Grave Doubts (7 page)

Morgan looked down into the box. “Her lips are sealed,” he said.

“Death has a way of doing that,” said Shelagh Hubbard.

“No, I mean it. They’re sewn shut.” He pointed to a thread barely visible among creases of wizened flesh.

“Not an uncommon funerary practice,” she said.

“Let me see that,” said the professor, who suddenly appeared beside them. Ignoring prescribed methodology he unceremoniously picked up the woman’s head by the hair and carried it over to an examining table to get a better look under the bright illumination. He plunked it down close to the stump of her companion’s neck. For a moment the professor seemed confused. Then he took the head in his hands and
moved to the other table where he set it in place above the woman’s own body. He’s not immune to the subtle proprieties of death, thought Morgan.

Morgan bent close to observe as the professor used a spatula and a small scalpel to pry between the lips and sever the threads. Her lips were drawn tight against her teeth, but with the thread gone, they shrank back and her mouth opened a little to the light. Morgan leaned closer.

“Oh, my goodness,” he gasped in astonishment.

Professor Birbalsingh fixed his gaze on the woman’s mouth. Without saying a word, he pulled back the leathery flesh of her lips. She had a remarkably good set of teeth. He gently forced them apart. He stood upright but said nothing. He glanced at Morgan in affirmation, then shifted his line of vision and seemed to become absorbed in something outside the windows.

“Well now,” said Morgan. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to terminate your inquiry, professor.”

The graduate student sidled closer to the centre of attention, smiling at some private joke.

“Could I use your cellphone, Joleen?” Morgan asked. “I need to call the coroner’s office, police headquarters, and my partner in crime.”

“What on earth?” said Shelagh Hubbard as if she were about to protest. Professor Birbalsingh remained silent.

“People her age always have cellphones,” Morgan explained.

Ignoring him, Shelagh Hubbard moved forward, and for a moment seemed to lose herself in the revelation of what appeared to be glistening composite fillings in the dead woman’s skull. Slowly, her posture stiffened and, avoiding Morgan’s gaze, she too looked out the windows into the middle distance, perhaps observing the lost possibilities of a research grant and easy tenure.

Morgan felt strangely elated, vindicated somehow, although he had been as beguiled by the simulations of antiquity as the experts. The case was now under his jurisdiction; a case and not just a case study. But he also felt oppressed: what had appeared to be a quirky historical windfall was now a genuine tragedy. This was no longer about death — it was about dying.

“Oh, my God,” said Joleen Chau, standing between the cadavers, “I’ve never seen a real dead person before!”

chapter four
Isabelle Street

Miranda was luxuriating in the warmth of her overheated apartment, lying in on a leisurely Saturday off work. She rolled over languidly, shifting the flannel sheet off and away, and stretched until her muscles tingled through every part of her body. She arched against the bed, feeling wonderfully lithe and sexual, emotionally vague, intellectually drifting, like she had been making love for hours.

Damn it, she thought. I wish I could remember my dreams.

Suddenly, a loud thumping on the door wrenched her out of her reverie. My God, she thought. What’s Morgan doing here at a time like this?

It had to be him. The building superintendent would have knocked deferentially, and the few people she knew in neighbouring apartments would telephone first. He must have slipped past the security door. She looked around for a robe. In movies there is always a dressing gown within hand’s reach of the bed.

The hell with it, she mumbled to herself. I pay the heating bills, I’ll wear what I want. By the time she got to the door, she was having second thoughts. What if it’s Girl Guides selling cookies, or Jehovah’s Witnesses? She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and nothing else. She looked good. If it’s a couple of fresh-faced Mormons, I might let them in.

It was Morgan.

Through the peephole he looked grotesquely distorted. He was leaning so close, all she could see was the smile. His version of the Cheshire Cat; he had done it before, with full explanation. She opened the door. His face become solemn, then shy.

“I love your outfit,” he said.

“Come in, Morgan.”

She turned and walked barefoot into the living room as if she were wearing heels.

