Whispers of the Dead (18 page)

Dead meat.
You'd grown up haunted by that knowledge. Then, when you were
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seventeen, you'd stared into a dying woman's eyes as the life -- the light -- went out of them.
And you'd realized that you were more than meat after all.
It had been a revelation, but over the years it had become harder to sustain
your belief. You'd set out to prove it, but each disappointment had only
undermined it more. And after all the work and planning, after all the risks,
tonight's failure was almost too much to take.
Wiping your eyes, you go to the kitchen table where the Leica is partially
disassembled. You'd started to clean it, but even that pleasure has turned to
ashes. You slump down on to the chair and consider the pieces. Lethargically,
you pick up the lens and turn it in your hand.
The idea comes from nowhere.
A sense of excitement starts to grow as it takes shape. How could you have
overlooked something so obvious? It was there, staring you in the face all
along! You should never have let yourself forget that you have a higher
purpose. You'd lost sight of what was really important, let yourself become
distracted. Lieberman was a dead end, but a necessary one.
Because if not for that you mightn't have realized what a rare opportunity
you've been given.
You feel strong and powerful again as you contemplate what has to be done. This is it, you can feel it. Everything you've worked for, all the
disappointment you've endured, it was all for a reason. Fate had dropped a
dying woman at your feet, and now fate's intervened again.
Whistling tunelessly to yourself, you start to strip off the uniform. You've
been wearing it all night. There's no time to take it to the laundry, but you
can sponge it down and press it.
You're going to need it looking its best.
14

The overweight receptionist was on duty at the morgue when I
arrived. 'You heard 'bout Dr Lieberman?' he asked. The sing-song
voice was cruelly mismatched to his huge frame. He looked
disappointed when I said I had, tutting and shaking his head so that
his chins quivered like jelly. 'It's a real shame. Hope he's OK.' I just
nodded as I swiped my card and went inside.
I didn't bother to change into scrubs. I didn't know if I'd be staying
or not.
Paul was in the autopsy suite where Tom had been working. He
was poring over the contents of an open folder on the workbench,
but glanced up when I entered.
'How was he?'
'About the same.'
He gestured at the papers in the folder. The bright fluorescent
lighting showed up the dark shadows under his eyes, making his
tiredness more evident. 'I was going through Tom's notes. I know
some of the background, but it'd help if you could bring me up to
speed.'
Paul listened silently as I told him how the body discovered at the
cemetery seemed almost certain to be Willis Dexter's, and how
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the remains exhumed from Dexter's grave seemed likely to belong
to a petty thief called Noah Harper. I described the pink teeth we'd
found on both Harper's remains and those of Terry Loomis, the
victim in the mountain cabin, and how they appeared to contradict
the blood loss and wounds on the latter s body. When I told him
that the hyoid bones of both victims were intact, and so far there
were no signs of knife cuts to the bones themselves, he gave a tired
grin.
'It's either or. Cause of death could be strangulation or stabbing,
but not both. We'll just have to hope we find definitive evidence for
one or the other.' He looked down at the folder for a moment, then
seemed to rouse himself. 'So, are you OK to carry on?'
It had been what I'd been hoping to hear earlier, but circumstances
robbed the moment of any satisfaction.'Yes, but I don't want to cause
any more friction. Wouldn't it be better if someone else took over?'
Paul closed the folder. 'I'm not asking you to be polite. With Tom
in hospital the faculty's going to be pretty stretched. I'll do what I
can here, but the next few days are going to be hectic. Frankly, we
could use the help, and it seems stupid not to use you when you've
been involved from the start.'
'What about Gardner?'
'It's not his decision. This is a morgue, not a crime scene. If he
wants our help I've made it clear that he can either trust our judgement
or find someone else. And he isn't about to do that, not now
he's lost Tom so soon after Irving was snatched on his watch.'
I felt a touch of guilt at the reminder. What with Tom's heart
attack, I'd almost forgotten about the profiler.
'And what about Hicks?' I asked.

