by Sue Grafton
"Didn't I see you at Bobby's funeral?" I asked.
"Might have. I saw you." His eyes settled on me with a disconcerting gaze. Where had I seen that color before? In a swimming pool where a dead man was floating like a lily pad. That had been four years ago, one of the first investigations I ever did.
"Chair over there if you have time to sit." He managed to get this sentence out while holding his breath, dope smoke locked in his lungs.
I glanced around and spotted an old wooden lawn chair, which I dragged over to the step. Then I took the address book out of my handbag and passed it to him, open to the back cover. "Any idea who this is? It's not a local number."
He glanced at the penciled entry and then gave me a quick look. "You tried calling?"
"Sure. I also tried the only Blackman listed in the book. Its a disconnect. Why? Do you know who it is?"
"I know the number, but it's not a telephone listing. Bobby moved the hyphen over."
"What's it for? I don't understand."
"These first two digits indicate Santa Teresa County. Last five are the morgue code. This is the I.D. number on a body we got in storage. I told you we had two that had been out there for years. This is Franklin."
"But why list it under Blackman?"
Kelly smiled at me, taking a long pull off his joint before he spoke. "Franklin's black. He's a black man. Maybe it was Bobby's joke."
"Are you sure?"
"Reasonably sure. You can check it yourself if you don't believe me."
"I think he was searching for a handgun out there. Would you have any idea where he might have started?"
"Nope. Place is big. They must have eighty, ninety rooms out there that haven't been used in years. Could be anywhere. Bobby would have worked his shift by himself. He had the run of the building as long as no one found out he was away from his work."
"Well. I guess I'll just have to wing it. I appreciate your help."
"No problem."
I went back to my office. Kelly Borden had told me that a kid named Alfie Leadbetter would be working the three-to-eleven shift at the morgue. The guy was a friend of his and he said he d call ahead and let him know I was coming out.
I hauled out my typewriter again and made some notes. What was this? What did the corpse of a black man have to do with the murder of Dwight Costigan and the blackmailing of his former wife?
The phone rang and I picked it up like an automaton, my mind on the problem at hand. "Yes?"
"Kinsey?"
"Speaking."
"I wasn't sure that was you. This is Jonah. You always answer that way?"
I focused. "God, sorry. What can I do for you?"
"I heard about something I thought might interest you. You know that Callahan accident?"
"Sure. What about it?"
"I just ran into the guy who works Traffic and he says the lab boys went over the car this afternoon. The brake lines were cut just as clean as you please. They transferred the whole case to Homicide."
I could feel myself doing the same kind of mental double take I'd done just minutes before when I finally heard what the name Blackman meant. "What?"
"Your friend Bobby Callahan was murdered," Jonah said patiently. "The brake lines on his car had been cut, which means all the brake fluid ran out, which means he crashed into that tree because he rounded the curve with no way to slow down."
"I thought the autopsy showed he had a stroke."
"Maybe he did when he realized what was happening. That's not inconsistent as far as I can tell."
"Oh, you're right." For a moment I just breathed in Jonah's ear. "How long would that take?"
"What, cutting the brake lines or the fluid running out?"
"Both, now that you mention it."
"Oh, probably five minutes to cut the lines. That's no big deal if you know where to look. The other depends. He probably could have driven the car for a little while, pumped the brakes once or twice. Next thing he knew, he'd have tried 'em and boom, gone."
"So it happened that night? Whoever cut the lines?"
"Had to. The kid couldn't have driven far."
I was dead silent, thinking of the message Bobby'd left on my machine. He'd seen Kleinert the night he died. I remember Kleinert mentioning it too.
"You there?"
"I don't know what it means, Jonah," I said. "This case is starting to break and I just can't figure out what's going on."
"You want me to come over and we'll talk it out?"
"Not, not yet. I need to be by myself. Let me call you later when I have more to go on."
"Sure. You've got my home number, haven't you?"
