Maggie smiled. "The morgue?"
"Aye." He looked her right in the eye. "Annie never mentioned no family."
Gulp.
"So," he went on, "I 'magine she'll likely get a pauper's funeral at the church tomorrow morn, it being Sunday and all."
"Okay, the morgue, huh? And where's that?"
"Do you know where the police station is?" An interesting point of reference, Maggie thought. "Well, from there..." and he explained the quickest route from police station to morgue. She decided not to ask how he knew that.
Maggie let out a quick little sigh of relief. She had gotten what she'd come for. Time to go. "Well, okay then. Thank you so much."
She stood to leave, reaching into her purse, past the spellbook, for her wallet so she could pay for the untouched beer.
"Say, lass?" The bartender crossed his arms again.
"Yes?" Maggie's eyes widened. She could always just run for the door...
"You say the police contacted you?"
"Yes," it was almost a question.
"If that's so, then why did you no ask them where Annie was going to be buried?"
Uh-oh.
* * *
"What?!" yelled the priest.
Cameron had not seen the telltale white priest's collar when the man had walked in; he'd had his jacket pulled up around his neck. But now the collar and its owner stared at him in dumbfounded amazement.
"What did you say?" the priest asked again.
"Oh, dear God. Forgive me, Father." Cameron had said that before in his life. "I'm afraid we've made a terrible mistake."
He looked down at the bag the priest had in his hand.
"The bag—?" Cameron asked weakly. It wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility that the priest was the killer. Unlikely, but he did have to confirm it.
The priest looked down at the satchel in his hand. "This?" he asked.
"Yes, Father. May we look inside?"
The priest drew himself up. He was trying not to be insulted, but he had not gone to seminary to be accused of murder, particularly not late at night in bus stations.
"Of course," he replied and opened the bag himself. It was filled with several dozen small red books. "They're Bibles. I'm taking a bus to Glasgow tonight. I'm visiting an orphanage first thing tomorrow morning and these are for the children. I locked them away while I ran out for a bite to eat."
"Bibles?" He was going to kill Warwick. She and her damned American psychic. "Glasgow?"
The priest shrugged. "Yes. The diocese thought it would be more frugal if I took an overnight bus and slept on the way. With the money we saved, we were able to buy Bibles for all the children."
Cameron closed his eyes and took a deep cleansing breath. "Of course, Father. Quite good of you." He shook his head in mortification. "Sorry to have bothered you. Have a good trip."
The priest just smiled, bewildered. "Thank you."
"Come on, boys," Cameron announced with a wave of his upraised hand. "Let's go."
He and the other three officers gathered up and walked back out into the cold clear moonless evening.
And in the corner of the bus station, in the shadows near the restrooms, stood a tall dark figure, who looked down into the palm of a wet hand, where sat the cold, slimy key to locker 66.
* * *
"The police?" Maggie hadn't anticipated that question. It was a good one. "Yeah, well, I talked to the police. But they weren't really very helpful."
That much was true. Sort of.
"Thanks anyway, though," and she pulled out her wallet. The bartender walked away and she finally found a banknote inside her pocketbook. Setting it under the still full beer glass she turned to leave.
"Hey!" she heard from behind her. "Hey you, lass!"
She stopped. Probably better to see him coming. She turned around.
She had expected to see either the large bald bartender or someone else equally mammoth. Instead, she was staring almost directly into the eyes of a very short, very angry, and most likely very drunk man. He had very short bleached blond hair, several rings in various parts of his face, and tattoos up and down his bare and very strong looking arms. He also had a two long red welts down the side of his neck from his right ear.
"Yes?" Maggie gulped.
"You're nosin' 'round 'bout Annie?" he demanded.
"I was just asking a couple of questions," she replied as calmly as the heart in her throat would allow. Surely he wouldn't punch a girl. No, he's probably got girlfriends to do that for him. She looked around his shoulder to see who might get the honor of beating her up, but saw no one who immediately fit the bill. She did notice however that most of the customers had turned to watch the excitement.
