Ghouls

cement mixer.”

“He was hung over.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He didn’t even look fit to drive, so I had Higgins give him a ride.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Chief. You had Higgins take him ’cause you thought he might try to split.”

Bard’s grin turned sly. “Gotta admit, the thought crossed my mind… Coffee?”

“No thanks. I’d need a better life insurance policy before I’d drink that spew. And I really find it hard to believe—”

“Keep your shirt and dick on, Kurt. I’m friends with Glen, too, you know. But I can’t let that obstruct operating procedure.”

Christ, Kurt thought again. Next they’ll be wanting me on the box.

Bard’s face shriveled up like wrapping paper when he sipped his coffee. “Anyway,” he said. “You never know. Anything can happen in this world, right? If Glen’s got nothing to hide, then why are you so uptight, or is it just the awesome vision of my presence that’s making you look like you’re about to shit your pants? Now’s his chance to prove he’s clean.”

“This isn’t Russia,” Kurt said. “He shouldn’t have to prove anything.”

“You can’t deny he’s been acting a little weird lately.”

“I can deny that easy,” Kurt lied, thinking, He’s always been a little weird. “He’s as straight as you or me.”

“Then why is he clamming?”

“He’s not clamming. Jesus, you sound like Lew Archer.”

“Lew Archer was a great detective.” Bard sipped more coffee, seeming quite pleased with himself. “Glen’s keeping his trap shut about something. But he won’t be able to do that on the poly.”

“Oh, shit, Chief. Those things are less reliable than Ouija boards.”

“LEAA says they’re ninety-percent-plus effective with an experienced operator.”

“I don’t care if they’re a million-percent effective. The things are a goddamned injustice; they violate civil rights.”

“Sounds like you’re turning hippie on me—”

“And why would Glen volunteer for a polygraph if he knows something?”

“It’s common knowledge,” Bard said. “Lots of nuts are subconsciously guided to self-incrimination—deep down they all want to be caught. All I’m saying is that you never know. I’m not shitting on Glen—hell, I’d love to see him come out of this clean as a cat’s ass, too. But just because he’s a friend of ours doesn’t mean he can’t lose an oar. Let’s face it, we don’t know him all that well. He works at night, we hardly ever see him. He could be the screw-loose of the century for all we know. Son of Sam was a security guard once. So was Chapman—”

“Oh, come on—”

“And if it’s not Glen, then who is it?”

The finality of the question lodged in Kurt’s throat. For a moment, he felt utterly displaced, his teeth on edge. He wished he could punch Bard right in his distrusting, smart-ass belly, watch his fist gleefully sink in fat.

“Anyhow,” Bard jabbered on. “We’ll let Glen worry about himself. In the meantime, I think you’ve got a job to do.”

««—»»

Kurt walked down the cold, antiseptic hallway like a man expecting an ambush. The petrifying fumes reached him even here and set off in his stomach an explosion of acid and disgust.

The office door was open; Kurt peeked in and found the pathologist’s anteroom unoccupied. An old Fedders air conditioner hummed clamorously from the room’s only window; cold air chilled his face. The door to the autopsy room, he saw, stood ajar. A shadow passed quickly across the drab cement floor. As boldly as he could, Kurt ventured in.

A cadaver enclosed in plastic lay on the autopsy table. A liver in a pan scale swayed slightly to and fro, like a hanging flower pot. From it fluid dripped pap pap pap onto the plastic. Kurt nearly fell back into the office.

Dr. Greene was lifting a brain from a large white bucket. He looked up, features roughed by fluorescent light, and said in a mock Scottish accent, “Tep a the marnin’ to ya.”

Kurt nodded, swallowing. “I thought you had night duty.”

“We got bodies piled up till next year’s Super Bowl, and my boss decides to take a week off. Somebody’s got to open these dead guys. Might as well be me.” Greene then picked up a long, narrow knife and began cutting the brain into half-inch slices, as one might slice a loaf of pumpernickel. He deposited each slice into another bucket marked HISTO in black magic marker. “Be with you in a minute,” he said.

Kurt looked away, but each time his eyes fell onto some new horror. A Stryker orbital saw hung from a nearby peg, its fine-toothed blade smudged with blood and hair. One shelf was stacked high with boxes of Parke- Davis cadaver bags; another stored cryptic chemicals in dark bottles. The needle on the pan-scale gauge indicated precisely 1601 grams.

“Mind if I smoke?” Kurt asked.

“No, but your lungs do.”

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He popped a cigarette into his mouth and lit up.

“Want to quit?”

“I can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Greene pointed across the room, hand dripping. “Look in that white bucket there. The one on the end, third shelf.”

I asked for this, he thought. His fingers touched the lid, but didn’t move.

“Go on,” Greene urged. “Open the bucket. Look inside.”

Kurt raised the lid and looked in. Settled at the bottom of the bucket were two blob-shaped objects which resembled giant moldering leeches. They were brown-black and glistening, specked minutely with white.

Greene smiled, still tending to his slices. “They’re metasticized lungs.”

“Jesus.”

“Your lungs will look like that if you don’t quit smoking. Cancer’s a hard way to go. It’s like slowly rotting to death from the inside out.”

Greene washed his hands in the big sink, thumping a pink-filled soap dispenser like an inverted service bell. His lab coat bore a craggy reddish stain the shape of North America, and beneath the open coat, a clinging orange T-shirt elucidated washboard abdominals. Kurt dropped his cigarette onto the floor drain and stepped on it. Dizzily, he followed Greene into the office.

“Ah, my favorite fruit,” Greene said, and picked a Chunky up off the desk. He passed Kurt a nine by twelve manila envelope. “Here’s your lab report.”

Kurt scanned the pages, deciphering almost none of it. Hieroglyphics, he thought; most of the words were ten letters long. “We weren’t briefed by the county about any of this,” he told Greene. “In other words, we don’t even know what this is.”

“Stands to reason. This didn’t make the papers.” The pathologist spoke between bites of his Chunky. “It concerns those two high school girls—”

“The ones whose car was found on our town line.”

“Right,” Greene said. He dropped the silver candy wrapper into a pedal-operated garbage can; the lid snapped shut like a flytrap.

“But those girls haven’t turned up yet,” Kurt clarified.

“No, they haven’t. And they won’t, not alive, anyway.”

The a/c hum was beginning to irritate Kurt, along with Greene’s elusiveness. “Then what the hell did you do this lab report on?” he asked.

“Organs.”

The answer brought only silence from Kurt, a dense and pleading silence that demanded elaboration. At last Greene perched up on his desk and explained, “That’s why the county is certain the two girls are dead. What they