The Moon by Night (50 page)

“Thank you, John. It is cold down in the lab, but I'll try to make them as comfortable as I can.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, sounding unconvinced. He wound Shannon's pink muffler around her neck and then Sean's plaid one around his. Of course, they both had on their handmade matching booties, and Shannon had her two pink bows at the base of her enormous ears. The two looked up at Cheney as though very pleased with themselves.

“Silly dogs,” she murmured affectionately.

She turned to go, but James called out, “Here, Dr. Duvall, we made them some chew toys. You'd better take a couple of them. Wouldn't want them chewing on anything down in your laboratory or—” he elbowed his younger brother in the ribs—“or anything in the morgue, especially!”

“Stop it, James. They wouldn't,” John said uneasily.

James and John had taken narrow lengths of leather, tightly braided them, and formed them into shapes like great bones. Then they had soaked them in water and put them by the stove to dry and harden.

Obediently Cheney took them. “Thank you, James, John. It was very kind of you to make them toys.”

“Kinda had to,” James said with amusement. “They were starting in on the workbench, and we figured they'd have the stables eaten up in a week or so. Not to mention that at your office—”

Now John elbowed his brother and said loudly, “They're just like babies, aren't they? Teething and all. Well, bye, Dr. Duvall! We'll be sure and give Dr. Buchanan and Mr. Irons-Winslow your message!”

“Good-bye,” Cheney said with amusement, hoping that whatever had happened at the office did not involve any personal injuries.

Since Cheney had the dogs with her, she went down the outside steps that went to the cellar entrance. The dogs followed her, their noses raised high, sniffing curiously. Cheney had not yet brought them into the lab, and she hoped they wouldn't be bothered by the strong medicinal smells or made nervous by the morgue. She had learned that Sean and Shannon were sensitive dogs, alert to Cheney's and Shiloh's moods, to the atmosphere in a room, to tone of voice. Certainly Cheney had no silly superstitions or fears concerning dead bodies, but she did know that dogs had a phenomenal sense of smell and the scent of the dead might upset them. As she came in and turned up several of the gaslights, she watched Sean and Shannon carefully.

They split up, as if by plan, Sean taking the far end of the laboratory, walking down the long row of cabinets and shelves, sniffing ponderously, looking up at the darkened windows, eyeing some of the jars and boxes with suspicion.

Shannon, meanwhile, sniffed all around the walls of the morgue, her head down to the joint where the walls met the floor. Finally she came to the door and sniffed fast and lightly, as dogs will when they are eager. She lifted her head, looked up at the door as if she were looking for something, and started to wag her tail.

Watching her, Cheney giggled. “Shannon, try not to be so sensitive and high-strung.” Shannon turned her head to look at Cheney reproachfully, and her long red tongue got caught hanging out the side of her mouth, which made Cheney laugh even harder. “Silly old puppies,” she said softly.

Both of them kept nosing around the lab area while Cheney stored her coat and gloves and started preparing the dissection instruments. Sketes had made the dogs a feather mattress, a cushion made of flannel and stuffed with goose down, that Cheney laid in front of the stove. They found this and started investigating it, their tails going like lopsided metronomes, at Sketes's scent, Cheney figured. They loved Sketes as if she were their long-lost mother, though she kept up a continual monotone of rebuke when she was with them.

Satisfied that the dogs were going to be just fine, Cheney went in the morgue, rolled out the body, and went to work. An autopsy, particularly if it was requested by the police for purposes of investigation into cause of death, was a painstakingly slow process, made even more so because Cheney believed that the autopsy notes should be made at the time of the autopsy, not afterward, to ensure the highest degree of correctness and detail.

As generally happened when Cheney was utterly absorbed in something, she became oblivious to her environment. She could be making complex notes in a patient file, for instance, and not hear someone speak to her. She could look up from a book to think of something, stare into space, and not see a person walk past. And she had found in the past months that when she worked too long without moving, sometimes her legs and feet would half freeze and swell up so much that she could barely walk when she finally got up to do so. As she went to work now, Cheney made a promise to herself that she would stop every so often and walk around to keep the blood flowing in her legs.

