and mounded like a haystack. Fiftyish, lofty and buxom, David believed she sacrificed breathing freedom for glandular elevation.
'Hello, Marsha. Ted in?' David picked up a miniature skeleton from atop a case and blew away its dust.
'No, he's gone for the day but he'll be back in the morning. Can I help you with anything, or shall I have him call you?'
'No, that's okay. I'll drop by tomorrow.'
He replaced the skeleton and was about to leave. 'David, wait,' Marsha said. 'What's going on?' 'With?'
'The murders.' She kneaded the back of her neck. 'It's scary.'
'You know about them already?'
'Are you kidding? The whole hospital knows.' 'I don't
'Yes.'
'Good. Ted will be happy about that.'
David retraced his steps to the landing and felt bothered by the secretary. Murders in a hospital! And I'm bothered because she seems matter-of-fact? But how about me? Or, is even an investigator supposed to wear alarm on his sleeve?
Careful to use his elbow and not a hand, he pushed on the emergency bar of the other door there and received the full blast of a January squall whipped into the alley along with its snow, like in a wind tunnel. He welcomed the refreshing taste of some flakes and, brushing away the rest, released the door which snapped shut.
He leaned against the wall and ran his finger over his bottom lip. Did the murderer take his gown and scrub suit and gloves with him, or what? Did he exit deliberately past Cortez? He must have. But why? It's not the quickest way out.
David headed back through the lockers, pausing to inspect the floor between Cortez's body and Suite 7. He saw no blood and stopped short of entering the suite door, fearing distraction by the few people he heard conversing inside.
His finger returned to his lips. The son-of-a-bitch must have paused to look at Cortez-the pool is under the bench. So … the blood must have gotten on his toe, on his shoe's surgical slip-ons. But why stop to look at a guy you already killed, especially when you're in a hurry? And the blood can't be from Bugles because there's no trail from there to here. Could the murderer have killed Bugles before he gave the chiv to Cortez? That doesn't figure. He was taking Cortez's place, remember? You couldn't have him and Cortez scrubbing at the same time.
He tried to visualize a shoe covered with green cloth that was smeared with blood in varying degrees of clotting.
He slapped his forehead and rushed to the bottom of the stairs again and looked closely at both doors there. The bottom edge of the left one-the one to Pathology bore a slight pink stain.
When David arrived at Suite 7, security guards swarmed about the halls surrounding it. He shook hands with one of the men he recognized.
'Just a quick look-see, that okay, Hank?'
'Sure, doc, but don't step in any blood.'
He walked in. The room was empty except for the purplish corpse of Board Chairman Bugles which still lay in the tilted Trendelenberg position. The skin was waxy, almost translucent and the eyes were flat. David looked around, imagining all the stainless steel had lost its sheen, so blasphemed as a backdrop to murder. It was one thing for a surgical procedure to go sour; it was quite another for the nobility of such a place to be violated, for the trust of the consigned to be so severed.
He saw tubes dangling loose from the anesthesia and suction apparatus. Syringes, surgical instruments and blood-caked towels were scattered over the floor. Stools and a cautery machine lay toppled against a wall as if the room had been ransacked.
At the operating table, stationary retractors were still in place exposing the upper two-thirds of Bugles' abdominal cavity. David peered inside, scrutinizing the now malarranged vicera and supporting structures. He had seen his share of corpses before, but this was a carcass, a melange of crimsons, lusterless and brick-dry, and of deflated intestines tucked behind gauze strips. They probably suctioned away all the blood he had. The more he bled, the less they could see. So the more they suctioned. He examined the retro-spaces at both flanks where kidneys, now prune-like, had been shorn of their protective tents. And look there: both renals cut. Up here: liver lacerated end to end. On the other side: spleen sliced in two. David balled his hands into tight fists. There's the scalpel. One final swipe from quadrant to quadrant, and the bastard dropped his weapon before he bolted.
He had seen enough. Leaving, he heard voices coming from the hallway. He recognized Kathy Dupre's.
'We got here as quickly as we could. The traveling's terrible,' Kathy said.
David resisted the urge to iron out the pout of her lips with his own, to pat her short wet hair which had kept its waves. He had often reminded her she was too petite and luminescent for a cop. A blue London Fog was tucked over a purse that hung down from her shoulder. She wore his favorite black suit and, this time, displayed a badge on her hip pocket as he had often requested. 'Keeps the bird dogs at bay,' he had once said. 'Especially when your stockings match the suit. And hair, come to think of it.' He imagined the feel of her unpowdered skin, the brush against her high cheekbone below a hint of eyeshadow.
'David, I'd like you to meet my new supervisor, Detective Chief Nick Medicore. He's moved here from the West Coast.'
David clicked him in as drab as Kathy was striking. 'How do you do, Chief?' he said. 'Welcome to Connecticut, your mirror image on the East Coast.'
'Except for the weather, but thanks. How do you stand this stuff, Dr. Brooks? It's bad for my bowling ball.' He pointed to his head.
'We don't, and it's David.' He reached down to shake Nick's outstretched hand while engaging his eyes. The Chief was the first to disengage.
'Medicore?' David said. 'This should be right up your alley.'
'Some people call me Mediocre,' Nick replied with a crooked grin.
The Chief carried a gray overcoat and wore a white turtleneck under a checkered jacket, and there was a badge over the swelling near his breast pocket. His nose was redder than his red face, and he was smooth-shaven with cheeks that bore venous markings like tertiary roads on a highway map. David wondered why he hadn't grown a beard.
'And you know Walter Sparks, our criminalist?' Kathy said.
'Yes, of course. Good to see you again, Sparky … I guess.'
David nodded to the others who had arrived: Alton Foster, the hospital's administrator with two of his associates; the medical examiner and his deputy; and four uniformed police officers. He motioned Foster aside and put an arm on his shoulder. 'I'm sorry this happened here, Alton. Hope I can speak with you about it in the next day or two.'
'Yes, yes. God, this is so terrible,' Foster said, his voice cracking. His hair, normally plastered for hurricanes, was disheveled.
David signaled Kathy and she joined them. 'What happened to the Emergency Response Team?' he asked.
'This is it, now. It's been streamlined.'
'No Evidence Officer?'
'You're looking at him … I mean, her.'
Nick walked over. 'So how's your seven-eighths professional sleuthing coming along?' he asked. 'Kathy's been telling me about you. You're really building up the credits.'
'Not nearly seven-eighths, I'm afraid, but I'm working at it.' David was not sure about the man and hoped his elbowroom would not be narrowed. 'Have you seen the other body, yet?'
'No, but we'd better look there first,' Kathy answered. 'Then, Sparky, you can do your dusting and stills and whatever. Where's the other one, David?'
'In the locker room, down the hall.'
David felt the vibration of the digital phone attached to his belt. 'Wait up,' he said. He checked its display
