Sam glanced down at her jeans, white cotton shirt, and tennis shoes. “I can’t come to work dressed like this. I’ve got to go home and shower and change.”
Shelly frowned, then smiled and looked at Matt. “Matt, do you think you could spare the time to run Sam home so that I won’t be late to my lecture?”
Matt’s heart gave a little lurch. “Sure, no problem.”
* * *
The morning traffic was fierce, but Matt didn’t care. The longer it took him to get to Sam’s house, the more time he got to spend with her.
He always had the radio tuned to K-OLD, a station that played music from the sixties and seventies. He liked to joke that, like Christine, the car in the old Stephen King movie, it was the only station the ’Vette would pick up. He was surprised when Sam began to sing along with several of the tunes. When she said that golden oldies were favorites of hers, Matt told her that she was forgiven for not knowing what kind of car the ’Vette was. Old music was a particular favorite of his too.
Sam lived in a duplex in the Village, a small community between Rice University and the medical center. As Matt pulled up in front of her unit, she turned to him and said, “Would you like to come in and have some coffee while I shower and change?”
It was practically the first personal thing she’d said to him since they’d met. “Sure. You want me to wait and give you a ride back to the hospital?”
“If you’re not in a hurry. It’ll take me about twenty minutes, and then we can be on our way. My roommate and I share a car, and I don’t know just what her schedule is today.”
Sam opened the door, led Matt into the living room, and told him to make himself comfortable while she started the coffee, then disappeared into the kitchen.
As he sat there, the bedroom door opened and a woman shuffled out. She was short, about five feet two inches, had tousled black hair that was partially covering her face, and was dressed only in a large T-shirt that had a picture of Snoopy on the front.
She halfheartedly covered a prodigious yawn and stretched, looking around as if she couldn’t quite figure out where she was. As her eyes lighted on Matt, she said, “Hi. I’m TJ.”
“Hi, TJ, I’m Matt.”
Sam came into the room carrying two cups of coffee. “Matt, this is TJ, my roommate, but don’t ask her what the initials stand for.”
She handed one of the cups to Matt and the other to TJ. “Rough night?”
TJ answered, “Yeah. I was on call and a couple of gomers kept me up all night. The bastards had the mistaken idea that they could die on my service.”
Sam laughed. “I’ll bet you showed them.”
“Damn right. They were alive when I left this morning—kicking and screaming but alive.”
Sam looked over at Matt. “TJ’s a third-year resident in internal medicine.”
She looked back toward TJ. “Matt’s a professor of emergency medicine, and he’s consulting with Shelly and me on some cases.”
TJ raised her eyebrows and gave a low whistle. “Oh, a professor! Looks like you hit the jackpot, Sam.”
Matt blushed, but Sam just waved her hand at him as she turned and went into the bedroom.
TJ finished the coffee in two swallows. As she bent over to put the cup on a table next to the couch, she whispered, “You’d better be good to her, Matt, or I’ll kill you in some slow and particularly painful way.” Then she winked and shuffled tiredly back into the bedroom. At the door, she turned and waved. “Good night. I’m gonna grab a few more hours of shut-eye while I can.”
“Good night, TJ. It was nice meeting you.”
She pointed a finger at Matt, pursing her lips and trying to look stern. “You remember what I said, or I’ll come looking for you with a syringe filled with God knows what.”
A few minutes later Sam came out of the bedroom, slipping her white lab coat on. “Come on, Matt. Duty calls.”
On the way back to the medical center, Sam looked at Matt out of the corner of her eye and asked, “What did you think of TJ?”
“Cute, very cute.”
Sam punched him in the shoulder. “Cute? The woman has an IQ of a hundred and fifty and is one of the smartest medical residents in the country and all you can say is she’s cute?” She shook her head, a disgusted look on her face, as if she expected such a comment from a man.
“Okay, okay,” Matt said, realizing his mistake. “How about charming, intelligent, witty . . .”
As Sam nodded her head in agreement, Matt finished with, “And she has very nice legs too!”
