended only for temporary use, if somebody in the facility dies suddenly. But in 2013 there had been a mass shooting here. Twelve people had died very damn suddenly on that occasion, and as he pulled up to the low gray building where the unit was located, he wondered if it had been put to use then.
    He’d been waved onto the facility when the security police identified his license number. They had instructions not to approach the car and to allow him to park anywhere he wished. Diana’s usual excellent work.
    He turned off the car and opened his jacket in order to expose his pistol. He entered the building. At the end of a narrow corridor was a small sign on a door: CORONER.
    He had been unusually effective when it came to cleaning up criminal elements from Aeon. In fact, he was the only cop who was effective, at least in the field. Diana was good at deskwork and planning, but he was the one who could go out into the forests or down into the caves where Aeon’s biorobots lurked and actually get kills. When the biorobots had been run by a few criminals, he had been a constant target. Now that the criminals were the government of the planet, the danger he was in had escalated even further.
    They were capable of fielding bios that appeared to be human, but when you shot them, the skin sank against the metal frame in such a way that made it immediately apparent that they were anything but. When they were functional, though, they were very, very good.
    So, were such things behind that door waiting for him? He had no reason to think so, but nevertheless his pistol slipped into his right hand. It happened so quickly that it would have seemed to an observer like a magic trick, as if the gun had appeared out of nowhere. As he drew, he simultaneously threw the door open. He determined that the room was empty except for a stainless steel double sink along one wall and an examining table at its center, its surface scuffed dull from many years of use. On the wall opposite the sink were three cabinets held closed by heavy-duty handles.
    He could see by the fact that the handle had no dust on it that they had used the center drawer. He grasped it, felt a click, and stopped. Another pull and the door would swing wide.
    Again, he braced the pistol. Only then did he open the door.
    Darkness within. The odor of raw, dead blood. Total silence, no movement.
    He released the handle, drew a small flashlight out of his pocket, and trained it on the dark.
    What he saw was a corpse, and only that. He pulled at the gurney it was on, and it rattled forward on old rails.
    The body was naked and headless. Tucked in between the legs was a black plastic bag.
    Carefully, he ran a hand over the gray skin of the corpse. He next opened the bag and drew out the head. A human head weighs about three pounds, and he didn’t notice anything unusual about the weight of this one. The young face was intent, the lips parted in a way that suggested pleasure. Pleasure in death? Why? Was it relief, or had whoever killed him somehow deceived him about what was happening?
    He looked a long time into those eyes. Given the weapon used, he probably hadn’t even realized that he was being killed. It had been strung from wall to wall where his throat would connect with it when he sat down and bent to his work. There would have been a sharp stab of pain as it slid through his neck but his head would have fallen off before he could so much as cringe.
    â€œWhy did you have our dossier, Albert Doxy?” he asked, speaking to himself, his soft words sinking into the quiet. “Where did you get it?”
    Over the past year, their