Close to the Bone (27 page)

‘Bet that sucked.’

‘It did. I need to look at one of the old daybooks, okay?’

They cocked their heads at her in unison, but only for a moment before waving her toward the shelves and returning to their pad thai. The deskmen’s hub formed the pivot on which the rest of the building turned, and they saw not only every oddity of the dead but also most of those of the living as well. They fielded calls from relatives, agencies and the press, removed personal effects from victims ranging from sex toys of outstanding depravity to bloodstained photos of children, and kept track of office gossip with a bookie’s precision. Someone browsing through the ledgers of the dead hardly merited a glance … in any week except this one, perhaps.

‘What you looking for?’ the other asked her.

‘I’m not sure yet.’ The tall red daybooks, similar to the ones they had used in Trace Evidence before the conversion to digital, were stacked in order on the second-highest shelf. Since only one covered an entire year, they had nearly twenty years of history sitting in the deskmen’s office. When that shelf filled to overflowing the excess migrated to the vault. They would not be allowed to take up another shelf, which had all been spoken for by forms and other supplies and a thorough collection of crackers. She found the one for the year of Diana’s death and pulled it out.

Each page had the date embossed at the top, its lines filled with handwritten notations regarding the victims received during the day. They were first assigned a number, handed out in numerical order on a first-come, first-served basis. Then there would be various notations of name, age, gender, home address, apparent cause of death, next of kin and to which funeral home or crematorium the body had gone after its brief stay. Some days allowed for spaces between the entries; some days required writing in the margins in ever-more cramped script.

She turned to the date of Diana’s death, September 23. It had not been particularly busy. Two motor vehicle accidents, both male and single vehicle – Car Vs. Tree and Motorcycle Vs. Pothole. Theresa wondered if a biker could have a more embarrassing epitaph than
done in by frost damage.
The shooting, B/M, 22 yrs, GSW to head. Unwitnessed death at home of a W/M 55 yrs with the common notation Hx of EtOH, which meant that whatever the technical cause of death might be, the victim’s penchant for hooch had finally caught up with him. And Diana, recorded in Darryl Johnson’s dispassionate hand. B/F, Hom-Strangled. There the day had ended, until a homeless man who had fallen down the escalator at Tower City came in bright and early on the twenty-fourth as a W/M, unk, Acc.

Theresa turned back to the previous page. Another young man dead from an auto accident, two middle-aged men with apparent heart issues, another who had overdosed and one who had been excavating a ditch when the soil gave way and a backhoe tumbled into the space on top of him.

She even checked the day before, but the sad history there did not clear up her question.

‘Did Sergeant Shephard leave?’ she asked.

‘Dunno. He had been looking for the ME, last I saw him. How long do you think they’re going to hang around here?’

‘What about the detectives? Are they still in the building?’

‘Nah, they headed out all bustlin’, asking us if Justin – that Allman guy, I mean – ever said anything about prison or about somebody gunnin’ for him or anything like that. He never seemed too worried to me.’

‘I didn’t work with the guy,’ the second deskman said. ‘So I couldn’t tell them nothing.’

The first guy went on: ‘Only thing it seemed like he didn’t like was the bodies. But he got used to them. Where you going?’ he asked Theresa as she put the ledger back and moved to the door.

‘Upstairs,’ Theresa said, but didn’t specify which floor. It might be best not to leave a trail.

THIRTY-ONE

L
eo had managed to keep his position at the Medical Examiner’s office for close to twenty years despite being malicious and cold with a wide streak of lazy. One of the more helpful qualities he maintained in order to accomplish this was a habit of socking away information for future reference like a squirrel with nuts preparing for the inevitable winter. And not just information. Sometimes the habit included other people’s employment applications, the contents of other people’s Rolodexes, and keys to other people’s offices.

