She giggled, her laugh coming through the speaker as static. Kay’s bright, funny, with a real
“What for?”
“I want to talk to Doc Marsha.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Kay was messing with me now. All part of the game.
“C’mon, Kay, you’re not careful here, you’re going to make me think of my ex-wife.”
“Oh, God forbid …” she yelled, laughing as she pushed another button. The door buzzer wailed. I grabbed the handle and pulled. The front door to the morgue is so heavy you’ve got to grasp it with both hands and plant your feet solid or you’ll never make it.
The bunker door swung open, and I stepped into the heavily air-conditioned building. I shivered slightly after being outside in the hot sun. Every time I’ve ever been in this building, it’s as cold as a meat locker. So to speak.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, showing your face around here after all this time.” Kay was teasing me now, or at least I hoped that’s what she was doing. Tough to tell with her.
“I know it’s been a long time, babe. But since I got canned at the paper, I don’t have much chance to get down here.”
She stood up, motioned for me. I stepped over to her desk and leaned in. She gave me a quick hug, a peck on the cheek.
“I saw your name in the paper,” she said. “You okay?”
“Little tired. Little sore. Nothing heavy. I guess you know why I’m here.”
“Yeah, and it’s a good thing Dr. Henry’s up in East Tennessee.”
Dr. Henry Krohlmeyer, all the right credentials including Stanford Medical School, was the head meat cutter, the official city medical examiner. He also probably would’ve thrown me out, given the circumstances. My being here was most improper, and I knew it.
“He’s out of town?” I asked, surprised.
“Seminar. Won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“So you guys haven’t autopsied Fletcher yet?”
“Dr. Marsha did it. Dr. Henry’ll sign off on it when he gets back.”
“You think she’ll talk to me?”
“I’ll check, Harry. Best I can do.”
Kay walked back to Marsha’s office, which was one of two smaller offices occupied by the forensic pathologists. Off to another side was an office shared by the three forensic investigators.
Kay walked back in a moment, a wicked grin on her face. “Yeah, go on back there. But be prepared.”
I had a feeling I knew what she was talking about. Tune was when Marsha and I had done a fair amount of flirting, back before I got my divorce. Still under the delusion that I had a marriage, I backed off. Stupid me …
I smiled at Kay, thanked her, and limped on back.
“You know,” she said behind me, “you need a vacation. You look like hell.”
I turned to her. “People keep telling me that.”
“You should listen.”
Marsha sat behind her cluttered desk. Behind her, on a windowsill beneath another pane of bullet-proof glass, sat a dozen or so tiny pill bottles, each marked with a black felt tip pen, each holding a bullet that had been pulled out of one of her customers. Grim work, I thought, but these people seem to thrive on it. In fact, Marsha’s office was filled with other souvenirs: a human skull, a large specimen bottle with a human fetus preserved in formaldehyde, framed color pictures of gruesome murder scenes.
“Who does your decorating?” I asked. “The Addams Family?”
She smiled at me, revealing a mouth full of perfect white teeth. Marsha Helms was even prettier than I’d remembered; maybe it was because I’d been in the middle of a long, dry spell. Maybe she just was, and it took me this long to notice.
“Hello, Harry.” She stood up, and up, and up, and up. God, she was tall. She stuck out a hand, which I took gratefully and shook gently. “Good to see you, again.”
“Good to see you, Marsh. How’s it going?”
“Busy. Long hot summer. The murder rate’s up fourteen percent this year over last, and we aren’t even through the worst part of the summer yet.”
And now I’d been a party, however inadvertently, to making it a notch worse.
“So I’ve heard.” I sat in a scuffed, city-issue office chair across from her.
“You’re limping,” she said. “What happened?”
“Nothing much. Compound fracture. I just had ’em stuff the bone back in and wrap it.”
“Heard you got bopped on the head. Stitches?”
“Coupla hundred. But it’ll be okay.”
We stared at each other for a moment, a thankfully non-pregnant pause. “Such a tough guy,” she chided. “I guess it comes with being a private … dick.”
“So you heard?”
“Yeah. What happened at the newspaper?” Marsha crossed her legs and leaned back in her office chair. She was wearing a long black skirt that peeked out beneath her white lab coat. Great legs, I thought, distracted for a moment. Sorry, can’t help it.
“I hacked off the wrong people. Attitude problem, I guess.”
“I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did. I heard about you and Lanie, too.”
“Yeah,” I said, uncomfortable. I don’t like reopening old wounds-the new ones are bad enough. What the hell, it’s all in the past, anyway. Letting go of things is tough, but hanging on’s even tougher. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“Pretty rough?”
“In places.”
She looked down at her desk. “You should’ve called me. Somebody to talk to. Shoulder to cry on, maybe.”
I thought for a moment. This was encouraging news, especially for a person in my situation. Wonder if my landlady would mind my having company some evening? I’d never asked her; it simply hadn’t occurred to me.
“Why don’t I do that sometime?”
She looked back at me, smile gone from her face. “But that’s not why you’re here now?”
“No, Marsh. You did Fletcher, right?”
“I was there. I was the one who did the on-scene. You were already gone by then.”
“They took me down to E.R.”
“So what do you want to know?”
“What killed him, Marsh? What killed Conrad Fletcher?”
“You know how much trouble I’d get in for divulging that?”
I leaned forward in the chair, a self-conscious attempt to convey sincerity with body language. I’m never able to pull off that sort of thing, but I keep trying.
“Marsha, I just want to know because, well, I’m involved. It’ll be a matter of public record eventually, anyway. Let me know what I’m up against. Whatever you tell me doesn’t go any further than this office.”
She stood up, thumbed through a stack of file folders, and pulled out one near the top. “C’mon. I’m only doing this because Dr. Henry’s out of the office and Charlie’s out running a D.O.A. car wreck.”
She walked past me quickly, her lab coat brushing against my arm. I followed her out of the office, past Kay Delacorte’s desk, and through the door into the autopsy room. Two tilting tables with bright overhead lights sat shiny, cold, and clean. Off to the left were the tool kits laid out on white towels, the brutal Stryker saw on its side, on a shelf by itself. Marsha’s heels clicked sharply on the tile floor as we walked out of the autopsy room into the receiving room.
“We got him in here just after midnight. I grabbed a couple hours’ sleep, then came in at five to do the autopsy. He’s in the cooler now. The mortician’s supposed to pick him up around two. You ready for this?”
“Who else you got in there?”