"Don't lie to me, lass!" barked the strong little man. "Annie ain't had no fam'ly. 'Specially not no Yanks. She was me girl, so she'd bloody well a' told me if she had." He narrowed his eyes and leaned into her face. "Who the bloody hell are you?"
"Er, Maggie Devereaux," she replied without really thinking. Her fear was actually fading. Somehow she almost liked the confrontation. So she added, "And you are?"
His eyes flared at this. "Look 'ere, lass. You don't want to start nosin' 'bout where you don't belong. It's a sure way o' endin' up hurt. Badly hurt." He cracked his knuckles.
Maggie imagined using the levitation spell to throw Mr. Annie's-Boyfriend across the room. It was a pleasant image, but she thought better of it.
"Fine," she said firmly. "I'll just be going then."
"You damn well better, you Yank bitch!"
Maggie looked at him through narrowed eyes. I wonder if I could get that transmutation spell to work. How did that go again—a pillar of salt? But instead she turned and walked out the door.
"You all right, Johnny?" asked the bartender to the little man.
"Aye, I'm damn well all right!" he yelled back. "Give me another bloody pint!"
Johnny sat down at the bar and snatched his beer from the bartender. He gripped it tightly and stared at the door where Maggie Devereaux had just exited, his chest rising and falling with his angry breaths.
The other patrons returned to their conversations, or to something else to distract their attention. But in the back of the club, sitting largely unnoticed by the other patrons, another man was also staring at the door where Maggie Devereaux had just exited. Unlike Johnny, his breathing was controlled and even as he stood up and laid several bills on the table. He pulled on a very stylish overcoat, which only punctuated the fact that he was dressed considerably better than the other regulars at the bar. In this way he seemed rather out of place. The only thing that would have indicated that this well-dressed man who was making his way to the exit somehow fit in with the pierced, tattooed and hardened crowd of the tavern, was the single untidy scar running down the length of his left cheek.
48. The Morgue
The 10:45 never came. Maggie had arrived at the bus stop well before then, and had waited until after eleven o'clock, but no bus. So she pulled her coat tight around her, swung her book-laden purse over both shoulders and started walking, her misty breath trailing behind her. She probably should have called for a ride, but how was she going to explain being down at the docks at eleven o'clock at night? Alex and Lucy were probably asleep. Iain was probably still mad at her. She could have called Ellen, she supposed, but again, how did she explain? It wasn't that long of a walk, and it would give her time to think.
She looked up. Still no moon.
She wasn't walking home of course. Not directly anyway. She didn't even know the direct way home. She had taken a bus from the college and so was following that trail back. Once at the college she would know her way home. Maybe she could call for a ride from there. The college was more centrally located, and it wouldn't seem strange at all for her to be there late on a Saturday night. She would reach the college no later than midnight, she figured. What with the stop by the morgue.
The morgue was close to the college. Close enough that she
could swing by it on her way back. The bartender had said Annie Gwyer would receive a pauper's funeral tomorrow and her body was most likely housed at the morgue for the night. Maggie supposed she could stop by in the morning, but the funeral was probably pretty early. Even with no family to mourn her, Maggie still didn't think the priest would appreciate an ancient pagan divining spell being cast during his eulogy.
Of course, the morgue was probably closed. Although maybe not. Did morgues close? Hospitals don't, and she supposed the people who died there needed to be put somewhere. She really had no idea. So it was at least worth a try.
The walk alone in the dark was a bit spooky. More than once she thought she heard footsteps behind her, only to whirl around and face an entirely empty sidewalk. She was just a little jittery. The short man at the bar had gotten her worked up and she was a little nervous at the idea of going to a morgue in the middle of the night. If she hadn't been so sure the murder would happen the next night she never would have been outside alone. But she was sure, and whenever she got a little bit too scared, or started to think she was crazy for what she was trying to do, she just replayed Iain's voice in her head: 'Some poor girl's going to be next if they don't catch this lunatic soon. I think maybe you'd have that girl's death on your head a bit if you could've helped, but didn't.'
