by Sue Grafton
Tentatively, I lifted the plastic away from the face. Male, white, in his twenties. There was no pulse evident but that was probably because there was a ligature wound around his neck so tightly that it had all but disappeared, sinking into the flesh until his tongue bugged out. The body was cool, but not cold. I stopped breathing. I thought my heart would stop as well. I was reasonably sure I’d just made the acquaintance of Alfie Leadbetter, newly deceased. At that instant I wasn’t as worried about who had killed him as who had buzzed the door open to let me in. I didn’t think it was Alf. I suddenly suspected that I’d been cruising around that deserted building in the company of a killer who was undoubtedly still there, waiting to see what I was up to, waiting to do to me what had been done to the hapless morgue attendant who’d gotten in the way.
I backed out of the room as fast as I could, my heart banging away, sending sick spurts of fear through my electrified frame. The morgue was reassuringly bright, but so deadly still.
Mentally, I traced an escape route, wondering what choices I had. The windows down here were covered with burglar bars too narrow to slip through. The exterior doors were heavy glass, embedded with wire that I might or might not be able to penetrate. I certainly wasn’t going to smash through them without calling attention to myself. I’d have to try for the stairs, pushing out of the same double doors I’d come through in the first place, though the idea of even going out into the hall at this point was nearly more than I could bear.
Somewhere above me, a door slammed and I jumped. I heard someone coping down the stairs, whistling aimlessly. A security guard? Someone coming back after work? I absolutely could not move. It was too late for action, too late for escape, and there was no place to hide. Transfixed, I stared at the door as footsteps approached. Someone paused in the corridor, singing the first few snatches of “Someone to Watch over Me.” The knob turned and Dr. Fraker came in, glancing up, startled, at the sight of me.
“Oh! Hello. I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “I thought you were off talking to Kelly.”
I let out a breath and found my voice. “I did that. A little while ago.”
“Jesus, what’s wrong? You’re as white as a ghost.”
I shook my head. “I was just on my way out when I heard the door slam. You scared the shit out of me.” My voice cracked in the middle of the sentence as if I’d just reached puberty.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you like that.” He had on his surgical greens. I watched him cross the counter and open a drawer, taking out instruments. From the next drawer down, he took out a vial and a syringe.
“Listen, we’ve got a problem,” I said.
“Oh really. What’s that?” Dr. Fraker turned to smile at me and Nola’s line popped into my head. “We’re talking about a lunatic. Someone so crazy,” she had whispered. Dr. Fraker’s eyes were fixed on mine as he filled the syringe. The penny dropped. She hadn’t wanted to stay in the marriage. She had wanted out. Bobby Callahan in his naivete had thought he could help.
It was there in his face and the lazy way he moved. This man meant to kill me. Judging from the tools he’d assembled, he had all of the equipment he needed ��� nice table with a drain, hacksaws, scalpels, a working disposal just under the sink. He knew anatomy too, all the tendons and ligaments. I pictured a turkey wing, how you have to bend it backward to ease the blade into that joint.
I usually cry when I’m scared and I could feel tears well up. Not sorrow, but horror. Given all the lies I’d told in my life, right then I couldn’t think of one. My mind was empty of thought. There I stood with the X ray in my hand, the truth, I’m sure, written all over my face. My only hope was to act before he did and move twice as fast.
I dove for the door, fumbling with the knob. I yanked it open and ran for the stairs, taking two at a time, then three, looking back with a moan of raw fear. He was coming out of the door, syringe held loosely in one hand. What scared me was that he was moving slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. He’d taken up the song lyric where he left off, a sort of tuneless rendition that didn’t do the Gershwins justice.
“Like a little lamb who’s lost in the wood… I know I could always be good… to one who’ll watch over me…”
I reached the top of the stairs. What did he know that I didn’t know? Why did he feel that this leisurely pace would suit when I was flying toward the entrance? I lowered a shoulder and slammed up against the double doors, but neither gave way. I rammed them again. The entranceway, locked like this, formed a small cul-de-sac. If I gave him time to reach the corridor, I’d have no way out. I reached the hall just as he got to the top of the stairs.