That got him another punch in the shoulder, but it was worth it. It also got a laugh out of Sam, his first one. He decided to press his luck. “Is she going with anyone, seriously I mean?”
Sam looked over and arched an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“’Cause, I think she’d be just right for Shooter. He needs to meet a woman who will put him in his place.”
She thought for a moment, then smiled and nodded. “I think you’re right. That would be a fun match to watch.”
Heart in his throat, Matt took a chance. “How about seeing if she’ll go out with him on a blind date? Maybe we could double-date this weekend, if neither of you is on duty.”
Matt held his breath as she considered this, a slight scowl on her face. “I don’t know, Matt.” She glanced at him and her face softened. “I’ve dated a couple of doctors in the past, and it didn’t work out too well.”
Matt considered what to say next, finally deciding on, “Oh, and I thought you two were friends.”
She raised her eyebrows. “We are. What is that remark supposed to mean?” she asked, her voice flat.
Matt shrugged, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Well, if you’re really her friend, how can you keep her from meeting a terrific guy like Shooter just because you’re afraid to go out with me?”
“Afraid? Listen, buster, I’m not afraid of anyone, male or female. You name the time and the place.”
Matt smiled. “Saturday night. We’ll pick y’all up at seven.”
Sam blew out her breath, a crooked smile on her face. She knew she’d been outsmarted.
“Okay, Matt. You win this one, but I warn you, the next one won’t be so easy.”
Matt pulled into the medical center parking lot thinking the trip had been much too short.
Fourteen
Sheldon Silver had his feet on his desk and was leaning back in his chair when Matt walked into his office.
Samantha Scott was sitting on the edge of Shelly’s desk, munching on an apple and holding a container of blueberry yogurt. Shelly was eating a bagel smothered with cream cheese. She looked at his bagel with a yearning expression on her face. “Jesus, Shelly, how can you eat that for breakfast? The preservatives alone are enough to kill you, never mind the cholesterol.”
Shelly grinned around the bagel, the cream cheese making a moustache on his upper lip. “Ha, you’re just jealous, my little shiksa, because I am past the age where I have to worry about my figure.” He flopped his feet off the desk and sat up, popping the last of the bagel into his mouth. “Besides, cholesterol is just a myth perpetuated by the internists who want us all to be miserable and skinny. That’s why I’m not starting on my new diet until tomorrow.”
Matt smiled, shaking his head. He had been through many diets with Shelly over the years. They typically lasted for a few days; then he would gorge himself and gain back all he had lost.
As Matt stood in the doorway watching Shelly and Sam, he began to suspect their relationship was more like father and daughter than professor and assistant.
Shelly looked up, as if noticing Matt’s presence for the first time.
“Good morning, Matt.”
“Good morning,” Matt said, fearing he was blushing. “Hiya, Sam.”
“Mornin’, Matt,” she said, no particular warmth in her voice. “What’re you doing down here in purgatory this early?”
“I came to discuss our work on the murders and to see w
hat our next step should be.”
Shelly wiped the cream cheese off his lips, picked up a thick stack of papers, and pitched them to the front of the desk for Matt and Sam to see. “These are the police reports from the double homicide last night. We can go over them later, after we’ve done the autopsies. By the way, I’ve checked with the administrator of the hospital and with the dean of the medical school, and they’ve both agreed to my department working closely with the police on these murders. How about you, Matt?”
“The chief of emergency services has agreed to get substitutes for my lectures, but I’ll still have to cover the emergency rooms. Course, that’ll enable me to keep a closer watch on what kind of homicides are coming in, just in case we get some more ‘throat cases.’”
Sam clasped her hands in front of her, clearly excited by the prospect of playing detective. “Then that settles it, doesn’t it? We’re in the hunt!”
Shelly shook his head. “Not necessarily, it depends on if they are willing to meet my demands or not.”
“Which are?”
He held up his hand. “You’ll find out soon enough. Clark is supposed to meet with us later today, but, meanwhile, we’ve got a lot of work to do on the autopsy of last night’s victims.”
