The phone rang.
Ben remembered at once that they had forgotten to put it on the answering machine again when they had finished contacting people with the news of Eric's death and funeral, and in confirmation it rang again, stridently.
“Damn,” Rachael said, pulling back from him.
“I'll get it.”
“Probably another reporter.”
He took the call on the wall phone by the refrigerator, and it was not a reporter. It was Everett Kordell, chief medical examiner for the city of Santa Ana, phoning from the morgue. A serious problem had arisen, and he needed to speak to Mrs. Leben.
“I’m a family friend,” Ben said. “I'm taking all calls for her.”
“But I've got to speak to her personally,” the medical examiner insisted. “It's urgent.
“Surely you can understand that Mrs. Leben has had a difficult day. I'm afraid you'll simply have to deal with me.”
“But she's got to come downtown,” Kordell said plaintively.
“Downtown? You mean to the morgue? Now?”
“Yes. Right away.”
“Why?”
Kordell hesitated. Then, “This is embarrassing and frustrating, and I assure you that it'll all he straightened out sooner or later, probably very soon, but… well, Eric Leben's corpse is missing.”
Certain that he'd misunderstood, Ben said, “Missing?”
“Well… perhaps misplaced,” Everett Kordell said nervously.
“
Ben got a few more details, hung up, and turned to Rachael.
She was hugging herself, as if in the grip of a sudden chill. “The morgue, you said?”
He nodded. “The damn incompetent bureaucrats have apparently lost the body.”
Rachael was very pale, and her eyes had a haunted look. But, curiously, she did not appear to be surprised by the startling news.
Ben had the strange feeling that she had been waiting for this call all evening.
4
DOWN WHERE THEY KEEP THE DEAD
To Rachael, the condition of the medical examiner's office was evidence that Everett Kordell was an obsessive-compulsive personality. No papers, books, or files cluttered his desk. The blotter was new, crisp, unmarked. The pen-and-pencil set, letter opener, letter tray, and silver-framed pictures of his family were precisely arranged. On the shelves behind his desk were two hundred or three hundred books in such pristine condition and so evenly placed that they almost appeared to be part of a painted backdrop. His diplomas and two anatomy charts were hung on the walls with an exactitude that made Rachael wonder if he checked their alignment every morning with ruler and plumb line.
Kordell's preoccupation with neatness and orderliness was also evident in his appearance. He was tall and almost excessively lean, about fifty, with a sharp-featured ascetic face and clear brown eyes. Not a strand of his graying, razor-cut hair was out of place. His long-fingered hands were singularly spare of flesh, almost skeletal. His white shirt looked as if it had been laundered only five minutes ago, and the straight creases in each leg of his dark brown trousers were so sharp they almost glinted in the fluorescent light.
When Rachael and Benny were settled in a pair of dark pine chairs with forest-green leather cushions, Kordell went around the desk to his own chair. “This is most distressing to me, Mrs. Leben — to add this burden to what you've already been through today. It's quite inexcusable. I apologize again and extend my deepest sympathies, though I know nothing I say can make the matter any less disturbing. Are you all right? Can I get you a glass of water or anything?”
“I'm okay,” Rachael said, though she could not remember ever feeling worse.
Benny reached out and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. Sweet, reliable Benny. She was so glad he was with her. At five eleven and a hundred fifty pounds, he was not physically imposing. With brown hair, brown eyes, and a pleasing but ordinary face, he seemed like a man who would vanish in a crowd and be virtually invisible at a party. But when he spoke in that soft voice of his, or moved with his uncanny grace, or just looked hard at you, his sensitivity and intelligence were instantly discernible. In his own quiet way, he had the impact of a lion's roar. Everything would be easier with Benny at her side, but she worried about getting him involved in this.
To the medical examiner, Rachael said, “I just want to understand what's happened.”
But she was afraid that she understood more than Kordell.
“I'll be entirely candid, Mrs. Leben,” Kordell said. “No point in being otherwise.” He sighed and shook his head as if he still had difficulty believing such a screwup had happened. Then he blinked, frowned, and turned to Benny. “You're not Mrs. Leben's attorney, by any chance?”
“Just an old friend,” Benny said.
“Really?”
“I'm here for moral support.”
“Well, I'm hoping we can avoid attorneys,” Kordell said.
“I've absolutely no intention of retaining legal counsel,” Rachael assured him.
The medical examiner nodded glumly, clearly unconvinced of her sincerity. He said, “I'm not ordinarily in the office at this hour.” It was nine-thirty Monday night. “When work unexpectedly backs up and it's necessary to schedule late autopsies, I leave them to one of the assistant medical examiners. The only exceptions are when the deceased is a prominent citizen or the victim of a particularly bizarre and complex homicide. In that case, when there's certain to be a lot of heat involved — the media and politicians, I mean — then I prefer not to put the burden on my subordinates, and if a night autopsy is unavoidable, I stay after hours. Your husband was, of course, a very prominent citizen.”
As he seemed to expect a response, she nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak. Fear had risen and fallen in her ever since she had received the news of the body's disappearance, and at the moment it was at high tide.
“The body was delivered to the morgue and logged in at 12:14 this afternoon,” Kordell continued. “Because we were already behind schedule and because I had a speaking engagement this afternoon, I ordered my assistants to proceed with the cadavers in the order of their log entries, and I arranged to handle your husband's body myself at 6:30 this evening.” He put his fingertips to his temples, massaging lightly and wincing as if merely recounting these events had given him an excruciating headache. “At that time, when I'd prepared the autopsy chamber, I sent an assistant to bring Dr. Leben's body from the morgue… but the cadaver couldn't be found.”
“Misplaced?” Benny asked.
“That's rarely happened during my tenure in this office,” Kordell said with a brief flash of pride. “And on those few occasions when a cadaver has been misplaced — sent to a wrong autopsy table, stored in the wrong drawer, or left on a gurney with an improper ID tag — we've always located it within five minutes.”
“But tonight you couldn't find it,” Benny said.
“We looked for nearly an hour. Everywhere. Everywhere,” Kordell said with evident distress. “It makes no sense. No sense whatsoever. Given our procedures, it's an impossibility.”
Rachael realized that she was clutching the purse in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were sharp and white. She tried to relax her hands, folded them. Afraid that either Kordell or Benny would suddenly read a fragment of the monstrous truth in her unguarded eyes, she closed them and lowered her head, hoping the men would think she was simply reacting to the dreadful circumstances that had brought them here.
From within her private darkness, Rachael heard Benny say, “Dr. Kordell, is it possible that Dr. Leben's body was released in error to a private mortuary?”