“What on earth are you doing here,” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night, my time, and I was having lovely dreams.”

He plunked himself down on the sofa, admiring the full length of her legs before her lower half disappeared behind the kitchen counter. He had kicked off his snow-drenched shoes in the hall but he was still wearing his sheepskin coat.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” he announced.

“It’s not.”

She put on the coffee and came back around the counter, still feeling a little flirtatious, even though it was only Morgan. She walked across to her bedroom door, swaying her hips just enough to set the lower edge of her T-shirt astir. He peered into the fluttering shadows and immediately glanced away.

“Why don’t you take your coat off and get comfortable,” she murmured in a sultry voice as she turned to face him.

“No hurry.” He seemed to be searching for something to say. “I was with you when you bought that T-shirt.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said, giving her his most inscrutable smile. Not out of
Alice in Wonderland
, she thought. It’s his Buddha smile. No, his post-coital Mona Lisa smile. No, his Jesus smile — endearing and infinitely dangerous.

He smiled so seldom, but when he did he had a range she found thrilling.

Still in the doorway, standing in opaque silhouette with the daylight from the bedroom behind her, she asked, “What are you doing here, anyway? It’s too early for a gentleman caller — or too late.”

They both smiled.

“It must be business, except you seem cheerful.”

“Do you want to get dressed?”

“Do I need to?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear.”

She walked through into her bathroom, leaving the doors open.

“Has this got something to do with the boss working last night?”

He followed her as far as the bedroom door; then, leaning against the frame, he admired the play of shadow and light as she attended to her tantalizing ablutions just out of sight.

“I think he’s had a fight with his wife.”

“You mean there’s no city-wide disaster? He’s just hiding out?”

“Yeah.”

“His wife’s a lawyer.”

“Yeah.”

“Lawyers should only marry lawyers, and cops, cops.”

“How do you figure?”

“A functioning lawyer is adversarial —”

“What’s an unfunctioning lawyer?’

“I’ve known a few.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said, remembering one in particular she had dated a couple of years ago. Another lawyer, ineffectual and lethal, occupied a more sinister place in their recent past: he of the Jaguar, of posthumous infamy.

“At least with two lawyers, they understand the rules.”

She turned on the shower.

He raised his voice.

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“What?”

Splattering water drowned out his words, but not hers.

“About the rules,” he shouted.

“Stand where I can hear you, Morgan! The shower’s steamed up — you couldn’t see me for looking.”

He stopped at the bathroom door. She was wrong; she was absorbed in washing and her body was revealed in waves as water sheeted against the glass door. It was full and lean, the body of a mature woman in splendid condition. He remembered her from the night they made love; she had seemed almost girlish then. He backed away and sat down on the chair by her bedroom window.

“Can you hear me?” she shouted. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m here.”

She shut off the water and for a moment there was silence.

“Why do you think lawyers have all the power, Morgan?”

“Because they know the law.”

“Because they know its limitations.”

Morgan thought about that.

“The rest of us live in moral chaos,” she continued. “And we grasp at the law to make sense of it all. Not lawyers. They don’t give a damn about sense and morality. That’s why so many of them are politicians; they want order — they’re
inherently fascist. Think of the utter stupidity of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers in the witness box. There are no ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.”

“Now you’re sounding like me.”

“I could do worse.”

Suddenly she was at the door, wrapped in a towel.

“Get out of here, Morgan. The lady is about to get dressed.”

He regarded her with mild exasperation, got up, and ambled back to the living room.

Cops should marry cops, she had said. Given her splenetic response about lawyers he decided that was not something to pursue.

“Aren’t you curious about why you’re being hauled into action on a day off?” he asked.

“Well, let’s see,” she said. “Since it isn’t a major metropolitan catastrophe, and you seem in a rare good mood, I would say it has something to do with our lovers last night. Am I right?”

