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.
“Perhaps?”
“Or perhaps… stolen.”
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?”
“We'd been informed earlier today that the Attison Brothers' firm was handling funeral arrangements, so of course we called them when we couldn't find the body. We suspected they'd come for Dr. Leben and that a day employee of the morgue had mistakenly released the cadaver without authorization, prior to autopsy. But they tell us they never came to collect, were in fact waiting for a call from us, and don't have the deceased.”
“What I meant,” Benny said, “was that perhaps Dr. Leben's body was released in error to another mortician who had come to collect someone else.”
“That, of course, was another possibility that we explored with, I assure you, considerable urgency. Subsequent to the arrival of Dr. Leben's b
ody at 12:14 this afternoon, four other bodies were released to private mortuaries. We sent employees to all of those funeral homes to confirm the identity of the cadavers and to make sure none of them was Dr. Leben. None of them was.”
“Then what do you suppose has happened to him?” Benny asked.
Eyes closed, Rachael listened to their macabre conversation in darkness, and gradually it began to seem as if she were asleep and as if their voices were the echoey phantom voices of characters in a nightmare.
Kordell said, “Insane as it seems, we were forced to conclude the body's been stolen.”
In her self-imposed blackness, Rachael tried unsuccessfully to block out the gruesome images that her imagination began to supply.
“You've contacted the police?” Benny asked the medical examiner.
“Yes, we brought them into it as soon as we realized theft was the only remaining explanation. They're downstairs right now, in the morgue, and of course they want to speak with you, Mrs. Leben.”
A soft rhythmic rasping noise was coming from Everett Kordell’s direction. Rachael opened her eyes. The medical examiner was nervously sliding his letter opener in and out of its protective sheath. Rachael closed her eyes again.
Benny said, “But are your security measures so inadequate that someone could waltz right in off the street and steal a corpse?”
“Certainly not,” Kordell said. “Nothing like this has happened before. I tell you, it's inexplicable. Oh, yes, a determined person might be clever enough to find a way through our security, but it wouldn't be an easy job. Not easy at all.”
“But not impossible,” Benny said.
The rasping noise stopped. From the new sounds that followed, Rachael figured that the medical examiner must be compulsively rearranging the silver-framed photographs on his desk.
She concentrated on that image to counteract the mad scenes that her darkly cunning imagination had conjured up for her horrified consideration.
Everett Kordell said, “I'd like to suggest that both of you accompany me to the morgue downstairs, so you can see firsthand exactly how tight our security is and how very difficult it would be to breach it. Mrs. Leben? Do you feel strong enough to take a tour of the facility?”
Rachael opened her eyes. Both Benny and Kordell were watching her with concern. She nodded.
“Are you sure?” Kordell asked, rising and coming out from behind his desk. “Please understand that I'm not insisting on it. But it would make me feel ever so much better if you would let me show you how careful we are, how responsibly we fulfill our duties here.”
“I'm okay,” she said.
Picking at a tiny piece of dark lint that he had just spotted on his sleeve, the medical examiner headed toward the door.
As Rachael got up from her chair and turned to follow Kordell, she was swept by a wave of dizziness. She swayed.
Benny took her arm, steadied her. “This tour isn't necessary.”
“Yes,” she said grimly. “Yes, it is. I've got to see. I've got to know.”
Benny looked at her strangely, and she couldn't meet his eyes. He knew something was wrong, something more than Eric's death and disappearance, but he didn't know what. He was unabashedly curious.
Rachael had intended to conceal her anxiety and keep him out of this hideous affair. But deceit was not one of her talents, and she knew he had been aware of her fear from the moment he'd stepped into her house. The dear man was both intrigued and concerned, staunchly determined to stay by her side, which was exactly what she didn't want, but she couldn't help that now. Later, she would have to find a way to get rid of Benny because, much as she needed him, it was not fair to drag him into this mess, not fair to put his life in jeopardy the way hers was.
Right now, however, she had to see where Eric's battered corpse had lain, for she hoped a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the body's disappearance would allay her worst fears. She needed all her strength for the tour of the morgue.
They left the office and went down where the dead waited.
* * *
The broad, tile-floored, pale gray corridor ended at a heavy metal door. A white-uniformed attendant sat at a desk in an alcove to the right, this side of the door. When he saw Kordell approaching with Rachael and Benny, he got up and fished a set of bright jangling keys from the pocket of his uniform jacket.
“This is the only interior entrance to the morgue,” Kordell said. “The door is always locked. Isn't that right, Walt?”
“Absolutely,” the attendant said. “You did want to go in, Dr. Kordell?”
“Yes.”
When Walt slid the key into the lock, Rachael saw a tiny spark of static electricity.
