From Potter's Field ks-6 Page 16

  'Dammit!' I exclaimed under my breath. 'Dammit, dammit, dammit!'

  The buzzer sounded in the bay as I wondered what else had been tampered with or taken. I thought about my office upstairs as I went out and pushed a button on the wall. The great door screeched open. Marino, in uniform, stood on its other side with two patrolmen and a detective. They ran past me to the autopsy suite, holsters unsnapped. I followed them and set my revolver on the counter because I did not think I would need it now.

  'What the hell's going on?' Marino asked as he looked blankly at the body in its unzipped pouch.

  The other officers looked on, not seeing anything wrong. Then they looked at me and the revolver I had just set down.

  'Dr. Scarpetta? What seems to be the problem?' asked the detective, whose name I did not know.

  I explained about the removal service while they listened with no expression on their faces.

  'And he came in with what appears to be a note in his pocket. What police investigator would allow that? What police department is working this, for that matter? There's no mention of one,' I said, next pointing out that the head was bagged with a garbage bag tied with a shoelace.

  'What does the note say?' asked the detective, who wore a belted dark coat, cowboy boots, and a gold Rolex that I was certain was counterfeit.

  'I haven't touched it,' I said. 'I thought it wise to wait until you got here.'

  'I think we'd better look,' he said.

  With gloved hands, I slid the envelope out of the pocket, touching as little of the paper as I could. I was startled to see my name and home address neatly written on the front of it in black fountain ink. The letter also was affixed with a stamp. Carrying it to the counter, I carefully slit it open with a scalpel and unfolded a single sheet of stationery that by now was chillingly familiar. The note read:

  HO! HO! HO! CAIN

  'Who's CAIN?' an officer asked as I untied the shoelace and removed the trash bag from the dead man's head.

  'Oh shit,' the detective said, taking a step back.

  'Holy Christ,' Marino exclaimed.

  Sheriff Santa had been shot between the eyes, a nine-millimeter shell stuck in his left ear. The firing pin impression was distinctly Glock. I sat down in a chair and looked around. No one seemed quite sure what to do. This had never happened before. People didn't commit homicides and then deliver their victims to the morgue.

  'The night-shift security guard is upstairs,' I said, trying to catch my breath.

  'He was here when this was delivered?' Marino lit a cigarette, eyes darting.

  'Apparently.'

  'I'm gonna go talk to him,' said Marino, who was in command, for we were in his precinct. He looked at his officers. 'You guys poke around down here and out in the bay. See what you find. Put something out over the air without tipping off the media. Gault's been here. He may still be in the area.' He glanced at his watch, then looked at me. 'What's the guy's name upstairs?'

  'Evans.'

  'You know him?'

  'Vaguely.'

  'Come on,' he said.

  'Is someone going to secure this room?' I looked at the detective and two uniformed men.

  'I will,' one of them said. 'But you might not want to leave your gun sitting there.'

  I returned my revolver to my purse, which I carried with me. Marino stabbed the cigarette in an ash can, and we boarded the elevator across the hall. The instant the doors shut his face turned red. He lost his captain's composure.

  'I'm not believing this!' He looked at me, eyes filled with fury. 'This can't happen, it just can't happen!'

  Doors opened and he angrily strode down the hall on the floor where I had spent so much of my life.

  'He should be in the conference room,' I said.

  We passed my office and I barely glanced inside. I did not have time now to see if Gault had been in there. All he had to do was get on the elevator or climb the stairs, and he could have walked into my office. At three o'clock in the morning, who was going to check?

  Inside the conference room, Evans sat stiffly in a chair about halfway between the head and foot of the table. Around the room many photographs of former chiefs gazed at me as I sat across from this security guard who had just allowed my workplace to be turned into a crime scene. Evans was an older black man who needed his job. He wore a khaki uniform with brown flaps over the pockets and carried a gun that I wondered if he knew how to use.

  'Do you know what's going on?' Marino pulled out a chair and asked him.

  'No, sir. I sure don't.' His eyes were scared.