Shelly got up and led the way to the morgue. On the way, he said to Matt, “I think you should be involved with the autopsies also. The more you see about how the killer works, the easier it’ll be for you to recognize his handiwork the next time you see it.”
“Jeez, Shelly. I don’t know. I never much liked autopsies as a student.”
He dismissed Matt’s objection with a wave of his hand. “Oh, you’ll get used to it.” He grinned. “It’s just like the work you do in the ER, only there’s less blood.”
As they entered the morgue, Shelly stopped just inside the door and looked around. “Now where is Gregory? He’s supposed to be here at all times.”
The huge room appeared empty, the steel tables waiting for their human cargo to be delivered to them.
“Ah well, he’s probably on his break,” said Sam, as she walked over to the cooler door and pulled it open.
Gregory whirled around from his position leaning over the naked female corpse on the gurney. “Oh . . . uh . . . hello, Dr. Scott, Dr. Silver. Boy, you really startled me!”
Sam put her hand to her open mouth and Shelly frowned. Gregory had blood on both hands and some was smeared on his cheeks and chin.
“What the hell are you doing, Gregory?”
“Uh, well . . . I was trying to rearrange the gurneys and this body”—he turned and pointed at the female—“sort of started to fall.” He looked at his hands, and his face blanched even whiter than usual when he noticed they were covered with blood. “When I grabbed her and put her back, I guess I got some blood on me.”
With a disgusted snarl, Shelly said, “For God’s sake, go and wash up. We’ll get the bodies ready for post.”
After he left, Sam started to speak, but Shelly shushed her with a finger to his lips. “Sh-h-h, we’ll discuss it later.”
They rolled the gurneys containing the man and woman out of the cooler and began the autopsies. Matt stepped close to observe, trying to forget the ghoulish appearance of Gregory and concentrate on what the pathologists were about to uncover. As Shelly began to dictate, Matt’s mind kept returning to the bedroom where they had first examined the couple. The room where the couple had made love and held each other in supposed security, never dreaming of the horror that was to befall them there. The shiver that shook Matt and made goose bumps appear on his arms wasn’t due entirely to the coldness of the morgue.
After they finished the autopsies, Sam and Shelly and Matt went to Christy’s Seafood Restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was on Fannin Street, about two blocks from the medical center and accessible without getting into the Houston lunchtime traffic. Shelly had a fried fish sandwich, french fries, and a Diet Coke, while Sam and Matt munched on shrimp salads.
Shelly took a large bite of his sandwich and said to Matt, “Okay, Professor Virchow, tell me what you think about our findings.” An inside joke, Professor Virchow being the father of the science of pathology, of which Matt was mostly ignorant.
Sam wiped mayonnaise off her lips with a dainty gesture. “Before we get into that, Shelly, what did you think about Gory?”
Shelly raised his eyebrows. “Gory?”
“Yeah, you know, Gregory . . .” She leaned over the table and whispered to Matt, “That’s what all the residents call him, because he’s so creepy!” Then she shuddered, as if someone had walked over her grave.
Shelly glanced at Matt, smiling like a proud father when one of his children says something cute. He chewed for a few moments, looking at the ceiling and thinking. “Well, I don’t for a minute buy his story about the corpse falling off the gurney. He acted too guilty when we walked in on him.”
Sam grimaced at the memory. “He looked like he had seen a ghost. In fact, I thought he was going to faint dead away for a minute.”
“You know, Sam, it’s not unusual for morgue assistants, or mortuary workers, to have rather strange . . . sexual fantasies about the bodies they work with.” As he said this, Shelly looked at Matt, blushing a bright crimson. “In fact, it’s not unheard of for them to actually act out those fantasies in bizarre ways.”
Sam put her fork down and looked at her salad as if it had suddenly spoiled.
“Shelly, you don’t mean to tell me that you think Gory actually . . .” she began, eyes wide.
He held up his hand, “No, I don’t know what he was doing with, or to, that corpse.” He finished off his fish, his appetite unaffected by their discussion. “But I do know that we’re going to have to watch Gregory very closely from now on.” He glanced at the ceiling and said, almost to himself, “Especially in view of the types of cases we’re working on now.”
