by Lisa Black
Now she retrieved the jangling ring from a cubbyhole in Leo’s old desk and wondered what other forbidden citadels they might open to her.
If she hesitated, she might falter and second-guess herself into oblivion. So she went directly to Stone’s office.
The second floor sat deserted and silent as if hermetically sealed, the only illumination coming from a single set of tubes in one ceiling tile and the red and green glowing ‘ready’ lights on the sea of computer monitors, towers, speakers and battery back-ups along the secretaries’ desks. If only Janice, Queen of the Secretaries, had stayed behind. Theresa would take on Bigfoot if Janice had her back.
The fourth key on the ring fit.
The office of the medical examiner held only the ambient light that passed through its windows: two large ones facing the street and its lamps, and two facing the secretaries’ area, but it was enough for her to move to the shelf against the latter windows and find the jar marked 9/23/04. She held it up to the small amount of light from the street, double-checking the label. A supposedly cancerous uterus from a supposedly autopsied female. But there had been no females autopsied within the few days on and prior to Diana’s death. Only Diana.
None of this made any sense. Yet here she held a specimen with a clearly erroneous date, in the office of the Medical Examiner, where such a thing as an error of any kind should not exist.
‘Put that down,’ Elliott Stone said.
She turned, nearly dropping the heavy glass jar but catching it before it could shatter on the credenza that ran beneath the shelves. Once she had it settled more securely in her hands, she stammered, ‘What is this?’
He didn’t appear to have a weapon, though he wore a light trench coat with big pockets. He also blocked the only door.
‘It’s a uterus with a burst subserosal fibroid. What about it?’ His casual tone seemed annoyed but unworried. ‘How did you get into my office?’
‘Leo had keys. It’s dated the same day as Diana’s death.’
‘Leo had keys to my office?’
‘Apparently, Leo had keys to every office.’
‘Leo? That compromises … Do you have any idea what that means?’
‘Yes,’ Theresa said. ‘It means you killed Diana.’
THIRTY-TWO
He had always made the most sense from the beginning, she realized. Relatively young, handsome, ambitious, relatively wealthy and on his way to becoming more so. And silver-tongued. Diana would have been doomed to fall from her first day on the job.
She had also been willing to be discreet, keeping knowledge of the affair from even her closest friends. Most of his money stemmed from his wife’s family, and the reigning ME back then had been very old-fashioned about things like sleeping with the staff.
‘What did you tell her?’ Theresa asked. ‘That you needed to keep your wife on the hook until your student loans were paid off? That she would become suicidal if you left? That you had to hang in there until the kids were a little older and better able to handle the upheaval?’
He didn’t move from the doorway. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Why did you keep this, all these years? The evidence that could condemn you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ But the conviction in his voice slipped a notch. His gaze darted from her to the jar in her hands, as if part of him feared she might drop it and the other part calculated how best to snatch it from her.
‘Did you volunteer to act as diener for Dr Reese that day? The eager young doctor, ready to pitch in wherever needed. No one wanted to see their co-worker flayed open like that, best to get it done as quickly as possible. But you were both doctors, so you could both do the work, speed things up a little. You could dissect the organs while he worked on the larynx. That, after all, seemed the relevant area.’
‘Can you see Reese delegating work?’
‘Any other day of the decade, no. But as zealous as he could be about work, Hubert Reese was a pompous man looking forward to a ceremony acknowledging his stature at no less than Cleveland’s premier university. And, as I said, you were both doctors.’
‘Let me get this straight. You think I kept Diana Allman’s uterus in a jar for the past ten years. That is beyond bizarre.’
‘It is. Why didn’t you just dissect, discard, then lie about it in your report? Because the autopsy report is false, isn’t it? Diana’s uterus wasn’t “unremarkable”. Diana was pregnant with your child.’
‘You’re crazy,’ he stated without inflection, just a regrettable but unmistakable fact. ‘The trauma of the past two days has unhinged you – it would affect anyone, so don’t feel insulted. I never had an affair with Diana Allman, and I certainly never impregnated her. That specimen is from a different victim.’
‘There were no other females autopsied that day, or the two days prior.’
‘Then it’s mislabeled.’
‘The printer emits the labels automatically. Why didn’t you just slip it into your pocket to get it out of the room? A small thing, it will fit in the palm of your hand, but how to get rid of it? Someone might notice it in the garbage, and you had Causer and Darryl Johnson hanging around just to get a glimpse of Diana Allman naked. So you slipped into the dispensing cubby for a smoke just to give yourself time to think. Is that what gave you the idea? That a cigarette burn would make a convincing fake cancer? Drop it in a jar and fill with formalin, then leave on the counter with the rest of the specimens. You probably didn’t even think about it, just fixed the sticker the way you had a thousand times before. Habits will always out.’
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing—’
‘You went back to the autopsy with nothing left to fear. But you couldn’t leave the jar there, of course, or the gals in Histology would section it for Reese and he would see the pregnancy. You had to go back later and get it, but that wasn’t difficult. No one ever questioned a doctor popping in and out of autopsy. No one ever questioned a doctor, period.’