Theresa had found them after cleaning out his desk and had tossed them aside, assuming the assortment would belong to their storage areas in the basement or perhaps downtown. But weeks later, when she had time to check, the keys hadn’t fit any of those locks. Another week later when she had been alone on the floor, on a whim she tried them one by one until she discovered that two fit the lab doors of their neighbors across the hall in Toxicology. This had been in violation of county rules, certainly, but more importantly in violation of the director of toxicology, who guarded their findings as if they were secret wedding locations of A-list Hollywood celebrities. The truth might give the man an instant coronary, and who knew what effect it might have on the legal disposition of past cases? Lawyers could, if they chose, make huge haystacks out of such straws. So Theresa had mentally shelved the topic, gotten busy with a rash of homicides, and completely forgotten about it.

Now she retrieved the jangling ring from a cubbyhole in Leo’s old desk and wondered what other forbidden citadels they might open to her.

If she hesitated, she might falter and second-guess herself into oblivion. So she went directly to Stone’s office.

The second floor sat deserted and silent as if hermetically sealed, the only illumination coming from a single set of tubes in one ceiling tile and the red and green glowing ‘ready’ lights on the sea of computer monitors, towers, speakers and battery back-ups along the secretaries’ desks. If only Janice, Queen of the Secretaries, had stayed behind. Theresa would take on Bigfoot if Janice had her back.

The fourth key on the ring fit.

The office of the medical examiner held only the ambient light that passed through its windows: two large ones facing the street and its lamps, and two facing the secretaries’ area, but it was enough for her to move to the shelf against the latter windows and find the jar marked 9/23/04. She held it up to the small amount of light from the street, double-checking the label. A supposedly cancerous uterus from a supposedly autopsied female. But there had been no females autopsied within the few days on and prior to Diana’s death. Only Diana.

None of this made any sense. Yet here she held a specimen with a clearly erroneous date, in the office of the Medical Examiner, where such a thing as an error of any kind should not exist.

‘Put that down,’ Elliott Stone said.

She turned, nearly dropping the heavy glass jar but catching it before it could shatter on the credenza that ran beneath the shelves. Once she had it settled more securely in her hands, she stammered, ‘What is this?’

He didn’t appear to have a weapon, though he wore a light trench coat with big pockets. He also blocked the only door.

‘It’s a uterus with a burst subserosal fibroid. What about it?’ His casual tone seemed annoyed but unworried. ‘How did you get into my office?’

‘Leo had keys. It’s dated the same day as Diana’s death.’

‘Leo had keys to my office?’

‘Apparently, Leo had keys to every office.’

‘
Leo
? That compromises … Do you have any idea what that means?’

‘Yes,’ Theresa said. ‘It means you killed Diana.’

THIRTY-TWO

H
e had always made the most sense from the beginning, she realized. Relatively young, handsome, ambitious, relatively wealthy and on his way to becoming more so. And silver-tongued. Diana would have been doomed to fall from her first day on the job.

She had also been willing to be discreet, keeping knowledge of the affair from even her closest friends. Most of his money stemmed from his wife’s family, and the reigning ME back then had been very old-fashioned about things like sleeping with the staff.

‘What did you tell her?’ Theresa asked. ‘That you needed to keep your wife on the hook until your student loans were paid off? That she would become suicidal if you left? That you had to hang in there until the kids were a little older and better able to handle the upheaval?’

He didn’t move from the doorway. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why did you keep this, all these years? The evidence that could condemn you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ But the conviction in his voice slipped a notch. His gaze darted from her to the jar in her hands, as if part of him feared she might drop it and the other part calculated how best to snatch it from her.

‘Did you volunteer to act as diener for Dr Reese that day? The eager young doctor, ready to pitch in wherever needed. No one wanted to see their co-worker flayed open like that, best to get it done as quickly as possible. But you were both doctors, so you could both do the work, speed things up a little. You could dissect the organs while he worked on the larynx. That, after all, seemed the relevant area.’

‘Can you see Reese delegating work?’

‘Any other day of the decade, no. But as zealous as he could be about work, Hubert Reese was a pompous man looking forward to a ceremony acknowledging his stature at no less than Cleveland’s premier university. And, as I said, you were both doctors.’

‘Let me get this straight. You think I kept Diana Allman’s uterus in a jar for the past ten years. That is beyond bizarre.’