She tested the rigor mortis of her victim—which had passed—and recorded the fact. Then she shaved the woman's head where the injury was located, made a careful drawing, and wrote a meticulous description. By then she realized that her feet were freezing, so she put down her pen and notes, stretched, and walked in circles around the dissection table, also working her head around in circles to loosen the already tight muscles of her neck.

Abruptly she stopped and looked around the cavernous room. “Sean? Shannon?” she called, a little shocked at how tense she sounded. The dogs were nowhere in sight.

They haven't disappeared, you idiot,
Cheney chided herself.
But I'd better find them. They don't need to go up the stairs
. The thought of Shannon strolling into Henry Norton's cubicle with her pink bows on those ridiculous ears and her little pink booties made Cheney giggle as she lit a lantern and turned it up high. “Sean, Shannon, you bad children, where are you?” she called, rounding the corner of the morgue.

She distinctly heard a whine, not of distress or warning, but just in recognition that she had called them. It came from the farthest end of the cellar, down at the other end of the rows of storage shelves. Cheney briskly went to the end of the rows, stopped and lifted the lantern and peered down each row. At the third she saw a light blur far down. “Shannon? Is that you?” she scolded, moving toward the dog. “What do you think you're doing, standing there in the dark like some—”

She had come near enough to make out the dog. Shannon turned and looked at her as she approached, and Cheney saw that her big sad-clown face looked uncharacteristically intent. The dog swiveled her head back around front quickly.

As Cheney neared the dog, she could see a shadow moving beyond Shannon. The shadow of a man, sliding back and forth as if he were at a dead end. Then Cheney saw, beyond the shadow, another blur. Sean was there. The two dogs had the man cornered.

Irish wolfhounds are not at all aggressive with humans. They are called gentle giants because of their sweet dispositions. Neither Sean nor Shannon was growling, and when Shannon had turned, Cheney could see that she was wary of the man, but not agitated.

All of this went through Cheney's mind in just a few seconds as she stood still and silent, her lantern raised high and throwing a glare that lit her face starkly. She understood that the man could see her much better than she could see him. “H-hello?” she said weakly. Quickly she cleared her throat and managed to sound less afraid and more confident. “Who are you? What are you doing down here?”

The shadow stopped his odd dodge-and-pace and stood still.

Cheney didn't move, her heart in her throat.

The man marched forward confidently. As he walked past Shannon, giving her the widest berth possible, and came into the light, Cheney saw it was Dr. Marcus Pettijohn, a set look of rather forced amusement with a touch of impatience on his face. He began in a loud brazen voice, “There you are, Dr. Duvall! I was not at all sure about these dogs, so I just tried to get by—”

He saw her face, stopped, and his features hardened with sudden comprehension. His eyes narrowed to bare slits. He took another step toward her.

Cheney backed up a step, suddenly feeling fearful. He knew; he had seen from her face that he wasn't going to be able to brazen it out. He looked desperate but set. And dangerous.

She took another step back.

He began walking toward her.

Cheney turned and ran. Shannon was right beside her, pressing so close to her that Cheney almost tripped. She heard Dr. Pettijohn's hard footsteps behind her.

Wildly she rounded the corner, ran as fast as she could to her dissection table, let the lantern fall onto it, and grabbed a long bone knife. Whirling, she held it up, her eyes wild.

He came running, his face a mask of fury. Cheney knew that both Sean and Shannon were pressing against her, but she sensed they wouldn't actually attack him. They might defend her if he attacked her….

By then it might be too late
was her panicky fleeting thought. She grasped the knife tightly in her sweaty hand. His burning gaze shifted ever so slightly to the dissection table behind her.

He stopped his headlong run, locking his knees and grinding to a stop like a train that has suddenly had the brakes thrown. He made a guttural moaning sound through clenched teeth. His eyes stretched so wide the whites all around his pupils showed starkly, his face distorted with horror.

“Uhhhh,” sounded his animal groan, “noooo…Manon…Manon?”