‘Did you dream all this up when you were locked in the trunk?’ he asked. ‘Bang your head too hard going over a couple of rumble strips?’
‘I identified the strange animal hair on her clothing.’ Theresa nodded at the furry rug underneath his guest chairs. ‘It’s alpaca.’
‘Except that rug wasn’t in this room ten years ago.’
‘No, but it was in your office, where Dr Banachek is now. I remember the other doctors joking about your decorating tastes.’
‘Diana dropped off reports and death certificates to my office all the time. You could probably find alpaca fur on all the secretaries then. And now. Animal hair gets everywhere – ask anyone who owns a cat.’
This time Theresa nodded at the framed photos. ‘She was going to take up skiing. Was that another plan you made while she was “dropping off reports” on your alpaca rug?’
‘This is the snow belt,’ he said with an impatient sigh. ‘Everyone skis.’
‘You know, you’re right. I could be way off here, but luckily there’s an easy way to resolve this. I’m going to take this specimen down to the autopsy room and do what should have been done ten years ago – examine the interior lining. If I find the beginnings of a child then DNA testing will be completed and the police can formally request a buccal swab from you to do the comparison. If I’m wrong and there’s no child present, then you can fire me, chalk my accusations up to PTSD and stick to the official “James killed Diana” story.’
‘Just put the jar down and go home.’
‘Why? Surely you can’t be that attached to a burst subserosal fibroid?’
‘I use that for teaching, just like the other samples. Now put it down.’
Instead she held it further from her body. ‘Why doesn’t it float, by the way? All your other specimens are floating.’
‘That depends on the exact formulation of the liquid and the density of the specimen. It means nothing.’
True, but it appeared to mean something to him. ‘Where’s the harm
? Let me have your dead uterus, and we can disprove the entire idea. You know that if I don’t, questions will linger forever.’
‘A man in my position is no stranger to gossip.’
‘A man in your position can’t afford to take chances. You took one ten years ago. I see you’ve learned to hold your temper since then. An affair can be quietly done away with. A murder is a much riskier proposition.’
‘So now I not only impregnated Diana, I killed her too?’
‘Who else had a motive?’
He took another step forward, closer to her but still blocking the door. It didn’t really matter since she’d never make it around him; the office wasn’t that big. ‘How about her violent, abusive husband who recently murdered three of our staff members and kidnapped a fourth? What did he do to you to create Stockholm Syndrome in only one morning? How did he get you so deep into his corner that you create a fantasy in order to shift blame to the one guy standing between you and your ambition?’
‘My ambition?’
‘You knew I’d never promote you to Leo’s position. So, get me out of the way and that sap Banachek becomes ME. You know you can get him to give you whatever you want.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘It is insane, because it will never work. I’m the Medical Examiner. You’ve only maintained your position because you and your cousin work the system. You probably framed Leo—’
‘What?’
‘—and the trauma of the past few days, added to the traumas of the past few years, have worked upon your delicate little mind until it broke. You’ve lost it, and no one is going to listen to you.’
She spoke through gritted teeth, determined not to let him get to her. ‘You might be surprised. And I am not leaving this office without this jar.’
‘Yes, you are. And when you do, it will be for good. You’re fired.’
‘Where’s James’ cellphone?’
He blinked. ‘What?’
‘You got the number from Don’s caller ID, when you huddled with him and Shephard, waiting for James to call. When you had a minute alone you called him and arranged a meeting. What did you tell him, that you knew who killed Diana, that you knew where the ring was? But then your call could be traced from his phone, so you had to take his phone with you. Is it here somewhere, too? I would think you would have learned to get rid of the evidence, given your line of work and all.’
‘Why would James agree to meet me? He didn’t even know me.’
‘Because James was about as desperate as a man could be. He wanted answers and knew the window to get them closed by the second. Did you know I was in the trunk?’
‘If I were the killer and I had—’ he smiled – ‘would you be standing here now?’
How could he not know? Theresa flashed back a few hours: James had said, ‘I’m stashing this woman.’ The listeners huddled around the phone had no idea where they were. They could have been in a safe house or a friend’s place where James locked her in a room or basement. Stone wouldn’t have heard her voice during the phone call. Unless James specifically mentioned her current location – and he hadn’t been in a sharing mood – Stone could have missed the possibility altogether.
It all fit. But she held the only possible proof in her hand, with no way out.
Like James, Stone had six inches and a hundred pounds on her, with those ski-pole-strengthened arms. And she had to let him attack first; otherwise he would use it as a sign of her mental instability. But he was also getting angry, frustrated at not getting his way, teetering on the brink of showing that famous temper.
‘I’m leaving with this jar,’ she said.
‘No.’
She started to walk past him. He put one hand on her neck and grabbed the jar with the other one, as if it were going to be that easy. She could smell his aftershave and the remnants of bourbon on his breath.
The movement caused the organ to shift inside its liquid bath. It bumped against the side of the jar, and in their frozen tableau they both heard the tiny, distinctive sound of metal against glass.
