"I don't like this part of the job," Investigator Graham Cowley says.

"Ah hello, is this Mrs. Feld? I'm looking for a Mrs. Feld," he says, spelling out the name to woman on the other end of the phone. "I'm calling from the medical examiner's office in San Francisco." Cowley, 54, is one of 12 investigators in San Francisco’s Medical Examiner’s office who is called to a death scene under circumstances that include but are not limited to: violence, homicide, sudden infant death syndrome, gunshots, stabbing, drowning, burns, starvation, suicide, acute alcoholism or drug use, contagious disease and any solitary death. They are usually the first on the scene after police or emergency medical responders.

"I just want to make sure I've got the right ... the number I was given was 804-368 ... the medical ... in San Francisco, and the number I was given was 804 ... oh, you’re his sister."

Part of the job is positively identifying the dead and contacting next of kin. The job is a combination of detective and priest.

"Ok well, my name is Graham Cowley, and I'm calling about John. Has anybody been in contact with you? No. Well, I'm afraid I got some bad news for the family. Well, I'm afraid John passed away."

John Feld had been sitting on the stoop in front of a single room occupancy hotel on Lombard Street when he began to complain he was short of breath. The manager of the hotel called 911 and paramedics arrived soon afterwards. On the way to the hospital, Feld informed them he had been drinking heavily the last few days—two six packs a day—and was struggling with an addiction to heroin and methamphetamine. Originally from Virginia, Feld had a long history of drifting and drug abuse. He died at the hospital.

“Oh my god. Oh my god ...” Feld’s sister cries into the phone.

“Yeah ... Is there anybody there with you?” Cowley asks. “Um ... well, we don’t have all the facts yet, but, well, apparently ...” he says in response to her questions. “First of all, do you have a pen there? Let me give you my name and number.”

The Medical Examiner's (M.E.'s) job is to take possession of the body, take charge of any personal effects related to the inquiry and positively determine cause of death before signing the death certificate.

Feld was identified by the papers in his wallet. Among his personal things, Cowley found a business card for a social worker in Washington D.C. He called her and she gave him Feld’s family contact number in Virginia. Cowley also matched Feld to a mug shot and police records for arrests in San Francisco and Fresno, where he was charged for drug possession and rape.

“She knew his history, at first she said no one by that name lived there. Then when I said medical examiner, she went ‘coroner?’ then she started freaking out,” Cowley says. “So, I’m glad now we got a match on my guy, identified 100 percent and the family notified.”

As soon as Cowley stamps Feld’s file as closed, the phone rings.

“We got another one here, Graham,” Chief Investigator Alan Pringle says, holding up a slip of paper with an address.

Nobody wants to see the medical examiner, Cowley says. Recently, he attended a training seminar for first responders in case of a terrorist attack. He filled out a form where he had to check a box describing his job title.

The jobs listed included nurse, doctor, police and fireman. Cowley had to check the box marked "other."

When a ceremony was held for the victims of the 101 California Street killings, firemen, police and other emergency responders were invited to attend. The M.E.'s office was snubbed.

"People think all we do is pick up dead bodies," he says.

Cowley and his partner Krzysztof Barbrich, 27, get into the medical examiners' van, which can transport four cadavers at one time. They head toward Union Street near Baker, an affluent area of the city. A woman has died during the night at a friend’s house. When they arrive an elderly woman and her daughter open the door.

They lead the investigators up the stairs, past framed black and white pictures of the family throughout the years hanging on the walls, toward the third floor bedroom. Barbrich takes a seat with the older woman in a balcony alcove, looking over the sunny San Francisco Bay with a view of Alcatraz, to ask questions and get the particulars of the discovery. Her daughter takes Cowley into the room with the body.

"This is very hard. My father also died in this house," she says. She takes a brief look at the remains, then leaves the room when it seems she can’t hold the tears back any longer.

As soon as she is out of view, Cowley goes to work. He rips off the bed covers exposing the body and begins to manipulate the limbs while removing jewelry and any other personal items. There is no longer a living being here.

Cowley handles the corpse with the tenderness of a gardener pulling weeds, working quickly to spare anyone the sight. It’s all business.

He rolls her into the white body bag, lifts her gently from the bed and lays her on a white sheet upon the hardwood floor. Then he wraps and ties the sheet at both ends and joins his partner who is wrapping up the paperwork.

“She died with you. It's kind of a nice thing,” Cowley says to them. “This is really the best way to go.”

As they carry the body downstairs, the older woman can’t look and begins to sob. Her daughter hugs her to hide the view, with her back to the investigators, her eyes out on the bay.

Once outside, they load the cargo, jump into the van and are off to the next stop as curious neighbors now on the street watch them drive off.

The last stop is a hotel on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin district. On the fifth floor, they are met by police and the building manager. The body was discovered when the man’s home-care nurse reported not seeing him for a few days. The door is broken in and the corpse found. The smell in the hallway is of rotting flesh. The body has been decomposing for some time. The smell of marijuana smoke is also coming from one of the rooms on the floor.

The small hallway is crowded with police, the M.E. investigators and tenants from the other rooms.

“We thought the smell was coming from the shitter because it’s out of order,” a woman who lives on the floor says. “Jeff, Jeff, come here, you want some reality?” she yells to a friend down the hall as Cowley opens the door and enters the room.

The floor is covered in trash, food scraps, empty cartons and dirty clothes. The body is on the bed upon its belly, the arms crossed under his head as though he were hugging a pillow that is not there. Rats scurry along the walls.

When Cowley opens the top drawer of a small dresser, he finds a nest of gray mice. A closer look at the man’s face shows they have been feeding on him for some time. Half the ear is eaten away and there are bloody holes near his nose and mouth.

Investigators take any kind of identification, valuables or personal effects. The corpse is zipped up into a white body bag and strapped to a gurney. Cowley and Barbrich ride down in the elevator with the building manager. He holds the front door open as they bring out the body. Barbrich is pushing the gurney as though it were a wheelbarrow. It makes a rasping clank as it falls from the entrance of the hotel onto the sidewalk.

“Ugh.” Building Manager Kevin Storr says, diverting his face. “I'll never get used to that sound.”

Overhead, the Blue Angels crack the sky with their engines. The van is loaded.

“Now there was one for you,” he says on the way back.

“Not too bad,” replies Barbrich.

“I don’t know who was the sanest up there, maybe the mice," Cowley says. "Their the only ones who had it
together.”

Barbrich and Cowley head back to the office with the day's dead through the busy streets of downtown San Francisco. The names of the dead were changed or left out in the interest of privacy.