  'Someone made a delivery they wasn't supposed to make.' Marino got out his cigarettes again. 'It was while you was on.'

  Evans frowned. He looked genuinely clueless. 'You mean a body?'

  'Listen.' I stepped in. 'I know what the SOP is. We all do. You know about the suicide case. We just talked about it on the phone…'

  Evans interrupted, 'Like I said, I let him in.'

  'What time?' Marino asked.

  He looked up at the ceiling. 'I guess it would've been around three in the morning. I was next door at the desk where I always sit and this hearse pulls up.'

  'Pulls up where?' Marino asked.

  'Behind the building.'

  'If it was behind the building, how could you see it? The lobby where you sit's in front of the building,' Marino bluntly said.

  'I didn't see it,' the guard went on. 'But this man walks up and I see him through the glass. I go out to ask what he wants, and he says he has a delivery.'

  'What about paperwork?' I asked. 'He didn't show you anything?'

  'He says the police hadn't finished their report and told him to go on. He says they'll bring it by later.'

  'I see,' I said.

  'He says his hearse is parked out back,' Evans continued. 'He says a wheel on his stretcher's stuck and asks if he can use one of ours.'

  'Did you know him?' I asked, containing my anger.

  He shook his head.

  'Can you describe him?' I then asked.

  Evans thought for a minute. 'To tell you the truth, I didn't look close. But it seems like he was light skinned with white hair.'

  'His hair was white?'

  'Yes, ma'am. I'm sure of that.'

  'He was old?'

  Evans frowned again. 'No, ma'am.'

  'How was he dressed?'

  'Seems like he had on a dark suit and tie. You know, the way most funeral home folks dress.'

  'Fat, thin, tall, short?'

  Thin. Medium height.'

  'Then what happened?' Marino said.

  'Then I told him to pull up to the bay and I'd let him in. I cut through the building like I always do and open the bay door. He come in and there's a stretcher in the hall. So he takes it, gets the body and comes back. He signs him in and all that.' Evans's eyes drifted. 'And he put the body in the fridge and went on.' He wouldn't look at us.

  I took a deep, quiet breath and Marino blew out smoke.

  'Mr. Evans,' I said, 1 just want the truth.'

  He glanced at me.

  'You've got to tell us what happened when you let him in,' I said. That's all I want. Really.'

  Evans looked at me and his eyes got bright. 'Dr. Scarpetta, I don't know what's happened, but I can tell it's bad. Please don't be getting mad at me. I don't like it down there at night. I'd be a liar if I said I did. I try to do a good job.'

  'Just tell the truth.' I measured my words. That's all we want.'

  'I take care of my mama.' He was about to cry. 'I'm all she's got and she's got terrible heart trouble. I been going over there every day and doing her shopping since my wife passed on. I got a daughter raising three young'uns on her own.'

  'Mr. Evans, you are not going to lose your job,' I said, even though he deserved to.

  He briefly met my eyes. Thank you, ma'am. I believe what you're saying. But it's what other people will say that worries me.'

  'Mr. Evans.' I waited until he held my gaze. 'I'm the only other peo
ple you should worry about.'

  He wiped away a tear. 'I'm sorry about whatever it is I done. If I caused somebody to be hurt, I don't know what I'm gonna do.'

  'You didn't cause anything,' Marino said. That son of a bitch with white hair did.'

  Tell us about him,' I said. 'What exactly did he do when you let him in?'

  'He rolled the body in like I said, and left it parked in the hall in front of the refrigerator. I had to unlock it, you know, and I said he could roll the body on in there. Which he did. Then I took him in the morgue office and showed him what he needed to fill out. I told him he needed to put in for his mileage so he could get reimbursed. But he didn't pay no attention to that.'

  'Did you escort him back out?' I asked.

  Evans sighed. 'No, ma'am. I'm not going to lie to you.'

  'What did you do?' Marino asked.

  'I left him down there filling out paperwork. I'd locked the fridge back up and wasn't worried about shutting the bay door after him. He didn't pull into the bay 'cause there's one of your vans in there.'

  I thought for a minute. 'What van?' I asked.

  'That blue one.'