* * *
The morgue was easy enough to find. The bartender, for all his angry demeanor and inquisition, had given her quite good directions. Not surprising that he had related its position to the police station. No doubt he'd spent some time at the police station. Of course, so had Maggie.
Any building can be scary enough at night, Maggie supposed as she approached the structure. Even the warmest homes can take on a foreboding appearance in the elongated shadows and half light of the night. The Aberdeen City Morgue was no exception. The word 'MORGUE' carved above the doorway sent an involuntary shiver up her spine.
Maggie paused at the end of the walk.
What the hell are you thinking, Devereaux? The morgue? The morgue?! At night? She looked around. No one else in sight.
So why did she feel like she was being watched?
Probably just nerves. What with walking into a morgue as it approached midnight and all. She wondered: if they were open, would there be a receptionist? What kind of weirdo could work as the night receptionist at a morgue? She didn't want to know. But she was very likely about to find out.
Maggie climbed the seven stone steps to the heavy wooden door of the morgue. There were lights on inside, but they were dim. It looked more like the lights any business left on overnight; not the brightness someone would need to work by. Except maybe a weirdo night receptionist at a morgue.
Okay, Maggie took a deep breath. You're freaking yourself out here. Just take a deep breath.
She still felt like someone was watching her. Time to get inside. She put her hand on the doorknob. What if the morgue was closed? What then? Would she still try to force her way in? She really needed to get access to a sample from Annie Gwyer. But she wasn't sure breaking and entering was the way to go. It was important, but not that important.
Her hand still rested on the doorknob. She considered her alternatives.
Finally she decided to just turn the knob. If it opened, then she could go in. If not, then she'd come back first thing in the morning and hope she could see the body before the funeral. That would still give her several hours to convince Sgt. Warwick.
Maggie looked around. She took a deep breath. She tried not to think about the weirdo receptionist hiding behind the door. She turned the doorknob.
It was open.
Wow. She was genuinely surprised. The door swung open with a predictable groan and, after checking that no one was behind the door, she scurried inside. The heavy door closed behind her with a gentle thud.
Inside the morgue, the lights were on, but dimmed. The front desk was abandoned—apparently the receptionist didn't work nights after all. The hallways were green linoleum flooring with light green painted walls. Very institutional. It made Maggie's stomach queasy. That and a faint smell she couldn't identify and wouldn't have wanted to anyway. She just needed to get the samples and get out of there.
So if I were a dead body, where would I be?
Actually, the morgue wasn't that large. She wandered around the first floor and confirmed it held nothing but offices. There was a stairwell which gave her the option of up or down. She chose down. If she were in charge of the morgue, the bodies would definitely be in the basement, not upstairs. She wasn't sure why, but she knew that made more sense. She descended the stairs into the dark basement below.
The basement had even fewer lights on than the first floor. Only every third ceiling lamp was on down the long green hallway which stretched out to her right and left. Choosing at random, she turned right and walked toward the dimly lit room she could make out at the end of the hall. Her footsteps echoed off the walls, even in her soft-soled shoes. It wasn't that far to the end of the hallway, but it sure seemed like it to her.
The room turned out to be an examining room, if that's what they called it. Three metal tables stood side by side, like lifts at an auto-body garage. To one side was a tray with several brutal looking instruments lying on top of it. In the corner, Maggie saw a what looked remarkably like a chain saw.
Well, she supposed with a shudder, it's not like they have to sew them up again.
In any event, there were no bodies in there just then, and no personal effects either. Just the silver metal tables, the torture instruments, and a log book of some sort sitting on a small counter by the door.
Log book?
Maggie picked it up. She flipped through it quickly and confirmed that it appeared to be a record of each time they had removed a body from storage. The last page had the following entry:
'12/21. Gwyer. Out 1015. Returned 1145. C-3.'
C-3, huh? Sounds like a locker number.
She turned and headed back down the hallway.