"Better give it to me again," I said and jotted it down.
"Now, listen," he said to me. "Swear to me you won't do anything stupid."
"How can I do anything stupid? I don't even know what's going on," I said. "Besides, 'stupid' is after the fact. I always feel smart when I think things up."
"God damn it, you know what I'm talking about."
I laughed. "You're right. I know. And believe me, I'll call you if anything comes up. Honestly, my sole object in life is to protect my own ass."
"Well," he said grudgingly. "That's good to hear, but I doubt it."
We said our good-byes and he hung up. I left my hand on the receiver.
I tried Glen's number. I felt she should have the information and I couldn't be sure the cops would bring her up to date, especially since, at this point, they probably didn't have any more answers than I did.
She picked up the phone and I told her what was going on, including the business about Blackman in Bobby's address book. Of necessity, I told her as much as I knew about the blackmailing business. Hell, why not? This was no time to keep secrets. She already knew that Nola and Bobby were lovers. She might as well understand what he had undertaken in Nolas behalf. I even took the liberty of mentioning Sufi's involvement, though I still wasn't sure about that. I suspected that she was a go-between, ferrying messages between Nola and Bobby, counseling Bobby, perhaps, when his passion clashed with his youthful impatience.
She was quiet for a moment in the same way I had been. "What happens now?"
"I'll talk to Homicide tomorrow and tell them everything I know. They can handle it after that."
"Be careful in the meantime," she said.
"No sweat."
Chapter 26
* * *
There was still an hour and a half of daylight left when I reached the old county medical complex. From the number of parking spaces available, it was clear that most of the offices were closed, personnel gone for the day. Kelly had told me there was a second parking lot around the side that was used by the janitorial staff at night. I didn't see any reason to park that far away. I pulled into a slot as close to the entrance as I could get, noting with interest that there was a bicycle chained to a rack just off to my left. It was a banged-up old Schwinn with fat tires and a fake license plate wired onto the rear, reading "Alfie." Kelly had told me the building was generally locked up by seven, but that I could buzz in and Alfie would buzz back to admit me.
I grabbed my flashlight and my key picks, pausing to pull a sweatshirt over my tank top. I remembered the building as chilly, even more so, I imagined, if I was there after sunset. I locked my car and headed for the entrance.
I paused at the double doors in front and pressed a bell to my right. After a moment, the door buzzed back, releasing the lock, and I went in. The lobby was already accumulating shadows and reminded me vaguely of an abandoned train station in a futuristic movie. It had that same air of vintage elegance: inlaid marble floors, high ceilings, beautiful woodwork of buffed oak. The few remaining fixtures must have been there since the twenties, when the place was built.
I crossed the lobby, glancing idly at the wall directory as I passed. Almost subliminally, a name caught my eye. I paused and looked again. Leo Kleinert had an office out here, which I hadn't realized before. Had Bobby driven this far for weekly psychiat
ric sessions? Seemed a bit out of the way. I went downstairs, footsteps scratching on the tile steps. As before, I could feel the temperature dropping, like a descent into the waters of a lake. Down here, it was gloomier, but the glass door to the morgue was lighted, a bright rectangle in the gathering darkness of the hall. I checked my watch. It wasn't even 7:15.
I tapped on the glass for form's sake and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. I opened the door and peered in.
"Hello?"
There was no one in evidence, but that had happened to me before when Dr. Fraker and I had visited. Maybe Alfie was in the refrigerated storage room where the bodies were kept.
"Heellloo!"
No response. He'd buzzed me in, so he had to be around here someplace.
I closed the door behind me. The fluorescent lighting was harsh, giving the illusion of winter sunlight. There was a door to my left. I crossed and knocked before I opened it to find an empty office with a dark brown Naugahyde couch. Maybe the guy on the graveyard shift snagged some shut-eye in here when nothing else was going on. There was a desk and a swivel chair. The outside of the window was covered with ornamental wrought-iron burglar bars, the daylight blocked out by a mass of unruly shrubs. I closed the door and moved over to the refrigerated room where the bodies were kept, peering in.
