The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia (лучшие книги читать онлайн TXT) 📗
"Why don't you stop by the mansion on your way home?"
"I can probably be free in about two hours," I tell him. "I'll see you then, Kay. Say hello to Ms. Berger," he goes on. "When I was attorney general, we had a case that involved her office. I'll tell you about it sometime."
Off 4th Street, the enclosed bay where bodies are received looks like a square, gray igloo appended to the side of my building. I drive up the ramp and stop at the massive garage door, realizing with intense frustration that I have no way to get in. The remote opener is in my car, which is inside my garage at the house I have been banished from. I dial the number for the after-hours morgue attendant. "Arnold?" I say when he answers on the sixth ring. "Could you please open the bay door?"
"Oh, yes ma'am." He sounds groggy and confused, as if I just woke him up. "Doing it right now, ma'am. Your opener not working?"
I try to be patient with him. Arnold is one of those people who is overwhelmed by inertia. He battles gravity. Gravity wins. I am constantly having to remind myself that there is no point in getting angry with him. Highly motivated people aren't fighting for his job. Berger has pulled up behind me and Marino is behind her, all of us waiting for the door to rise, granting us entrance into the kingdom of the dead. My portable phone rings.
"Well, ain't this cozy," Marino says in my ear.
"Apparently she and the governor are acquainted." I watch a dark van turn into the ramp behind Marino's midnight blue Crown Victoria. The bay door begins to lurch up with screeching complaints.
"Well, well. You don't think he has something to do with Wolfman leaving us for the Big Apple, do you?"
"I don't know what to think anymore," I confess. The bay is large enough to hold all of us, and we get out at the same time, the rumbling of engines and shutting of doors amplified by concrete. Cold, raw air jars my fractured elbow again, and I am baffled to see Marino in a suit and tie. "You look nice," I
dryly comment. He lights a cigarette, his eyes fastened to
Berger's mink-draped figure as she leans inside her Mercedes to collect belongings from the backseat. Two men in long, dark coats open the tailgate of the van, revealing the stretcher inside and its ominous, shrouded cargo.
"Believe it or not," Marino says to me, "I was going to stop by the memorial service for the hell of it, then he decides to get whacked." He indicates the dead body in the back of the van. "It's turning out to be a little more complicated than we thought at first. Maybe more than a case of urban renewal." Berger heads toward us, loaded down with books, accordion files and a sturdy leather briefcase. "You came prepared." Marino stares at her with a flat expression on his face. Aluminum clacks as stretcher legs open. The tailgate slams shut.
"I really appreciate both of you seeing me on such short notice," Berger says.
In the glare of the lighted bay, I note the fine lines on her face and neck, the faint hollows in her cheeks that tattle on her age. At a glance, or when she's made up for the camera, she could pass for thirty-five. I suspect she is a few years older than I am, closer to fifty. Her angular features, short dark hair and perfect teeth coalesce into a portrait of the familiar, and I connect her with the expert I have seen on Court TV. She begins to resemble the photographs I pulled up on the Internet when I released search engines to find her in cyberspace so I could prepare myself for this invasion from what seems an alien galaxy.
Marino doesn't offer to help her carry anything. He ignores her the same way he does me when he is stung or resentful or jealous. I unlock the door leading inside as the attendants wheel the stretcher in our direction, and I recognize the two men but can't recall their names. One of them stares at Berger with starstruck eyes. "You're the lady on TV," he pipes up. "Holy smoke. That lady judge."
"'Fraid not. I'm no judge." Berger looks them in the eye and smiles.
"You ain't the lady judge? You swear?" The stretcher clatters through the doorway. "I guess you want him in the cooler," one of the men says to me.
"Yes," I reply. "You know where to sign him in. Arnold's around here somewhere."
"Yes ma'am, I know what to do." Neither attendant makes any indication that I might have ended up in their van last weekend as another delivery had my destiny turned out differently. It is my observation that people who work for funeral homes and removal services aren't shocked or even moved by much. It is not lost on me that these two guys are more impressed with Berger's celebrity than with the fact that their local chief medical examiner is lucky to be alive and is faring rather poorly in the public eye these days. "You ready for Christmas?" one of them asks me.
"Never am," I reply. "You gentlemen have a happy one."
"Lot happier than he's gonna have." Indicating the pouched body, they roll off in the direction of the morgue office, where they will fill out a toe tag and sign in the newest patient. I push buttons to open several sets of stainless steel doors as we walk over disinfected floors, passing coolers and the rooms where autopsies are done. Industrial-strength deodorizers are heavy-handed in their presence, and Marino talks about the case from Mosby Court. Berger asks him nothing about it, but he seems to think she wants to know. Or maybe he is showing off now.
"First, it looked like a drive-by since he was in the street and his head was bloody. But I gotta tell you, now I'm wondering if maybe he got hit by a car," he informs us. I open doors leading into the dim silence of the administrative wing while he goes on to tell Berger every detail of a case he hasn't even discussed with me yet. I show them into my private conference room and we take off our coats. Berger is dressed in dark wool slacks and a heavy black sweater that does not accentuate but certainly can't hide her ample bosom. She has the slender, firm build of an athlete, and her scuffed Vibram boots hint that she will go anywhere and do anything if work re-quires it. She pulls out a chair and begins arranging briefcase, files and books on the round wooden table.
"See, he's got burns here and here." Marino points to his left cheek and neck and pulls out Polaroid photographs from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He makes the smart choice of handing them to me first.
"Why would a hit-and-run have burns?" My question is a rebuttal, and I am getting an uneasy feeling.
"If he was pushed out while the car was moving, or if he got toasted by the exhaust pipe," Marino suggests, not sure, not really caring. He has other matters on his mind.
"Not likely," I reply in an ominous tone.
"Shit," Marino says, and it begins to dawn on him as he meets my eyes. "I never looked at him, was already in a bag by the time I got there. Goddamn, I just went by what I was told by the guys at the scene. Shit," he says again, glancing at Berger, his face darkening with gathering embarrassment and irritation. "They'd already bagged the body by the time I got there. Dumb as a bag of hammers, all of 'em."
The man in the Polaroids is light-skinned with handsome features and short, tightly curled hair dyed egg-yolk yellow. A small gold loop pierces his left ear. I know instantly that his burns were not made by an exhaust pipe, which would leave elliptical burns and not these, which are perfectly round and the size of silver dollars and blistered. He was alive when he got them. I give Marino a long look. He makes the connection and blows out, shaking his head. "We have an ID?" I say to him.
"We don't got a clue." He smooths back hair that at this stage in his life is nothing more than gray fringe gelled to the top of his broad bald pate. He would look much better if he would just shave his head. "Nobody in the area says they've ever seen him before, either, and none of my guys think he looks like anybody we're used to seeing out there on the street."
