Bad Medicine (15 page)

Molly didn't say a word. She just nodded. She knew Sam hated asking her for help, but the paperwork killed him. Forms for reimbursement, forms for medical costs, for pharmaceutical costs. And then, the worst, when he got the notice on how much the government wasn't going to pay for his and Myra's treatments. He'd been a rich man in his heyday. Molly wasn't sure he was going to last through his old age intact.

"Later," she said, knowing just how both of them felt. Knowing it wouldn't do to explain to him that she wouldn't get any sleep this morning, because she was going to have to sit in on that young policeman's autopsy. "Right now," Molly said, sliding the key into her front door, "let's sit out back and decide if we like this morning business or not."

* * *

The St. Louis Medical Examiner's office and morgue sat at the corner of Clark and 14th Street, a square, unimpressive granite block building that had been put up sometime in the thirties along with the similarly designed central police station a block down. Serving first as the coroner's office and inquest court, it had, at one time, held all the paper records of every murder, suicide, and natural death in St. Louis as far back as the coroner's system went.

The system was automated now, the building inhabited by two pathologists, an administrator, secretaries, a team of investigators, the morgue attendants who watched the bodies come in and signed them back out the back door again, and the diener, who assisted in autopsies. The current staff inhabited two floors, the first holding the reception area, administrator's office, viewing room, and morgue areas. The second floor belonged to the pathologists and death investigators. The latter, with the exception of the chief investigator, shared the expansive room that had once held the inquest court. It now sported a black couch against the far wall for night shift, and as many desks, computers, and regulations books as the fire code would allow.

Recently repainted and cleaned, the building had lost some of its earlier institutional gloom to cream walls and newly washed curtains. The carpet was still seventies-era convent issue, though, which went a long way to negating the effect. Not only that, but if one walked through the front door of the building, the first thing he would see would be the viewing room to the right, which looked more like a mortician's dream than a bureaucrat's, with its rows of church pews and curtained wall into the morgue. The only thing missing was the organ and a tasteful stand for the visitors' book.

At eight o'clock in the morning, the viewing room was empty. A receptionist sat at the desk in the middle of the entryway, and a couple of homicide cops were descending the stairs from the offices after consulting with the investigator of their choice. Back in the autopsy room, the supporting cast waited for their star performer to arrive. Occupied black body bags rested on three of the gurneys that sat along the north wall. A fourth, zipped and anonymous, occupied the autopsy table. A set of skull films hung from the viewing box. Hercules Jones, the old, gnarled, almost toothless diener Winnie preferred to work with, waited alongside, aproned and still, instruments laid out and gleaming, saw tested and ready, specimen jars formalin-filled and waiting.

Arrayed across the other wall in OR gown and mask were the homicide officer of record, that being Rhett, and a severely sleep-deprived Molly.

As was custom with the St. Louis system, both homicide officer and death investigator witnessed the autopsy. The homicide officer to carry clothing and evidence that would be removed, so that the chain of evidence was as short as possible and uninterrupted; the investigator so there would be no paperwork or communications errors.

"Hey, Rhett," Molly said, leaning her head back against the tile wall. "You got any ideas why I'd have an unmarked car staking out my house this morning?"

Rhett looked over, truly surprised. "An unmarked? What kind?"

"Caprice. What else?"

"Recognize 'em?"

She shook her head. "Is there something you've forgotten to tell me? Like maybe somebody thinks I'm making money off the Pearl Johnson situation?"

Rhett snorted. "You've been talking to Martin and Jones, haven't you?"

"They should have been named Martin and Lewis, ya ask me. They got the conspiracy blues about Pearl. Want with all their hearts to believe that somebody hypnotized her into eating a hundred pills so the evil government could get her gambling contract."

"You shouldn't have shown up at work in that new Ferrari. Tips off the conspiracy cops every time."

"I know. But it was such a nice red."

The clock was creeping up to 8:00 a.m. Hercules pulled open the glove pack Winnie would use. A sense of anticipation gathered in the room. Rhett actually flipped open his notebook.

"This Ryan's gonna be a slam-dunk, isn't it?"

Molly nodded. "She scored just about every depression point I could come up with. History, attitude, availability. Alcohol."

"What about that blue pill they found? Figure out what it was?"

"Nope. Lab's still hunting that little baby down. My feeling was that she had enough other stuff, it could have been a designer of some kind. It shouldn't take 'em much longer."

At the stroke of eight, just as they knew she would, Winnie swept in. Hercules held out her gown and then her gloves, and then punched the button on the CD player in the corner. Mozart swelled into the room. Rhett came to attention. Molly just rubbed at her eyes. She never failed to enjoy Winnie's performance. It brought to mind a ballet presentation she'd once seen. The curtain had gone up to the company doing a stylized stretching exercise. Warm-ups choreographed to music, getting more and more complicated along with the music, so the audience could know just what ballet was and how impressive the talent was onstage. Stretching became recognizable moves, and then leaps and spins. And then just when the audience began to smile at the beauty onstage, they were treated to the real show. Baryshnikov, soaring onto stage, drawing a sustained gasp of wonder from the room. I showed you the world, he seemed to say. Now, I will transcend it.