‘It is. Why didn’t you just dissect, discard, then lie about it in your report? Because the autopsy report is false, isn’t it? Diana’s uterus wasn’t “unremarkable”. Diana was pregnant with your child.’

‘You’re crazy,’ he stated without inflection, just a regrettable but unmistakable fact. ‘The trauma of the past two days has unhinged you – it would affect anyone, so don’t feel insulted. I never had an affair with Diana Allman, and I certainly never impregnated her. That specimen is from a different victim.’

‘There were no other females autopsied that day, or the two days prior.’

‘Then it’s mislabeled.’

‘The printer emits the labels automatically. Why didn’t you just slip it into your pocket to get it out of the room? A small thing, it will fit in the palm of your hand, but how to get rid of it? Someone might notice it in the garbage, and you had Causer and Darryl Johnson hanging around just to get a glimpse of Diana Allman naked. So you slipped into the dispensing cubby for a smoke just to give yourself time to think. Is that what gave you the idea? That a cigarette burn would make a convincing fake cancer? Drop it in a jar and fill with formalin, then leave on the counter with the rest of the specimens. You probably didn’t even think about it, just fixed the sticker the way you had a thousand times before. Habits will always out.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing—’

‘You went back to the autopsy with nothing left to fear. But you couldn’t leave the jar there, of course, or the gals in Histology would section it for Reese and he would see the pregnancy. You had to go back later and get it, but that wasn’t difficult. No one ever questioned a doctor popping in and out of autopsy. No one ever questioned a doctor, period.’

‘Did you dream all this up when you were locked in the trunk?’ he asked. ‘Bang your head too hard going over a couple of rumble strips?’

‘I identified the strange animal hair on her clothing.’ Theresa nodded at the furry rug underneath his guest chairs. ‘It’s alpaca.’

‘Except that rug wasn’t in this room ten years ago.’

‘No, but it was in your office, where Dr Banachek is now. I remember the other doctors joking about your decorating tastes.’

‘Diana dropped off reports and death certificates to my office all the time. You could probably find alpaca fur on all the secretaries then. And now. Animal hair gets everywhere – ask anyone who owns a cat.’

This time Theresa nodded at the framed photos. ‘She was going to take up skiing. Was that another plan you made while she was “dropping off reports” on your alpaca rug?’

‘This is the snow belt,’ he said with an impatient sigh. ‘Everyone skis.’

‘You know, you’re right. I could be way off here, but luckily there’s an easy way to resolve this. I’m going to take this specimen down to the autopsy room and do what should have been done ten years ago – examine the interior lining. If I find the beginnings of a child then DNA testing will be completed and the police can formally request a buccal swab from you to do the comparison. If I’m wrong and there’s no child present, then you can fire me, chalk my accusations up to PTSD and stick to the official “James killed Diana” story.’

‘Just put the jar down and go home.’

‘Why? Surely you can’t be that attached to a burst subserosal fibroid?’

‘I use that for teaching, just like the other samples. Now put it down.’

Instead she held it further from her body. ‘Why doesn’t it float, by the way? All your other specimens are floating.’

‘That depends on the exact formulation of the liquid and the density of the specimen. It means nothing.’

True, but it appeared to mean something to him. ‘Where’s the harm? Let me have your dead uterus, and we can disprove the entire idea. You know that if I don’t, questions will linger forever.’

‘A man in my position is no stranger to gossip.’

‘A man in your position can’t afford to take chances. You took one ten years ago. I see you’ve learned to hold your temper since then. An affair can be quietly done away with. A murder is a much riskier proposition.’

‘So now I not only impregnated Diana, I killed her too?’

‘Who else had a motive?’

He took another step forward, closer to her but still blocking the door. It didn’t really matter since she’d never make it around him; the office wasn’t that big. ‘How about her violent, abusive husband who recently murdered three of our staff members and kidnapped a fourth? What did he do to you to create Stockholm Syndrome in only one morning? How did he get you so deep into his corner that you create a fantasy in order to shift blame to the one guy standing between you and your ambition?’