[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
again. I belong to this kind of
Catholic social club for single people. Kate got into it too. Sometimes the
people in the club go to hospitals, children s homes, and so on, do a little
volunteer work. I met her on one of those deals . . . here we are, Shores
Motel.
But when the car had stopped, in a splendor of light from the signs and
windows of the ornate office, the old man made no immediate move to get out.
He just sat there, looking at Joe so regally that Joe wondered for a moment if
the chauffeur was expected to get out and walk around and open the door for
the distinguished passenger.
But it turned out that his passenger had only been mulling over another
question. Do you know where poor
Kate s body is at present?
The Chicago morgue. Why? Joe was suddenly a little angry at this pointless
nosiness. He shifted in his seat to face the other more fully. The lights from
the motel showed Corday s chin smooth-shaven, lean and firm despite the lines
of age. The mouth was tough in a thin-lipped way, beneath a mildly beaky nose.
The eyes above were still in shadow, though lights made motionless spots of
bright reflection in them. Joe thought suddenly: I would not want this old man
Page 24
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
for my enemy.
The thin-lipped mouth said: Determination of the cause of death has long been
something of a specialty of mine.
Would you be kind enough to drive me to the Chicago morgue tonight? Or at
least give me the address?
Tonight?
The old man nodded, minimally.
Doctor, I don t know what kind of hours they keep in Europe, but they re not
going to let any strangers into that place tonight.
Corday s mouth smiled solidly. But I should like to see the building, at
least, that I may know where it is. And I
am eager to discover something of the great city near us, and eager also to
continue our so-interesting conversation.
Would it be a great inconvenience, for you to drive me there?
They re not going to let you in, Joe explained, with what he felt was
beautiful patience.
Or would you prefer to go to your home, and brood alone upon life s
sadnesses?
The morgue was a little south of the Loop, only a couple of blocks from
central police headquarters on State.
After driving past both buildings, Joe found a vacant parking space about
halfway between them, on a street of tall office buildings all locked up and
darkened for the night. He needed a parking space because it seemed that he
was going to have to do a little more patient explaining still.
Look, Dr. Corday, you re a real good listener, for which I m grateful. It s
been a help talking to you. But as far as trying to get into that place
tonight, it s silly. They won t let us in just because I m a cop or you re a
doctor.
I ask only that you wait here in the car for a few minutes, Joe, if you would
be so kind. I shall walk back to the building myself.
Joe shook his head. Maybe you can just walk around London alone at night, I
wouldn t know. Here it isn t always safe ah!
The stubborn old man had started to get out. Joe, determined to use gentle
force if necessary to make him behave sensibly, had taken him firmly by the
coatsleeve. It wasn t reasonable that the old man s flesh could really have
delivered a stinging electric shock to his hand through the thick cloth. But
that was what it had felt like. Rubbing his
thumb and fingers together now, testing for injury, Joe could feel nothing
wrong. He must have somehow twinged a nerve or twanged a tendon.
By now the old man was standing at his ease outside the re-closed door. I
shall be quite safe, he murmured with a smile, and touched his dark hatbrim.
He turned away and in a moment long strides had taken him around a corner.
All right, the chances were, of course, that nothing would happen. Winter
nights were safer than summer ones on the streets of the core city, and the
streetlighting here was excellent. But to a stranger, a perhaps innocent
foreigner, there was a special responsibility.
Joe got out of the car on his side, buttoned up his jacket, and walked to the
corner, flexing the fingers of his right hand. They felt fine, now. He would
catch up with the difficult old man and walk along. How did he get into these
things? But at the same time he was relieved not to be home alone in his
apartment.
He stood at the corner, squinting thoughtfully down a long, broad sidewalk
almost empty of pedestrians. The old man was nowhere in sight.
SEVEN
The visitor stood alone in a dark room, halfway along a broad, terrazo-floored
aisle that was lined on both sides with double tiers of massive metal drawers.
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
In the next room, the possessor of a pair of middle-aged lungs was sitting in
a slightly squeaky chair, sitting quite still and on the verge of snoring. The
light coming under the closed door from the room where the watchman dozed was
all that the visitor had to let him see the tags on the drawers, but it was
more light than he needed. What handicapped him in his search was not darkness
but the impenetrable official jargon on the tags, labels for this foreign
city s mysterious dead. Presently, with an almost inaudible hiss of relief, he
gave up trying to be methodical never his strong suit anyway and slid a long
drawer out at random.
The sheet-draped body in it was that of an adolescent black male whose
forehead had been grossly damaged, the rest of the face less so, by some
violent flat impact. Automobile, pavement, weapon? Touching the dark marble
shoulder, the visitor still could not be sure of which. But the physical
contact established for him some rapport. Not only with this one truncated
identity, but, by some dimly perceived extension of the contiguity, with all
the silent company about.
That was a start. The old man slid the young black statue back out of sight
and stood with closed eyes in the near-
dark, concentrating deeply. Now he began to pace along the aisle, brushing his
long fingers on the cold handles of the drawers. Top row, bottom row, top
again . . . he knew without pulling them open that in one was a woman,
somewhat too old to be the girl he wanted, in the next, a man, another man, a
boy, a girl . . . .
Even before the chosen drawer flowed out on easy rollers at his touch, he was
quite sure that he had found Kate
Southerland. His hand went out to delicately turn back the rim of coarse white
sheet from the face of Judy s sister.
The revealed face froze him into immobility.
For the second time in as many hours he found himself taken completely by
surprise. All his delicately forming plans, estimations, guesses, regarding
the Southerland affair, every theory that he had begun to play with in his
mind, all vanished like the rising mist at dawn.
This was not true death before him.
Oh, the girl was cold and unbreathing certainly, her heart as quiet as her
hands: medical student and expert pathologist alike would certify her dead.
But the old man was able to perceive the energies of altered life that still
charged all this pretty body s cells. Again he drew a minimal breath, and
uttered that faint, almost reptilian sound, expressing to himself his own
surprise. Had she enemies so bitter that they meant her to be autopsied alive?
Or . . .
He passed his flat, extended hand once close above the girl s face, forehead
to chin. Then he made the same motion in reverse. He needed only the one pass
to make Kate s eyes open for him. They were unseeing as yet, but a lovely
milk-blue, glass-blue, in the night.
It was important to know whether there had been any attempt at autopsy as yet,
and impersonally he drew the sheet down farther. The virginally flat belly was
marked by no incision. Good.
With doctorly gentleness he drew the sheet up to just below Kate s chin. Then
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]