physician encounters a condition of full and irreversible cardiac arrest coupled with brain death. The pupils of Dr. Leben's eyes wouldn't dilate in bright light. And no respiration. With all due respect, Mrs. Leben, your husband was as dead as any man I've ever seen, and I will stake my reputation on that.”
Rachael had no doubt that Eric had been dead. She had seen his sightless, unblinking eyes as he lay on the blood-spattered pavement. She had seen, too well, the deep concavity running from behind his ear all the way to the curve of his brow: the crushed and splintered bone. However, she was thankful that Benny had unwittingly confused things and had given the detectives yet another false trail to pursue.
She said, “I'm sure he was dead. I've no doubt of it. I saw him at the scene of the accident, and I know there could have been no mistaken diagnosis.”
Kordell and Tescanet looked immeasurably relieved.
With a shrug, Verdad said, “Then we discard the hypothesis.”
But Rachael knew that, once the possibility of mis-diagnosis had been planted in the cops' minds, they would expend time and energy in the exploration of it, which was all that mattered. Delay. That was the name of the game. Delay, stall, confuse the issue. She needed time to confirm her own worst suspicions, time to decide what must be done to protect herself from various sources of danger.
Lieutenant Verdad led Rachael past the three draped bodies and stopped with her at an empty gurney that was bedecked with rumpled shrouds. On it lay a thick paper tag trailing two strands of plastic-coated wire. The tag was crumpled.
“That's all we've got to go on, I'm afraid. The cart that the corpse once occupied and the ID tag that was once tied to its foot.” Only inches from Rachael, the detective looked hard at her, his intense dark eyes as flat and unreadable as his face. “Now, why do you suppose a body snatcher, whatever his motivation, would take the time to untie the tag from the dead man's toe?”
“I don't have the slightest idea,” she said.
“The thief would be worried about getting caught. He'd be in a hurry. Untying the tag would take precious seconds.”
“It's crazy,” she said shakily.
“Yes, crazy,” Verdad said.
“But then the whole thing's crazy.”
“Yes.”
She stared down at the wrinkled and vaguely stained shroud, thinking of how it had wrapped her husband's cold and naked cadaver, and she shuddered uncontrollably.
“Enough of this,” Benny said, putting his arm around her for warmth and support. “I'm getting you the hell out of this place.”
Everett Kordell and Ronald Tescanet accompanied Rachael and Benny to the elevator in the parking garage, continuing to make a case for the morgue's and the city's complete lack of culpability in the body's disappearance. They were not convinced by her repeated assurances that she did not intend to sue anyone. There were so many things for her to think and worry about that she had neither the energy nor the inclination to persuade them that her intentions were benign. She just wanted to be rid of them so she could get on with the urgent tasks that awaited her.
When the elevator doors closed, finally separating her and Benny from the lean pathologist and the corpulent attorney, Benny said, “If it was me, I think I
“Lawsuits, countersuits, depositions, legal strategy meetings, courtrooms — boring, boring, boring,” Rachael said. She opened her purse as the elevator rose.
“Verdad is a cool son of a bitch, isn't he?” Benny said.
“Just doing his job, I guess.” Rachael took the thirty-two pistol out of her purse.
Benny, watching the light move on the board of numbers above the lift's doors, did not immediately see the gun. “Yeah, well, he could do his job with a little more compassion and a little less machinelike efficiency.”
They had risen one and a half floors from the basement. On the indicator panel, the 2 was about to light. Her Mercedes was one level farther up.
Benny had wanted to bring his car, but Rachael had insisted on driving her own. As long as she was behind the wheel, her hands were occupied and her attention was partly on the road, so she couldn't become morbidly preoccupied with the frightening situation in which she found herself. If she had nothing to do but brood about recent developments, she would very likely lose the tenuous self-control she now possessed. She had to remain busy in order to hold terror at arm's length and stave off panic.
They reached the second floor and kept going up.
She said, “Benny, step away from the door.”
“Huh?” He looked down from the lightboard, blinked in surprise when he saw the pistol. “Hey, where the hell did you get that?”
“Brought it from home.”
“Why?”
“Please step back. Quickly now, Benny,” she said shakily, aiming at the doors.
Still blinking, confused, he got out of the way. “What's going on? You're not going to shoot anybody.”
Her thunderous heartbeat was so loud that it muffled his voice and made it sound as if he were speaking to her from a distance.
They arrived at the third floor.
The indicator board went
“Rachael, answer me. What is this?”
She did not respond. She had gotten the gun after leaving Eric. A woman alone ought to have a gun… especially after walking out on a man like him. As the doors rolled open, she tried to remember what her pistol instructor had said: Don't jerk the trigger; squeeze it slowly, or you'll pull the muzzle off target and miss.
But no one was waiting for them, at least not in front of the elevator. The gray concrete floor, walls, pillars, and ceiling looked like those in the basement from which they'd begun their ascent. The silence was the same, too: sepulchral and somehow threatening. The air was less dank and far warmer than it had been three levels below, though it was every bit as still. A few of the ceiling lights were burned out or broken, so a greater number of shadows populated the huge room than had darkened the basement, and they seemed deeper as well, better suited for the complete concealment of an attacker, though perhaps her imagination painted them blacker than they really were.
Following her out of the elevator, Benny said, “Rachael, who are you afraid of?”
“Later. Right now let's just get the hell out of here.”
“But—”
“Later.”
Their footsteps echoed and reechoed hollowly off the concrete, and she felt as if they were walking not through an ordinary parking garage in Santa Ana but through the chambers of an alien temple, under the eye of an unimaginably strange deity.
At that late hour, her red 560 SL was one of only three cars parked on the entire floor. It stood alone, gleaming, a hundred feet from the elevator. She walked directly toward it, circled it warily. No one crouched on the far side. Through the windows, she could see that no one was inside, either. She opened the door, got in quickly. As soon as Benny climbed in and closed his door, she hit the master lock switch, started the engine, threw the car in gear, popped the emergency brake, and drove too fast toward the exit ramp.
As she drove, she engaged the safeties on her pistol and, with one hand, returned it to her purse.
When they reached the street, Benny said, “Okay, now tell me what this cloak-and-dagger stuff is all about.”
She hesitated, wishing she had not brought him this far into it. She should have come to the morgue alone. She'd been weak, needed to lean on him, but now if she didn't break her dependency on him, if she drew him further into it, she would without doubt be putting his life in jeopardy. She had no right to endanger him.
“Rachael?”
She stopped at a red traffic light at the intersection of Main Street and Fourth, where a hot summer wind