Chit, chit. I could hear his footsteps scratch on the tile while he sang on.
“Although he may not be the man some girls think of as handsome, to my heart he’ll carry the key…”
Still taking his time. I wanted to scream, but what was the point? The building was empty. It was locked up tight. Dark except for the pale light filtering in from the parking lot. I needed a weapon. Dr. Fraker had his little syringe filled with whatever he meant to pop me with. He was a big guy too, and once he made contact, I was in trouble.
I flew down the hall to the old medical-records room and slammed the door back on its hinge. I snatched up a two-by-four, still running, and headed back out into the corridor, racing for the far end. There had to be stairs. There had to be windows to smash, some way out.
Behind me, from a man who couldn’t even carry a tune, I heard… “Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed, follow my lead, oh how I need, someone to watch over me…”
I reached the stairwell and headed up, beginning to analyze the situation as I ran. At this rate, he could chase me all over the building. I’d soon be exhausted and he wouldn’t even be breaking a sweat. Not a good idea, this form of pursuit. I reached the landing and snatched for the door. Locked. There was just one more floor. Was I being trapped or herded? In either case, I had the feeling he was in charge, that he’d set this all up in advance.
He was just coming into the stairwell below me as I took to the stairs again, heading toward the third floor, the two-by-four clutched in my hot little hand. I didn’t like this. The door at the third floor flew back at a touch and I stepped into the darkened hall. I took off to my right, forcing myself to slow my pace. I was out of breath from climbing the stairs, bathed in sweat. I considered searching out a place to hide, but my choices were limited. There were rooms opening off on either side of me, but I was afraid I was going to get cornered in one. All he had to do was check each one in turn and pretty soon he’d figure out where I was. Also I hate hiding. It turns me into a six-year-old and I’m sick of that. I wanted to be on my feet, in motion, taking action instead of crouching down with my hands held over my face hoping God had rendered me transparent.
I made another right-hand turn. Behind me, I heard the door to the third-floor landing slam shut. I spotted an elevator halfway down the corridor on the right-hand side. I sprinted, and when I reached it, pounded on the “down” button with my palm.
Dr. Fraker had just taken up a new tune, this time whistling the first few bars of “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.” Was this man sick or what?
I banged on the button again, listening fervently as the elevator cable whirred softly on the other side of the door. I looked to my right. There he came, his surgical greens showing up as a pale glow in the shadows. I heard the mechanism stop. He seemed to be moving faster, but he was still twenty yards away from me. The elevator doors slid open. Oh fuck!
I stepped forward just as I flashed on the fact that there was nothing there except a yawning shaft and a gust of cold air wafting up from below. I caught myself half a second from tumbling into that pitch-black hole. A low cry escaped me as I caught at the doorframe, swinging out over the pit for an instant before I managed to right myself. I stumbled backward to safety but I’d lost my purchase. I was down and the two-by-four flew out of my hand
, skittering off. I flipped over on my hands and knees scrambling toward it.
He had caught up to me by then and he grabbed me by the hair, hauling me upright just as my hand closed around the board. I swung it up, whacking at him. I made contact but the angle was awkward and there was no force behind the blow. I felt the sting of the needle in my left thigh. Both of us barked out a sound at the same time. Mine was a shrill yelp of pain and surprise, his the low grunt as the impact from the two-by-four registered. I had the advantage of a split second and I took it, lashing out with a side kick that caught him in the shin. No good, too low. The wisdom of self-defense would have it that there’s no point in simply inflecting pain on your attacker. It’ll just piss him off. Unless I could disable him, I didn’t have a chance.
He grabbed at me from behind. I snapped my left elbow back, but again I was slightly off the mark. I pushed at him, kicking repeatedly at his shin until he backed off, breathing hard. I cracked him one across the shoulder with the two-by-four and ran, pounding down the hall. I stumbled briefly, but regained my footing. I felt as if I’d stepped in a hole, and it occurred to me belatedly that whatever he’d injected me with was taking effect. My left leg was feeling wobbly, my kneecap loose, both feet going numb. The same fear that had sent adrenaline coursing through my body was speeding some drug on its way. Like snakebite. They say you shouldn’t run.