  'There's no van in the bay,' Marino said.

  Evans's face went slack. 'There sure was at three this morning. I saw it sitting right in there when I held open the door so he could roll the body in.'

  'Wait a minute,' I said. 'What was the man with white hair driving?'

  'A hearse.'

  I could tell he did not know that for a fact. 'You saw it,' I said.

  He exhaled in frustration. 'No, I didn't. He said he had one, and I just assumed it was parked in the back lot near the bay door.'

  'So when you pushed the button to open the bay door, you didn't actually wait and watch what drove in.'

  He looked down at the tabletop.

  'Was there a van parked in the bay when you originally went out to push the button on the wall? Before the body was wheeled in?' I asked.

  Evans thought for a minute, the expression on his face getting more miserable. 'Damn,' he said, eyes cast down. 'I don't remember. I didn't look. I just opened the door in the hallway, hit the button on the wall and went back inside. I didn't look.' He paused. 'It may be that nothing was in there then.'

  'So the bay could have been empty at that time.'

  'Yes, ma'am. I guess it could have been.'

  'And when you held the door open a few minutes later so the body could be rolled in, you didn't notice a van in the bay?'

  'That's when I did notice it,' he said. 'I just thought it belonged to your office. It looked like one of your vans. You know, dark blue with no windows except in front.'

  'Let's get back to the man rolling the body inside the refrigerator and your locking up,' Marino said. 'Then what?'

  'I figured he'd leave after he finished his paperwork,' Evans said. 'I went back to the other side of the building.'

  'Before he'd left the morgue.'

  Evans hung his head again.

  'Do you have any idea at all when he finally left?' Marino then asked.

  'No, sir,' the security guard quietly said. 'I guess I can't swear he ever did.'

  Everyone was silent, as if Gault might this minute walk in. Marino pushed his chair back and looked at the empty doorway.

  It was Evans who next spoke. 'If that was his van, I guess he shut the bay door himself. I know it was shut at five because I walked around the building.'

  'Well, it don't exactly require a rocket scientist to do that,' Marino said unkindly. 'You just drive out, go back inside and hit the damn button. Then you walk out through the side door.'

  'The van certainly isn't in there now,' I said. 'Someone drove it out.'

  'Are both vans outside?' Marino asked.

  'They were when I got here,' I said.

  Marino asked Evans, 'If you saw him in a lineup, could you pick him out?'

  He looked up, terrified. 'What did he do?'

  'Could you pick him out?' Marino said again.

  'I think I could. Yes, sir. I sure would try.'

  I got up and quickly walked down the hall. At my office I stopped in the doorway and looked around the same way I had last night when I had walked inside my house. I tried to sense the slightest shift in the environment - a rug disturbed, an object out of place, a lamp on that shouldn't be.

  My desk was neatly stacked with paperwork waiting for my review, and the computer screen on the return told me I had mail waiting. The in basket was full, the out basket empty, and my microscope was shrouded in plastic because when I had last looked at slides I was about to fly to Miami for a week.

  That seemed incredibly long ago, and it shocked me to think Sheriff Santa had been arrested Christmas Eve, and since then the world had changed. Gault had savaged a woman named Jane. He had murdered a young police officer. He had killed Sheriff Santa and broken into my morgue. In four days he had done all that. I moved closer to my desk, scanning, and as I got near my computer terminal I could almost smell a presence, or feel it, like an electrical field.

  I did not have to touch my keyboard to know he had. I watched the mail-waiting message quietly flash green. I hit several keys to go into a menu that would show me my messages. But the menu did not come up, a screen saver did. It was a black background with CAIN in bright red letters that dripped as if they were bleeding. I walked back down the hall.

  'Marino,' I said. 'Please come here.'

  He left Evans and followed me to my office. I pointed to my computer. Marino stared stonily at it. There were wet rings under the arms of his white uniform shirt, and I could smell his sweat. Stiff black leather creaked when he moved. He was constantly rearranging the fully loaded belt beneath his full belly as if everything he'd amounted to in life was in his way.