Paul's expression hardened. 'Hicks can go to hell.'
It was obvious he was in no mood to make concessions. The
pathologist and Gardner would find him very different to work with
from Tom, I thought.
'OK,' I said. 'Shall I carry on reassembling the exhumed remains?'
'Leave them for now. Gardner wants to confirm whether or not
the bones from the woods are Willis Dexter's. Summer's made a start
on unpacking them, so that's our priority for the moment.'
I turned to go, but then remembered what I wanted to ask. 'Mary
said Tom tried to tell her something earlier. She said it sounded like
"Spanish". Does that mean anything to you?'
'Spanish?' Paul looked blank. 'Doesn't ring any bells.'
I went to get changed after that. Paul had to go to an emergency
faculty meeting, but said he'd be back as soon as he could. Summer
was already in the autopsy suite where the remains from Steeple Hill
had been taken, unpacking the last of the evidence bags from their
boxes.
Somehow I wasn't surprised to find Kyle helping her.
Engrossed in their conversation, neither of them heard me enter.
'Hi,' I said.
Summer gave a cry and spun round, almost dropping the bag she'd
just picked up. 'Omigod!' she gasped, sagging with relief when she
saw it was me.
'Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.'
She managed a shaky smile. Her face looked tear-stained and
blotchy under the bleached hair.
'That's OK. I didn't hear you. Kyle was just lending a hand.'
The morgue assistant looked embarrassed but pleased with
himself.
'How's it going, Kyle?'
'Oh, pretty good.' He waggled his gloved hand, the one he'd spiked
on the needle. 'Healed up nicely.'
If the needle had been infected it wouldn't matter whether the
wound was healed or not. But he'd be well enough aware of that
himself. If he wanted to put on a brave face then I'd no intention of
spoiling it.
'Summer was telling me about Dr Lieberman,' he said. 'How is
he?'
'He's stable.' It sounded better than saying there was no change.
Summer looked as though she might cry.'I wish I could have done
more.'
'You did great,' Kyle assured her, his round face earnest. 'I'm sure
he's going to be OK.'
Summer gave him a tremulous smile. He returned it, then remembered
I was still there.
'Well, uh, I suppose I ought to get on. See you later, Summer.'
Her smile grew more dimpled. 'Bye, Kyle.'
Well, well. Perhaps something good might come out of this after
all.
After he'd gone Summer seemed listless, without her usual
exuberance as we finished unpacking the remains.
'Kyle's right. It's lucky you were here last night,' I told her.
The overhead lights glinted on her piercings as she shook her
head. 'I didn't do anything. I feel like I should have done something more. CPR, or something.'
'You got him to hospital in time. That's the main thing.'
'I hope so. He seemed fine, you know? A little tired, perhaps, but
that's all. He joked about buying me pizza to make up for keeping
me late.' The ghost of a smile flickered across her face. 'When it got
to ten o'clock he told me to go home. He said he wanted to check
something before he left himself.'
I felt my curiosity stir. 'Did he say what?'
'No, but I guessed it was something to do with the remains from
the cabin. I went to change and was on my way out when I heard
his cell phone ring. You know that corny old ringtone he has?'
Tom would have had a few choice words to say at hearing Dave
Brubeck's 'Take Five' described as 'corny'. But I just nodded.
'I didn't take much notice, but then there was this sudden crash
from the autopsy suite. I ran in and found him on the floor.' She gave
a sniff and quickly wiped her eyes. 'I dialled 911 and then held his
hand and talked to him until the paramedics arrived. Telling him he
was going to be all right, you know? I'm not sure he could hear me,
but that's what you're supposed to do, isn't it?'
'You did well,' I reassured her. 'Was he conscious?'
'Not really, but he wasn't completely out. He kept saying his wife's
name, like he was worried about her. I thought perhaps he didn't
want her to be upset when she found out, so I told him I'd call her.
I thought it might be better coming from me than the hospital.'
'I'm sure Mary appreciated it,' I said, although I knew that sort of
news was never welcome, no matter who it came from.

Summer gave another sniff and wiped her nose. A little of her
bleached hair had come loose from its Alice band, making her look
younger than she was.
'I put his glasses and cell phone in a cupboard above the workbench
in your autopsy suite. I hope that's OK; they were on the floor
and I didn't know what else to do with them.'
I was about to say that I'd make sure Mary got them, but then her
words registered. 'You mean they were on the floor in my autopsy
suite?'
'That's right. Didn't I say? That's where Dr Lieberman collapsed.'
'What was he doing in there?' I'd assumed Tom had been in his
own autopsy suite when he'd had the heart attack.
'I don't know. Is it important?' she asked, looking worried.
I assured her that it wasn't. Even so, I was puzzled. Tom had been
reassembling Terry Loomis's skeleton. Why would he have broken off
to check on the exhumed remains?
The question continued to nag me as we took the skull and other
bones from the cemetery to be X-rayed, but it was another hour
before I had a chance to do anything about it. Leaving Summer to
make a start on cleaning the remains, I went to see where Tom had
collapsed.
The suite looked exactly as I'd left it. Only the skull and larger
bones were set out on the examination table; the rest were still waiting
their turn in plastic boxes nearby. I stood there for a while, trying
to tell if anything had been moved or changed. But if it had I
couldn't see it.
I "went over to the cupboard where Summer had left Tom's glasses
and phone. The glasses looked both familiar and forlorn without
their owner. Or perhaps I was just colouring them with my own
emotions.
I slipped them into my top pocket and was about to do the same
with the phone when something occurred to me. I paused, feeling
its weight in my hand as I tried to decide if what I had in mind was
too much of an invasion of privacy.
That all depends what you find.
The phone had been left on overnight, but it still had plenty of
power. It didn't take long to find where incoming numbers were
stored.The most recent had been logged at 22.03 the previous night,
just as Summer had said.
The same time as Tom's heart attack.
I told myself that it could be a coincidence, that the two events
might not be connected. Still, there was only one way to find
out.
The number was from a landline with a local Knoxville code. I
keyed it into my own phone. I had enough doubts about what I was
doing as it was without using Tom's. Even then I still hesitated. You might as well try it. You've come this far.
I rang the number.
There was a pause, then the engaged tone sounded in my ear. With
a sense of anticlimax I rang off and left it a minute before trying
again. This time I was connected. My pulse quickened as I waited for
someone to answer.
But no one did. The phone rang on and on, repeating itself with
monotonous regularity. Finally accepting that no one was going to
pick up, I broke the connection.
There were any number of reasons why the line should have been
busy one minute and unanswered the next. The person at the other

