I tested the personnel entrance at the back of the building. No go. The garage door used for body intake was also locked.
I tried to be more quiet. I crossed to the first van and peered through a window. Nothing.
I scuttled to the second vehicle.
The third.
A set of keys lay on the seat!
Heart thumping, I liberated my prize and stumbled back to the building.
None of the keys worked on the personnel door.
Damn.
My hands trembled as I tried key after key at the vehicle bay.
No.
No.
No.
I dropped the cluster of keys. My legs shook as I searched on all fours in the dark. An eternity later, my hand closed around them.
Rising, I started again.
The fifth or sixth key slid into the lock and turned. I nudged the door upward an inch, and froze.
No sirens or beepers. No armed guards.
I nudged another two feet. The gears sounded louder than the jackhammers at my hotel.
No one appeared. No one called out.
Barely breathing, I crouched and crab-walked into the morgue. Why was it I wanted to be inside? Oh yeah. Dr. Fereira, or Ryan, or Galiano.
The familiar blended odors of death and disinfectant enveloped me. It was a smell I’d know anywhere.
Keeping my back to the wall, I followed a corridor past a roll-on gurney scale, an office, and a small room with a curtained window.
My lab in Montreal has a similar chamber. The dead are wheeled to the far side of the glass. The curtains are opened. A loved one reacts with relief or sorrow. It is the most heartbreaking place in the building.
Beyond the viewing room, the corridor dead-ended into another. I looked left, right.
Another light show behind my eyes. I closed them, breathed deeply, opened them. Better.
Though it was dark in both directions, I knew where I was. To the left I recognized the autopsy rooms, to the right the hall down which Angelina Fereira had led me to her office.
How long had it been since she’d given me Eduardo’s CT scans? A week? A month? A lifetime? My brain couldn’t compute.
I started right. Maybe she was there. She could tell me about Lucas.
A stab to the gut doubled me over. I took quick, shallow breaths, waited for the pain to subside. When I righted myself, lightning burst behind my eyes and the top of my head exploded. Bracing against the wall, I vomited in great, heaving spasms.
Dr. Fereira? Ryan? Galiano?
A lifetime later, the contractions stopped. My mouth tasted bitter. My sides ached. My legs felt rubbery, my body hot and cold at the same time. Dr. Fereira would send someone to clean this up.
Using the wall for support, I pushed on. Her office was empty. I reversed direction toward the autopsy rooms.
Autopsy room one was dark and deserted.
Ditto for two.
I noticed violet-blue light spilling under the door of autopsy room three, the one in which I’d examined Patricia Eduardo’s skeleton. She was probably there.
Gingerly, I opened the door.
There’s a surreal stillness to a nighttime morgue. No sucking hoses, no whining saws, no running water, no clanking instruments. It’s like no other silence I know.
The room was empty and deathly quiet.
“Dr. Fereira?”
Someone had left an X ray on an illuminator box. Fluorescence seeped around the film like the blue-white shimmer of a black-and-white TV in the dark. Metal and glass gleamed cold and steely.
A gurney sat by a stainless steel cooler at the back of the room. On it, a body bag. The bulge told me there was someone inside.
Another spasm. Black spots danced in my vision.
Lurching to the table, I dropped my head, breathed deeply.