They all froze, as still as if they were some nightmarish illustration for a lurid murder mystery: the horrified man, the terrified woman, the vigilant dogs, the waxy corpse.

Without another sound, Dr. Marcus Pettijohn turned and fled as though the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels.

Cheney remained frozen for what seemed like long minutes, but when the outside cellar door slammed shut, she jumped, and the spell was broken. Throwing down the knife, Cheney picked up her skirts and ran. By the time she reached the door, she realized the dogs were running too, trying to get outside. She remembered what Shiloh had said about pack behavior.

I'll try to get James and John to catch Dr. Pettijohn, but not the dogs. They might just decide that he is truly fair game if he's running
.

Cheney shuddered at the picture of her big bumbling puppies actually running “game” to the ground and maneuvered out the door without letting Sean and Shannon out. She lost precious seconds, though. By the time she had closed the door securely and bounded up the steps to ground level, Pettijohn was just a dark shadow in the trees, running east toward Sixth Avenue.

Helplessly she looked at Roe's, all the way across the grounds. James and John were there, for the lamps were still lit, but it would be impossible for them to hear her. But even as she doggedly started running toward the stables, she saw a procession come up Seventh Avenue: a hackney coach with a riderless horse tied behind it, Officer Goodin, and—blessed sight!—her husband escorting the coach.

She began shouting, and Shiloh saw her.

Immediately he spurred Balaam. The horse galloped at blurring speed across the grounds, and then did a picture-perfect quarter horse quick-stop, tucking his hind legs under, braking with them, and rearing up, nose to the sky, neighing like a war horse. He came to a full stop just a few feet from Cheney, and as if he could fly, Shiloh sailed out of the saddle and landed right in front of her. “What's wrong?”

“Dr. Pettijohn. He's running, that way!” she said, pointing.

“Are you hurt?” Shiloh demanded.

“No. I just hated for him to get away, Shiloh!”

Shiloh turned and shouted to Officer Goodin, who was riding up, slightly less dramatically, on his old gelding Gino. “Pettijohn's on foot going toward Sixth Avenue!”

Without a word Officer Goodin wheeled the horse and coaxed him to a gallop.

Shiloh turned back to her and grabbed her and hugged her with such strength that she could hardly breathe. “I thought you'd been hurt,” he whispered raggedly. “It scared me.”

“I'm all right. I'm fine,” she said, clinging to him. “But, Shiloh, I don't think I've ever been so glad to see you riding to my rescue—once again.”

****

Shiloh and Cheney went back down to the lab while Dev took Solange and Lisette into the hospital to get them fed and bedded down in one of the private rooms. By now it was two-thirty in the morning.

The dogs started baying with joy as soon as they saw Cheney and Shiloh return, so Shiloh took charge of them while Cheney covered Manon securely, put her back in the morgue, and cleaned up the dissection trays and instruments. They had barely gotten the dogs calmed down and had sat themselves down at the lab table to try to make sense of the night when Dev and Cleve Batson came downstairs, along with Carlie, who was carrying the blessed tea tray.

“I'm never taking off for a week again,” Cleve grumbled as they settled down on high stools at the lab table. “Just look at the mess all of you made of our lovely hospital while I wasn't paying attention.”

Carlie, who was serving, looked so distressed that Shiloh quickly said, “He's just joking, Carlie.”

Cleve smiled at the boy as he took the steaming cup of tea from him. “I am, Carlie. I would never say such a thing about you. You always do a good job.” He took a sip of tea, then murmured, “Mmm, especially with tea. Takes a special gift to make good tea, Carlie.”

“I know,” he soberly agreed. “Dr. Duvall said I have the gift. Dr. Duvall said I can do something even Iron Man can't do.”

“She's right,” Shiloh said lightly. “She usually is.”

Carlie nodded in vehement agreement. Then he asked Dev, “Can I go now? Or are you going to ask me some more questions about Dr. Pettijohn?”

“You can go, Carlie,” Dev said gently. “You did very well tonight.”

They waited until his STEP-step, STEP-step, STEP-step died away on the stairs.

The four looked at each other wearily.

“You first, Dev,” Cheney finally said. “You knew first.”