He stood in the middle of the living room, still in her sightline, hands in his pockets, with his back to her, slouched in a waiting posture. He still had on his sheepskin coat, although it was unbuttoned and hanging loosely on his shoulders, rather like a cape, she thought. He was lean and muscular, more with the air of a soldier than an athlete: a man comfortable in his body who carried himself with the pride of a combat survivor.

“Am I right?” she repeated.

He shrugged equivocally, knowing she was watching him.

She let her towel drop and stood naked in her bedroom doorway, barely two steps away, amused to think that if he turned around she would be righteously indignant.

“Get dressed,” he said. He knew what she was doing. Senses especially acute in the moment, he had heard the towel slide against skin to the floor.

She suddenly felt vulnerable and foolish. She mimed a posture of exaggerated modesty, stuck out her tongue in Morgan’s direction, and retreated.

Miranda strapped on a shoulder holster over her blouse and tucked her semi-automatic into place. She put on a loose jacket and walked into the living room where her partner was still standing, as if he were holding a pose.

“Okay, Morgan,” she whispered in a burlesque of sensuality. “I’m packin’ heat. Let’s go.”

She kissed him impulsively on the cheek as she walked by.

“I don’t think you’ll be needing that,” he said.

She took off the jacket and holster and put her Glock in her purse.

Miranda sometimes carried her weapon, and Morgan seldom carried his. She liked the feeling it gave her of being a little bit dangerous. He liked the sense of relinquishing power, of playing danger against wit. They had talked about this several times, each accusing the other of subverting gender stereotypes, in deference to Freudian principles they both abhorred.

Miranda was surprised when they walked out of her building to find that Morgan had picked up a car from headquarters. “Okay, Morgan,” she said, “this must be serious. You do not ever take charge of transportation. In our fair division of labour that’s my job. You drive,” she declared, as she slipped into the passenger seat. “And after this, lock the doors when you park. You’d feel like a fool if someone made off with a cop car.”

Driving up Yonge Street, Morgan focused on manoeuvring through runnels of frozen slush. This late in the season, there wasn’t even salt on the roads. The car lurched from rut to rut as he overcorrected, damning the shortfall on the city budget.

He was losing patience, waiting for her to ask again why they were back at work on a day off. She was resisting, certain that he would break by the time they reached Eglinton. One block south, the car caught an edge of ice and swerved. Morgan wrenched it out of the groove, eased it through a long skid, and let it slide to a stop smack against the curb.

“You drive,” he said, and got out of the car. When they had exchanged places, he explained, without being in the least defensive. “You’re better at winter driving than me. You enjoy it. I don’t.”

It was true, she liked to drive, even in bad conditions. He was not a nervous passenger, nor particularly a nervous driver, just not a very good one. Having grown up in a family without a car, he could never relate to men who measured their manhood by their prowess behind the wheel.

“If you do something, anything, just to prove you’re a man,” his father had said, “then you’re not.”

When he was eight years old, his father taught him to box. Not because it’s a manly sport. “Hammering someone into unconsciousness, boy, that’s nothing to be proud of. But the world’s a tough place; you’ve gotta be tough to survive.”

The boxing lesson came after a kid about ten years old had pinned Morgan down and cuffed him on the head until tears filled his eyes. He wasn’t crying. It was an involuntary response. The kid wouldn’t stop, so Morgan flailed wildly and landed a smack straight on the kid’s nose. He broke his nose.

His father had been called in and had to take half a day off work. The boxing lesson was the only repercussion at home or at school.

His father made boxing gloves out of socks, folding one sock across the knuckles between layers over and under it, securing each makeshift affair with duct tape at the wrist.

“Make a fist, not around your thumb. Relax your thumbs,” he said.

He got down on his knees so that he was the same height as his son. “Now let’s see you punch. Punch me, David.”

“I don’t want to,” Morgan said.

“Punch into my hand, hard as you can.”

Morgan did what he was told. His blows met with little resistance as his father’s hand gave way to the force. This wasn’t like the kids fighting at school.

“What do they do?”