Suddenly, she knew. She could feel her eyes widen, and he returned her stare with narrowed lids. A decision had just been made, on both parts.
She hung on to the jar with both hands and kicked him in the groin. The angle wasn’t helpful and it wasn’t much of a kick, but she wrenched the jar back.
He bent slightly, then punched her in the face. It snapped her head back and put her off-balance. He pulled at the jar. There was no sound in the universe except their assorted puffs of breath and grunts of exertion.
Theresa kicked at his shin as hard as she could, and much more effectively than before, since she had gotten her spare work boots from her office closet. The steel toes came in handy. She tried for the groin again, but he knocked her back across the armchair, cracking her spine in not one but two places.
He leaned over and put his hands around her neck.
He can’t kill me, she told herself. He’ll never be able to explain it.
But she knew he could. He could take her body out the back, drop it in the park system somewhere and hope she’d be badly decomposed when found. The staff would come up with all sorts of scenarios in which she had gotten connected with James’ world and it’d bitten her in the ass.
Or he could hang her from a tree somewhere, or even in her office. Make it look like a suicide – it wouldn’t fool a decent pathologist for a second, but when he thoughtfully performed the process himself, sparing the other doctors and especially her pal Dr Banachek, then he could make her death look like anything he wanted. She had been upset. She had been traumatized. It wouldn’t look like a stretch to anyone who didn’t know her well.
Breathing in became an impossibility. Her throat burned as if it were on fire, and her face probably looked as red as his did, as it contorted with effort and fury and a force beyond reasoning. The back of her neck rested against the thin padding of the wooden arm, so her neck would snap if the suffocation didn’t get her first.
She tried to kick his sensitive areas, but her thighs stayed pinned open by his legs. She couldn’t attack his face because her hands were full with the jar. No handy letter openers or even a stapler sat within reach on the desk. Her vision began to narrow, the view nothing but stars.
She slid the jar out from between them and raised it over her head, let the other hand join them. Then she brought it down on to his skull as hard as she could. She heard the clunk, but missed the sound of breaking glass – the first indication she had that the jar had shattered were the nicks of small cuts from the broken glass against her fingers and then the stinging pain as wetness found them.
The effect was not immediate. The tension around her larynx eased by only an iota, not enough to let her suck in the oxygen she so desperately needed. But then the formalin coursed over his head and along his scalp. Theresa closed her eyes and turned her head as much as she could, but still she felt the cold drops on her temple and ear.
Then the corrosive formaldehyde mixture reached his eyes, and with a roar of pain he let go of her and straightened up. Theresa slumped to the side and fell to the floor, feeling more stabs to her palms and forearms. But that came as a distant sensation, far secondary to the glorious oxygen that now flooded her lungs. They pumped in and out, frantically, while the rest of her body lacked the energy to do anything else. She could have stayed unmoving for the rest of the night, but the pricks of searing pain in her hands and the burning of her skin and the spastic gruntings of the medical examiner as he lumbered around the room told her that she had to move. Now.
She opened her eyes, blinked for focus that didn’t want to come. A few inches away sat a smooth pink triangular balloon. Next to it sat a silver ring with a cluster of blue and white stones.
She pushed herself up, forcing slivers of glass further into her fingers.
The blurry figure of the Medical Examiner stumbled out of his office doorway, hands held to his face. A keening wail filled the air, and d
espite everything it made her want to go help him, to find a sink and a towel to flush out his eyes.
Then she thought of Diana Allman and instead reached for the phone.
She called the police, then scooped up the organ and the ring and went down the front staircase to the deskmen’s office.
THIRTY-THREE
The cops found Stone still in the men’s room, flushing his eyes with fresh water; a smart thing to do, except that every copious dousing found more formalin in his hair to bring forward, so a complete cleansing took quite a while. He had used the time to formulate a plausible scenario, in which a deranged forensic scientist broke into his office and attacked him, accusing him of multiple homicides to which she had a much closer connection than he had. He was lucky not to have lost either his sight or his life.
It wasn’t a bad job, Shephard admitted to Theresa. The man had an ability to think fast when it came to covering up his crimes. But as soon as the officers had gotten a look at the bruises on Theresa’s neck, the story abruptly became much less plausible.
Now she sat on a vacant autopsy table while a medic applied ointment to her irritated skin and bandages to the myriad of small cuts on her fingers. Don had brought her coffee, caffeine being her only prop with which to stave off a complete collapse. Zoe held a scale next to Theresa’s collarbone to get photos of the purplish handprints. The photographer had to shove Shephard out of the way more than once to get close enough.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Theresa said to him.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said immediately. ‘You’ve had a horrific day. I just want you to know … I’m sure you know that you shouldn’t be alone—’
‘I meant, for you to be a witness,’ she explained. ‘To whatever Christina might find in there.’
The pathologist stood at the stainless steel counter, carefully conducting the sectioning and examination of the uterus that should have been done ten years previously. The recovered sapphire ring sat on a clean cutting board under a magnifying lamp.