Kordell said, “There's an attendant — Walt or someone else — on duty at this desk twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one can get in without his assistance. And he keeps a registry of all visitors.”
The wide door was unlocked, and Walt was holding it open for them. They went inside, where the cool air smelled of antiseptics and of something unidentifiable that was less pungent and less clean. The door closed behind them with a faint creak of hinges that seemed to echo through Rachael's bones. The lock engaged automatically with a hollow thunk.
Two sets of double doors, both open, led to big rooms on both sides of the morgue corridor. A fourth windowless metal portal, like that through which they had just entered, lay at the far end of the chilly hallway.
“Now please let me show you the only exterior entrance, where the morgue wagons and the morticians' vehicles pull up,” Kordell said, leading the way toward the distant barrier.
Rachael followed him, though just being in this repository of the dead, where Eric had so recently lain, made her knees weak and broke her out in a sweat along the back of her neck and all over her scalp.
“Wait a second,” Benny said. He turned to the door through which they had come, pushed down on the bar handle, and opened it, startling Walt, who was just returning to his desk on the other side. Letting the heavy door fall shut again, Benny looked at Kordell and said, “Although it's always locked from the outside, it's always open from the inside?”
“That's right, of course,” Kordell said. “It'd be too much trouble to have to summon the attendant to be let out as well as in. Besides, we can't risk having someone accidentally locked in here during an emergency. Fire or earthquake, for example.”
Their footsteps echoed eerily off the highly polished tile floor as they continued along the corridor toward the exterior service door at the far end. When they passed the two large rooms, Rachael saw several people in the chamber on the left, standing and moving and talking softly in a glare of crisp, cold fluorescent light. Morgue workers wearing hospital whites. A fat man in beige slacks and a beige-yellow-red-green madras sports jacket. Two men in dark suits looked up as Rachael walked by.
She also saw three dead bodies: still, shrouded shapes lying on stainless-steel gurneys.
At the end of the hall, Everett Kordell pushed open the wide metal door. He stepped outside and beckoned them.
Rachael and Benny followed. She expected to find an alleyway beyond, but though they had left the building, they were not actually outside. The exterior morgue door opened onto one of the underground levels of an adjacent multistory parking garage. It was the same garage in which she'd parked her 560 SL just a short while ago, though she'd left it a few levels above this one.
The gray concrete floor, the blank walls, and the thick pillars holding up the gray concrete ceiling made the subterranean garage seem like an immense, starkly modernistic, Western version of a pharaoh's tomb. The sodium-vapor ceiling lights, widely spaced, provided a jaundice-yellow illumination that Rachael found fitting for a place that served as an antechamber to the hall of the dead.
The area around the morgue entrance was a no-parking zone. But a score of cars were scattered farther out in the vast room, half in the crepuscular bile-yellow light and half in purple-black shadows tha
t had the velvet texture of a casket lining.
Looking at the cars, she had the extraordinary feeling that something was hiding among them, watching.
Watching her in particular.
Benny saw her shiver, and he put his arm around her shoulders.
Everett Kordell closed the heavy morgue door, then tried to open it, but the bar handle could not be depressed. “You see? It locks automatically. Ambulances, morgue wagons, and hearses drive down that ramp from the street and stop here. The only way to get in is to push this button.” He pushed a white button in the wall beside the door. “And speak into this intercom.” He brought his mouth close to a wire speaker set flush in the concrete. “Walt? This is Dr. Kordell at the outer door. Will you buzz us back in, please?”
Walt's voice came from the speaker. “Right away, sir.”
A buzzer sounded, and Kordell was able to open the door again.
“I assume the attendant doesn't just open for anyone who asks to be let in,” Benny said.
“Of course not,” Kordell said, standing in the open doorway. “If he's sure he recognizes the voice and if he knows the person, he buzzes him through. If he doesn't recognize the voice, or if it's someone new from a private mortuary, or if there's any reason to be suspicious, the attendant walks through the corridor that we just walked, all the way from the front desk, and he inspects whoever's seeking admittance.”
Rachael had lost all interest in these details and was concerned only about the gloom-mantled garage around them, which provided a hundred excellent hiding places.
Benny said, “At that point the attendant, not expecting violence, could be overpowered, and the intruder could force his way inside.”
“Possibly,” Kordell said, his thin face drawing into a sharp scowl. “But that's never happened.”
“The attendants on duty today swear that they logged in everyone who came and went — and allowed only authorized personnel to enter?”
“They swear,” Kordell said.
“And you trust them all?”
“Implicitly. Everyone who works here is aware that the bodies in our custody are the remains of other people's loved ones, and we know we have a solemn — even sacred — responsibility to protect those remains while we're in charge of them. I think that's evident in the security arrangements I've just shown you.”
Shadowfires Page 4