No Alfie in sight. Inside, the light was constant, occupants laid out on blue fiberglass berths, engaged in their eternal, motionless naps, some wrapped in sheets, some in plastic, necks and ankles wound with what looked like masking tape. Somehow, it reminded me of quiet time at summer camp.
I returned to the main room and sat for a while, staring at the autopsy table. My customary procedure would have been to snoop into every cabinet, drawer, and storage bin, but it felt disrespectful here. Or maybe I was afraid I'd stumble onto something grotesque: trays of dentures, a Mason jar chock-full of floating eyeballs. I don't know what I thought I'd see. I shifted restlessly. I felt as if I were wasting time. I went to the door and looked out into the hall, tilting my head to listen. Nothing.
"Alfie?" I called. I listened again, then shrugged and closed the door. It occurred to me that as long as I was there, I could at least verify that the number Bobby'd written down was, in fact, the same as the number on Franklin s toe tag. That wouldn't do any harm. I took the address book out of my handbag and turned to the penciled entry on the back cover. I went into the cold-storage room again, moving from body to body, checking I.D. tags. This was like some kind of bargain-basement sale only nothing was marked down.
When I got to the third body, the numbers matched. Kelly was right. Bobby'd shifted the hyphen over so the seven-digit code looked like a telephone number. I stared at the body, or what I could see of it. The plastic that Franklin was wrapped in was transparent but yellowing, as though stained with nicotine. Through the swaddling, I could see that he was a middle-aged black man of medium height, slim, with a face of stone. Why was this corpse significant? I was feeling anxious. I figured Alfie would be back shortly and I really didn't want to be caught nosing around in here. I went back to my chair.
Coming out of the cold-storage room was like leaving an air-conditioned theater. It made the autopsy room feel balmy by comparison. I was getting itchy to explore. I couldn't help myself. I was irritated that no one was there to help me and feeling edgy from the quiet. This was not a fun place. Ordinarily, I don't hang out in morgues and it was making me tense.
Just to soothe my nerves, I peered into a drawer, testing the contents against the grisly images I'd conjured up. This one contained scratch pads, order blanks, arid miscellaneous paper supplies. Reassured, I tried the next drawer: small vials of several drugs, the names of which I did not recognize. I was warming up here and I checked on down the line. Everything appeared to be related to the business of dissecting the dead; not surprising, given the locale, but not very enlightening.
I straightened up and looked around the room. Where were the files? Didn't anybody keep records around this place? Somebody had mentioned that there were medical charts stored out here, but where? This floor? Somewhere on one of the floors above? I didn't relish the idea of creeping through the empty building by myself. I'd been picturing Alfie Leadbetter at my side, telling me what was accessible and where I might start. I'd even pictured slipping him a twenty-dollar bill if that's what it took to enlist his aid.
I glanced at my watch. I'd now been here forty-five minutes and I wanted some results. I grabbed my handbag and went out in the hall, looking in both directions. It was getting darker down here, although I could see through a window at the end of the hall that it was still light outside. I found a wall switch and flipped on the lights and then I wandered along the corridor, reading the small white signs mounted above each office door. The radiology offices were right next to the morgue. Beyond that, Nuclear Medicine, and nursing offices. I wondered if Sufi Daniels had occasion to come out here.
Something was beginning to stir at the back of my brain. I was thinking about the cardboard box full of Bobby s belongings. What was in it? Medical texts and office supplies and two radiology manuals. What was he actually doing with those? He hadn't even been a medical student and I couldn't think why he'd need the manuals for equipment he might not be using for years, if ever. He'd indicated no particular interest in radiology.