  'How hard would that be to do?' he asked, mopping his face with a soiled handkerchief.

  'Not hard if you have a program ready to load.'

  'Where the hell did he get the program?'

  'That's what worries me,' I said, thinking of a question we didn't ask.

  We returned to the conference room. Evans was standing, numbly looking at photographs on the wall.

  'Mr. Evans,' I said. 'Did the man from the funeral home speak to you?'

  He turned around, startled. 'No, ma'am. Not much.'

  'Not much?' I puzzled.

  'No, ma'am.'

  'Then how did he convey what he wanted?'

  'He said what he had to say.' He paused. 'He was a real quiet type. He spoke in a real quiet voice.' Evans was rubbing his face. 'The more I think about it, the stranger it is. He was wearing tinted glasses. And to tell you the truth' - he stopped - 'well, I had my impressions.'

  'What impressions?' I asked.

  Evans said, after a pause, 'I thought he might be homosexual.'

  'Marino,' I said. 'Let's take a walk.'

  We escorted Evans out of the building and waited until he'd rounded a corner because I did not want him to see what we did next. Both vans were parked in their usual spaces not far from my Mercedes. Without touching door or glass, I looked through the driver's window of the one nearest the bay and could plainly see the plastic on the steering column was gone, wires exposed.

  'It's been hot-wired,' I said.

  Marino snapped up his portable radio and held it close to his mouth.

  'Unit eight hundred.'

  'Eight hundred,' the dispatcher came back.

  'Ten-five 711.'

  The radio called the detective inside my building whose unit number was 711, and then Marino was saying, 'Ten-twenty-five me out back.'

  'Ten-four.'

  Marino next radioed for a tow truck. The van was to be processed for prints on the door handles. It was to be impounded and carefully processed inside and out after that. Unit 711 had yet to walk out the back door fifteen minutes later.

  'He's dumb as a bag of hammers,' Marino complained, walking around the van, radio in hand. 'Lazy son of a bitch. That's why they called him Detective 711. Becau
se he's so quick. Shit.' He glanced irritably at his watch. 'What'd he do? Get lost in the men's room?'

  I waited on the tarmac, getting unbearably cold, for I had not changed out of my greens and was without a coat. I walked around the van several times, too, desperate to look in the back of it. Five more minutes passed and Marino got the dispatcher to call the other officers inside my building. Their response was immediate.

  'Where's Jakes?' Marino growled at them the instant they came out the door.

  'He said he was going to look around,' one of the officers replied.

  'I raised him twenty damn minutes ago and told him to ten-twenty-five me out here. I thought he was with one of you.'

  'No, sir. Not for the past half hour, at least.'

  Marino again tried 711 on the radio and got no answer. Fear shone in his eyes.

  'Maybe he's in some part of the building where he can't copy,' an officer suggested, looking up at windows. His partner had his hand near his gun and was looking around, too.

  Marino radioed for backups. People had begun pulling into the parking lot and letting themselves into the building. Many of the scientists with their topcoats and briefcases were braced against the raw, cold day and paid no attention to us. After all, police cars and those who drove them were a common sight. Marino tried to raise Detective Jakes on the air. Still he did not answer.

  'Where did you see him last?' Marino asked the officers.

  'He got on the elevator.'

  'Where?'

  'On the second floor.'

  Marino turned to me. 'He couldn't have gone up, could he?'

  'No,' I said. 'The elevator requires a security key for any floor above two.'

  'Did he go down to the morgue again?' Marino was getting increasingly agitated.

  'I went down there a few minutes later and didn't see him,' an officer said.

  'The crematorium,' I suggested. 'He could have gone down to that level.'

  'All right. You check the morgue,' Marino said to the officers. 'And I want you staying together. The doc and I will look around the crematorium.'

  Inside the bay, left of the loading dock, was an old elevator that serviced a lower level where at one time bodies donated to science were embalmed and stored and cremated after medical students were through with them. It was possible Jakes might have gone there to look. I pushed the down button. The elevator slowly rose with much clanking and complaining. I pulled a handle and shoved open heavy, paint-chipped doors. We ducked inside.