Now, silence can play tricks on a person's hearing. It's not normal for the ear to pick up no sounds at all. It's designed to hear things, not to not hear things. That's why when it's really quiet, people hear a high pitched ringing in their ears. It's the brain trying to put a label on the silence the ear is hearing. And in the confines of a Scottish morgue on a dark night, a person's mind can play even more tricks with the silence. So when Maggie thought she heard the faintest muffled thud from upstairs, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Had she heard it? Or not? She stood stock still and strained to hear something, anything, against the silence. Nothing. She waited some more. Still nothing. Finally she decided that there had been no noise at all, that her ears had just been teasing her.
Either that or the weirdo receptionist forgot her purse.
Maggie finished walking down the long hallway, past the stairs—her only way out, she noted—and to the room at the other end of the hall. That strange smell was strongest here. It was obviously the storage room. One entire wall was filled with handled doors that looked remarkably like the fronts of file cabinet drawers, only larger. There were seven columns: A, B, C, D, E, F and G. And three drawers per column: 1, 2 and 3.
A brief scan of the wall quickly revealed drawer C-3: three columns over and nearest the floor.
She walked over to it and placed her fingers on the handle. It was cool to the touch. Refrigeration, she deduced. She couldn't believe what she was about to do. She strained again to hear any noise from out in the silent morgue.
Nothing.
Okay, then. Here goes.
She yanked on the drawer. It gave only slightly at first but then rolled all the way open with a low squeak. And Maggie stared down at a turquoise sheet that covered what must have been the remains of Annie Gwyer.
Maggie had expected a stronger odor somehow, but the combination of formaldehyde and refrigeration probably kept decomposition to a minimum. The coroner probably didn't enjoy the smell of rotting flesh either.
/> She crouched down next to the drawer. Pulling her purse around, she removed the spellbook and opened it to the divining spell. Might as well just do it now. She had privacy anyway. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she pulled back the sheet covering the contents of drawer C-3.
When she had finished vomiting in the corner, Maggie crawled back to the drawer, careful to keep her eyes fixed squarely on her spell book, the floor, or really anything other than the human remains in the drawer. Reaching a tender hand up to the retracted sheet, she pulled it again over the corpse's face. Refrigeration or no, it had been several days since the tissue had died, and in that time the coroner had obviously used several of his more invasive tools to inquire into the cause of death. Maggie sat down on the cool floor and tried not to vomit again.
After several minutes, she began to feel better. The silence was still ringing in her ears, so she tried to focus on that to distract her from the smell in her nostrils and the gory vision still dancing before her eyes.
Okay, Devereaux, she told herself. Just hurry up and get it over with. Then you can go the hell home.
She had deliberately not pulled the sheet all the way up again. The curly blond hair still stuck out from under the teal sheet. Hair had worked before; it would certainly work again. She grabbed hold of several hairs and tugged slightly. They gave way with absolutely no resistance, and a small wet sound. Maggie felt her stomach flip over again, but she managed not to have to return to the vomit corner. She laid the hair out in front of her and spoke the spell. Damn the black smear it would leave on the floor.
The vision rose quickly from the hairs. It was of Annie. And the short angry man from the bar. Somehow that didn't surprise Maggie. The two were arguing. Both yelling at each other, although Maggie could hear no words. She could feel the anger and the hatred and the jealousy and the feelings of inadequacy and fear which swirled around the two figures. It felt like love might have been there once but had been corrupted into something sad and hopeless. They were in the alleyway Maggie had seen the worker hosing down. It was dark out. They were still yelling. Then she reached out and slapped him. He returned the slap with a punch, right to her mouth. She fell down, but he picked her up by the shoulders and hit her again. She clawed at his face and neck and he grabbed her around the throat. And shook. And shook. And shook again. And she stopped struggling. She went limp. He stopped shaking. He lowered her body onto the ground, its weight pulling her down faster than he could help. He stood over her body for a long time, looking around fretfully and running his hands through his short blond hair. Then, finally, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. He kneeled down and cut open Annie's shirt. Then he crossed himself and pushed the knife into her abdomen.
Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1) Page 37