I went upstairs. It wouldn't hurt to look at that stuff again. When I reached the front entrance, I slipped off my sweatshirt and wedged it in the opening. I could push the door open with no problem, but I didn't want the lock snapping shut behind me as I went out. I crossed to my car and unlocked it, wrestling the carton out the backseat. I removed the two radiology books and leafed through them quickly. These were technical manuals for specific equipment, information about the various gauges and dials and switches, with a lot of esoteric talk about exposures, rads, and roentgens. At the top of one page was a penciled number, like a doodle, surrounded by curlicues. Franklins again. The sight of the now familiar seven-digit code seemed eerie, like the sound of Bobby's voice on my answering machine five days after he died.
I tucked the two manuals under my arm and locked my car again, leaving the box on the front seat. Slowly, I returned to the building. I let myself in, pausing to pull on my sweatshirt. As long as I was on the first floor, I did a superficial survey. I kept thinking it was medical records I was looking for, the handgun tucked down in a bankers box packed with old charts. This had been a working hospital at one time and there had to be a records department somewhere. Where else would old charts be kept? If my memory of St. Terry's served me, the Medical Records Department was fairly centrally located so that doctors and other authorized personnel would have easy access.
Not many offices on this floor appeared to be occupied. I tried door handles randomly. Most were locked. I rounded the corner at the end of the hall and there it was, "Medical Records" painted above a set of double doors in a faded scrawl. I could see now that many of the old departments were similarly marked: florid lettering on a painted scroll, as though by declaration of the conquistadors.
I tried the knob, expecting to have to experiment with my key picks. Instead, the door swung open with a low-pitched creak that might have been contrived by a special-effects man. Waning daylight filtered in. The room yawned before me, barren, stripped of everything. No file cabinets, no furniture, no fixtures. A crumpled cigarette pack, some loose boards, and a couple of bent nails were scattered across the floor. This department had literally been dismantled at some point and God only knew where the old records were now. It was possible they were somewhere in one of the abandoned hospital rooms above, but I really didn't want to go up there by myself. I'd promised Jonah I wouldn't be stupid and I was trying to be a good scout on that score. Besides, something else was nagging at me.
I returned to the stairs, descending. What was that little voice in the back of my head murmuring? It was like a radio playing in the next room. I could pick up only a faint phrase now and then.
When I
reached the basement, I crossed to the radiology office and tried the knob. Locked. I got out my key picks and played around for a while. This was one of those "burglar-proof locks that can be picked, but it really is a pain in the ass. Still, I wanted to see what was in there and I worked patiently. I was using a set of rocker picks, with random depth cuts spaced along the top, the back side of each pick ground to an oval. The whole idea is that with enough different cut combinations, together with an applied rocking motion, somewhere along the way all the pins will, by chance, be raised to the shear line at the same time, popping the lock.
Like hiding, the only way to approach the whole process is to give oneself up to it. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes, easing the pick forward, rocking it, applying slight pressure when I felt movement of any sort. Lo and behold, the sucker gave way and I let out a little exclamation of delight. "Oh, wow. Hey, that's great." It's this sort of shit that makes my job fun. Also illegal, but who was going to tell?
I eased into the office. I flipped the overhead light on. It looked like ordinary office space. Typewriters and telephones and file cabinets, plants on the desks, pictures on the walls. There was a small reception area where I imagined patients seated, waiting to be called for their X rays. I wandered through some of the rooms in the rear, picturing the procedures for chest X rays and mammograms, upper G.I. series. I stood in front of the machines and opened one of the manuals I'd brought in from the car.
I checked the diagrams against the various dials and gauges on the X-ray equipment itself. It was a match, more or less. Maybe some variation according to year, make, or model of the actual machinery installed. Some of it looked like the stuff of science fiction. Massive nose cone on a swinging arm. I stood there, manual open in my arms, pages pressed to my chest while I stared at the table and the lead apron that looked like a baby bib for a giant. I thought about the X rays I'd had taken of my left arm two months ago, just after I'd been shot.