end might have gone out, or decided to ignore an unknown caller.
It was useless speculating.
Still, as I
left the autopsy suite, I knew I wasn't going to rest until
I found out.

I was too busy for the rest of that day to think about trying the
number again.The remains from Steeple Hill still had to be cleaned,
but that was a relatively straightforward job. Scavengers and insects
had already stripped any traces of soft tissue from them, so it was
largely a matter of degreasing them in a detergent solution.
But we'd no sooner got them in the vats when the medical records
of Noah Harper and Willis Dexter were delivered to the morgue.
Knowing Gardner would want their IDs verified as soon as possible,
I left Summer to finish cleaning and drying the bones while I turned
my attention to that task.
Of the two, Dexter s identity proved the easier to confirm. The
X-rays we'd taken that morning of the skull recovered from the
woods showed identical fractures to those in X-rays taken at
the mechanic's post mortem. It was what we'd expected, but now it
was official: Willis Dexter wasn't the killer. He'd died in a car crash
six months earlier.
That still left the question of whose body had been left in his
grave.
There seemed little doubt that it was Noah Harper's, but we
needed more than superficial similarities of age and race to be sure.
Unfortunately, there were no post mortem or dental records to
provide convenient identification. And while the eroded hip and
ankle joints I'd found on the body from the casket would explain
Harper's characteristic limp, there were no X-rays of them in his
medical records. Medical insurance and dental care were obviously
luxuries the petty thief couldn't afford.
In the end it was the childhood breaks in Harper's humerus and
femur that identified him. They at least had been X-rayed,

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and although the grown man's skeleton was aged and worn, the
long-healed fault lines in his bones remained constant.
By the time I'd satisfied myself as to the identities of both sets of
remains, it was growing late. Summer had left a couple of hours
earlier, and Paul had called to say that his meeting had overrun, so he
wouldn't be able to make it back to the morgue after all. He'd got
his priorities right, going home to his pregnant wife rather than
working all hours. Smart man.
I would have liked to carry on working, but it had been a tiring
day, emotionally as well as physically. Not only that, but I hadn't eaten
since breakfast. Much as I might want to make up for lost time,
starving myself was no way to go about it.
As I changed I called Mary to see how Tom was. But her phone was
switched off, which I guessed meant she was still with him. When I
called the ICU itself, a polite nurse told me he was stable, which I knew
meant there was no change. I was about to put away my phone when
I remembered the number I'd taken earlier from Tom's.
I'd forgotten all about it till then. I tried it again as I left the
morgue, nodding goodnight to the elderly black man who now sat
at reception.
The number was engaged.
Still, at least it showed that someone was home. I pushed open the
heavy glass doors and stepped outside. Dusk was settling on
the nearly empty hospital grounds, giving the evening a dying golden
glow as I called the number once more. This time it rang. I slowed as
I waited for someone to answer. Come on, pick up.
No one did. Frustrated, I ended the call. But as I lowered my
mobile I heard what sounded like a distant after-echo.
A phone was ringing nearby.
It stopped before I could tell where it was coming from. I waited,
but the only sounds were birdsong and the distant wash of traffic.
Knowing I was probably over-reacting to what was in all likelihood
just a coincidence, I called the number again.
A lonely ringing broke the evening's silence.
Perhaps thirty yards away, partially screened by a border of overgrown
shrubs, was a public payphone. No one was using it. Still not
quite believing this wasn't some fluke, I ended the call. The ringing
stopped.
I redialled as I walked over. The payphone started ringing again. It
grew louder as I approached, half a beat behind the tinnier version
coming from my mobile. This time I waited until I was only a few
feet away before I disconnected.
Silence fell.
The payphone was in a half-shell booth, open to the elements.
Branches from the shrubs had grown round it, so that it seemed to
be sinking into the greenery. I knew now why the line had either
been busy or gone unanswered when I'd called. Hospitals were one
of the few places where payphones were still in demand, visitors calling
relatives or for taxis. Yet no one would bother to pick up if one
rang.
I stepped into the booth without touching the phone. There was
no doubt that someone had called Tom from here the night before,
but I was at a loss as to why. Not until I looked back down the path
I'd just walked along. Through the straggly branches of the shrubs I
had a perfect view of the morgue entrance.
And of anyone who came out.
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