Shelly downed the last of his Diet Coke. “Now, Matt, tell me what you concluded from the autopsy.”
Matt concentrated, trying to recall the autopsy in detail. “Well, to begin with, the female was pretty much the same as the one last week. The fatal wound was complete avulsion of the structures of the throat: the trachea, the esophagus, and the major blood vessels of the neck.”
Shelly nodded. “Go on.”
Sam watched Matt, chewing absentmindedly on a cracker, her shrimp salad forgotten.
“The actual cause of death seemed to be loss of blood and the resultant cardiac arrest. There was also almost a complete exsanguination of the entire blood supply of the body. Just as you found on the other woman.”
“Do you still think the murderer sucked the blood out and drank it?” Shelly asked Sam.
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
Matt glanced at Shelly, but he just shook his head, as if undecided.
“And that’s what you think should be put in the official report?” Shelly asked her, frowning slightly.
“Why, yes. Don’t you?”
Shelly sighed. “Yes. But unfortunately, this is the real world, not some academic ivory tower. Convincing the authorities of the validity of our findings is every bit as important as determining the correct cause of death.”
Sam slumped a little, and said, “Oh, I see what you mean. You think it’s hard to believe us when we say ‘Yessir, Mr. Policeman, this young woman was killed by a bite on her neck and then the perpetrator drained or sucked all her blood out of her body’?”
Shelly looked up and saw their waitress standing behind Sam, her face as white as a sheet, as she stared at Sam with a horrified expression on her face. Shelly held up his hands and tried to explain to her that they were just discussing a movie they’d seen and ordered coffee for all of them. Matt doubted she believed him, but at least she didn’t call the cops.
Shelly read the dessert menu with a wistful look on his face, until he saw Sam frowning at him. He put it down without ordering any.
After a few moments, the manager of the restaurant de
livered their coffee, staring at them suspiciously. When he left, Shelly crossed his legs and leaned back, cradling his coffee in both hands. He peered closely at Sam for a moment, then seriously asked, “Why don’t you say what all this means, Sam? Are you afraid of the word?”
Sam looked at him, then over at Matt and nodded her head. “Yes, Shelly, I am.”
Matt stopped, coffee cup halfway to his lips. “Shelly, I’m afraid you all are losing me here. Just what are you getting at?”
Shelly pursed his lips, then glanced at his watch. “Uh-oh, it looks like it’s time for our meeting with Clark and Shooter. Let’s drink up, and I’ll answer all your questions at the meeting.”
* * *
They had just arrived at Shelly’s office when there came a knock at the door. Damon Clark and Shooter Kowolski entered and stood just inside the door.
Shooter smiled when he saw Matt and dipped his head slightly. He looked around and saw Sam leaning back against one of the bookshelves. She looked at him and smiled. Shelly came forward with outstretched hand and greeted them.
As Sam said hello to Damon and Shooter, Matt watched Shooter’s face. His eyes never left hers, even when Shelly was talking, and he had that dumbstruck look of someone who has fallen suddenly and unexpectedly in love. Matt thought to himself, Here we go again. He went through this with Shooter about every couple of months. He was always confusing hormone-induced lust with love, then crying on Matt’s shoulder about the fickleness of women.
After seating them and offering coffee, which they declined, Shelly asked if they were ready to begin. Clark asked Shelly if he still held to his theory about the cause of death of the woman found by the side of the road.
Shelly said, “Yes.”
Shooter looked up from his notebook. “You mean that she bled to death from a throat wound caused by human teeth?”
Shelly glanced at Sam, then answered, “Yes.”
Clark stood and went over to the coffeepot and motioned for permission to pour himself a cup. Shelly nodded and said, “Help yourself, Damon.”
After pouring the cup, Clark turned and leaned back against the counter, drinking the coffee and peering at the three of them over the brim. Shooter frowned and chewed on the end of his pencil, his eyes on Sam.
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