I stood and returned my chair to the front of Briggs’s desk. “I’m going to The Clinic with or without you, and I’m going to find out what happens to these guys after they leave the hospital.”
“I’m with you,” Briggs said. “Count me in.”
Morelli scraped his chair back. “Me too.”
I went in the Buick with Morelli, and Briggs followed in his car. We turned onto Route 1, drove a couple miles, and turned off into the light industrial complex. We drove to the end of the cul-de-sac and idled in front of The Clinic. Lights shone on the second floor.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the area they’re using for a surgical suite,” I said to Morelli. “The dayroom and the lab are in the back of the building. The operating room and patient rooms are in the front. When I was here last time I parked in the lot next to The Clinic.”
Morelli drove to the Myron Cryo lot and cut the engine. “Do you have a plan?” he asked.
“No. Do you?”
“Nope. I assumed we’d play it by ear. If we attempt entry into The Clinic and an alarm goes off and the police show up, I’m running into the woods and hanging you out to dry.”
“Been there, done that,” I said.
“Thought I should get it out in the open,” Morelli said.
“No problem.”
Fact is, if the police showed up I’d be in the woods before Morelli.
We got out of our cars, stumbled through the patch of woods, and stood looking at the back of The Clinic.
“How do we get in?” Morelli asked.
“Briggs lets us in.”
“Then what?”
I didn’t know
“Suppose we send Briggs in and he snoops around and comes back with a report,” Morelli said.
“I guess I could do that,” Briggs said.
“Shouldn’t he have a wire or something?” I said. “What if he gets caught?”
Morelli looked at me like I was from Mars. “It’s my day off,” he said. “I don’t have any wires in my back pocket.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m just saying.”
“Do you have a gun?” Morelli asked Briggs.
“Yeah, I have a gun,” Briggs said.
“Well, if you get caught you can shoot someone,” Morelli said. “If we hear shooting we’ll call the police.”
“Don’t pay attention to him,” I said to Briggs. “Just be careful and you’ll be fine.”
I went to the drop box and opened it. “Okay,” I said to Morelli, “pick him up and stuff him in.”
Morelli looked at the drop box and looked at Briggs. “You’re not going to tell anyone I did this, right? Blood oath. Sworn to secrecy.”
“Just stuff him in,” I said.
Morelli picked Briggs up and slid him into the drop box. I closed the box, there was some banging, and then there was quiet. I opened the box and looked in. Empty.
“He’s inside,” I said to Morelli.
“This is freaky,” Morelli said. “What do we do now?”
“We wait.”
Morelli wrapped an arm around me. “Want to make out?”
“No! Suppose something goes wrong and the Yeti comes out after us. If we’re making out you might not be able to run.”
“Why not?”
“You know . . .”
“I can run like that,” Morelli said. “I can jump out of second-story windows like that. I had a lot of experience when I was in high school.”
We waited for five minutes but didn’t see any sign of Briggs. Ten minutes. No Briggs.
“I’m worried,” I said to Morelli.
“Do you want me to try to stuff
“Try the door. Maybe he opened it before he wandered away.”
Morelli tried the door and it opened.
“This is illegal entry,” Morelli said.
“Only for you,” I told him. “I have rights.”
I stepped inside the dimly lit garage and let my eyes adjust. There were four cars parked. White panel van, black Escalade, silver Lexus, red Jaguar.
“Something’s going down,” I said to Morelli. “All the players are here. Maybe we should call the police.”
“I’m the police.”
“I was thinking it might be better to have guys in uniform.”
“What are you going to say to the guys in uniform? Are you going to tell them I shoved Briggs into the drop box and he didn’t come out so you want them to bust the door down?”
“Of course not. I’ll think up a fib.”
“I can do better than that.”
He climbed onto the hood of the Escalade and then onto the roof. He reached overhead, punched the smoke detector that was attached to the ceiling, and the fire alarm went off. He jumped down, and we ran out of the garage and hid in the wooded area.
Lights went on all over the building and after a minute the alarm went silent. Ten minutes later the lights began blinking out and there was no sign of police or a fire truck.
“They must not be hooked into an alarm company,” Morelli said.
My cellphone rang. It was Briggs, whispering so low I could barely hear him.
“You gotta get me out of here,” he said. “I saw feet. Big naked feet. I think they might have been dead but I don’t know for sure.”
“Were they attached to something . . . like a body?”
“They were sticking out from under a sheet.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the second floor, under a desk, and there’s a guy sitting in that little lobby area reading a paper. I can’t get past him.”
“Hang tight,” I said. “We’re on it.”
I disconnected and looked at Morelli. “He’s under a desk on the second floor and can’t get past some guy in the lobby.”
“Call him back and tell him to make more of an effort. I’m missing a really good ball game.”
“He said he saw naked feet sticking out from under a sheet. He sounded a little freaked.”
“Were they live naked feet or dead naked feet?”
“He said they might have been dead but he couldn’t be sure.”
“So much for the ball game,” Morelli said.
We went to the door beside the drop box and found it locked.
“They must have noticed the door was unlocked when they went around checking smoke detectors,” Morelli said. “This makes things more complicated.”
We were standing there hoping for a brilliant idea when the garage door rolled up. We flattened ourselves against the building, the door went totally open, and Kruger’s red Jaguar glided out of the garage and down the driveway.
“She’s going to work,” I said.
The door started to roll down, and Morelli and I slipped under it and into the garage before it closed completely. A moment later we saw the light go on over the elevator, indicating it was in motion.
“Someone else is coming down,” Morelli said.
We scrambled into a dark corner behind some packing crates and watched the elevator doors open and the