I glanced back. He was clutching his shoulder, just beginning to move in my direction, coming slowly again. He didn’t seem worried that I’d get away, so I had to guess that he had jammed the door to the stairwell as he came through. Either that or he knew that the shit he’d popped me with would soon knock me out. I was losing contact with my extremities and I could scarcely sense my own grip on the board. A chill was seeping from my skin toward my core as if I were being put through a quick-freeze process for shipping to God knows where. I was working as hard as I could, but the darkness had become gelatinous and I felt slow. Time was grinding down too as my body labored against the drug. My mind was working, but I felt myself distracted by the odd sensations I experienced.
Oh, the bothersome details that finally fall into place like a little right-brain joke. It did come to me, in a flash, like a bubble through my veins, that Fraker was the one supplying Kitty with drugs, probably in exchange for information about Bobby’s search for the gun. The stash in her bed-table drawer was a plant. He’d been there that night. Maybe he thought it was time to take her out, lest she in her guilt admit to her own duplicity where Bobby was concerned.
The distance to the corner of the hallway had been extended. I’d been running forever. The simple commands I was managing to send to my body were taking too long and I was losing the feedback system that records a response. Was I, in fact, running? Was I going anywhere? Sound was being stretched out, the echo of my own footsteps coming belatedly. I felt as if I were bounding down a corridor with a floor like a trampoline. Flash number two. Fraker had rigged the autopsy report. No seizure. He’d cut the brake lines. Too bad I hadn’t figured it out before now. God, what a dummy I was.
I reached the corner slowing, and I could feel my body folding down on itself. As I rounded the corner, I had to pause. I propped myself against the wall, working to
breathe. I had to clear my head. Stay upright. I had to lift my arms if I could. Time had begun to stretch out like taffy, long strands, sticky, hard to manage.
He was singing again, treating me to some oldies but goodies in his own private hit parade. He’d moved on now to “Accentuate the positive… eliminate the negative”… vowels dragged out like a phonograph record slowing when the power shuts off.
Even the voice in my own brain got hollow and remote.
Crouch, Kinsey, it said.
I thought I might be crouching but I couldn’t tell anymore where my legs were or my hips or much of my spine. My arms were feeling heavy and I wondered if my elbows were bent.
Batter up, the voice said and I believed, but couldn’t have sworn to the fact, that I was drawing the two-by-four back, elbow crooked as my aunt had taught me long long ago.
Day was passing into night, life into death.
Fraker’s voice droned out the song. “Acceeennntuate the pooosssitive, eeeellliiiimindaate the neeegatiiiive…”
When he came around the corner, I stepped into the swing, the two-by-four aimed straight at his face. I could see the board begin its march through space, like a series of time-lapse photographs, light against dark, closing down the distance. I felt the board connect with a sweet popping sound.
It was out of the ball park and I went down with the roar of the crowd in my ears.
Epilogue
*
They told me later, though I remember little of it, that I managed to make my way down to the morgue, where I dialed 911, mumbling a message that brought the cops. What comes back to me most clearly is the hangover I endured after the cocktail of barbiturates I was injected with. I woke in a hospital bed, as sick as a dog. But even with a pounding head, retching into a kidney-shaped plastic basin, I was glad to be among the living.
Glen spoiled me silly and everyone came to see me, including Jonah, Rosie, Gus, and Henry, bearing hot cross buns. Lila, he said, had written to him from a jail up north, but he didn’t bother to reply. Glen never relented in her determination to reject both Derek and Kitty, but I introduced Kitty Wenner to Gus. Last I heard, they were dating and Kitty was cleaning up her act. Both had gained weight.
Dr. Fraker is currently out on bail, awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder and two counts of first-degree murder. Nola pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, but served no time. When I got back to the office, I typed up my report, submitting a bill for thirty-three hours, plus mileage; a total I rounded off to an even $1000. The balance of Bobby’s advance I returned to Varden Talbot’s office to be factored into his estate. The rest of the report is a personal letter. Much of my last message to Bobby is devoted to the simple fact that I miss him. I hope, wherever he may be, that he sails among the angels, untethered and at peace.
Respectfully submitted,
Kinsey Millhone