It was the way Winnie ran an autopsy. Entering the stainless steel and tile room in midair and then preparing to set everyone and everything inside on figurative ears.

"I have to spend the afternoon in court," she announced, stepping up to take hold of the zipper on her first case to the sound of the overture to
The Magic Flute.
"I won't be late."

Translation: don't hold me back.

And then, dreadful silence when she saw whom she'd unearthed.

"What the hell is this?" she demanded, turning on her diener.

"Mary Margaret—"

Winnie shoved him back as if he were trying to spit in her food. "This is a woman! What the hell is she doing on my table first?"

"She was scheduled—"

Molly took an involuntary step forward. Why, she wasn't sure. She sure didn't want that wrath turned on her. It was anyway.

"Was this your idea of a joke?" Winnie demanded, swinging on her. "You think I should make this my priority today?"

"I think that the chaplain wanted to be here for Officer Myers's autopsy," Molly demurred, her recently enjoyed burrito threatening to make a return appearance.

Winnie's head shot up as if she'd heard the word pimp instead of chaplain. "The chaplain?" she retorted, her voice haughty and cold. "And is the chaplain going to sign the death certificate, too?"

"The family—"

"The medical examiner is the authority in this room, Ms. Burke," she snapped, somehow managing to look like an enraged queen of England, even in surgical gown, rubber gloves, and chocolate-colored skin. "Not the family.
Not
the chaplain. And I do not feel the need to explain to the press why I chose to put the welfare of a suicide ahead of that of a policeman. Do you? Would the chaplain, perhaps?"

That to Rhett, who had less to say than Molly.

"I shouldn't even have to waste my time on this!" Winnie continued, yanking the zipper up to cover the disaster that had been Mary Margaret Ryan's face. "I have over three hundred homicides in this city in a year, and you want me to do housecleaning!"

Molly was already moving, helping the flustered Hercules to get the offending bag from Winnie's table.

"I don't have time!" Winnie said in a snarl, the diva screaming at an ineffectual conductor. "You want me to waste it on your pet project? What about you, Detective? Now that you've decided to grace us with your illustrious presence. What do you say?"

Nobody had anything to say. Hercules pointed to the correct bag and Molly helped him move it and then heft it onto the table. Rhett changed paperwork while Hercules changed X rays while Winnie shouted about incompetence, inconsideration, and incoherence.

In fact, Winnie ranted until she reached for the zipper that would reveal Bill Myers. Then, suddenly, she too fell silent. Rhett, not fond of autopsies at any time, grew noticeably paler. Bill Myers had been in his academy class. Before he could see what Winnie was about to do to the man he'd shared more than one meal with, he sidled over to the door and looked the other way. Winnie never said a word. Winnie could be a raving maniac, but she wasn't heartless.

Bill Myers had been a handsome kid. Blond, muscular, with a strong jaw and jug ears that had incited more than one practical joke. Bill had put in ten years on the force, which meant that he'd either gained a lot of friends or a lot of enemies. Molly knew that half the combined forces in the area would be at his funeral tomorrow.

Molly was intending to go, too. Bill had yanked her to safety at a homicide scene once when the drive-by artists had decided to make another swing around the block to sign their work.

Bill had had a lousy sense of humor and a sterling sense of honor. Molly had the horrible feeling that even knowing what fifteen-year-olds were capable of in this day and age, when he
^'
d seen how young his opponent was, Bill had hesitated. That hesitation had cost him his life.

"August 10, 8:05 a.m. Dr. Winifred Harrison performing the postmortem on case number 81094251. Subject appears to be approximately thirty-five, white male, generally well-developed..."

Winnie made the first cut and Rhett ran from the room.

Chapter 8

"Jesus Christ, Burke. Hold it still!"

"I can't! The goddamn ground's shaking!"

Just to prove it, another rocket hit, taking with i
t the lights. She was on her knees in the mud, in the red mud that looked more like blood than anything pumping out of these bodies, and it just didn't stop.

"Can you clamp that artery for me?"

She couldn't even see the artery. The generator was on, but th
e feeble light didn't help. Blood pumped so hard it hit the lights. The table was damn near on the ground, and they were on their knees so they could protect themselves from the shelling that shattered the windows and pulled the ground out from under them. Operating in flak jackets and helmets, on their goddamn knees in the goddamn dark, and she was supposed to see a blood vessel.

"Molly! Clamp it!"

"I'm clamping, damn it, but the blood won't stop!"

"Aren't you guys finished yet?" the medic screamed from th
e
door.
"We've got a full house out here, and more coming in!"

Another rocket hit, and even the generator went out.

"Flashlights!"

"Can you see it?"

"What's he doing? How's his pressure?"

"Molly!"

"I can't get it clamped! I can still feel the blood!"

"Molly!"

"Somebody get me a goddamn light so I can see this fucking artery!"

"Molly, hey!"

At first, Molly couldn't figure out why Kevin McCaully was in Pleiku. Then she couldn't figure out why he was in her bedroom. The kinks in her back should have tipped her off. No place was more uncomfortable to stretch out on than the couch in the death investigator's parlor. And Molly, who usually pulled nights in the office, had done her share of time on its cracked black Naugahyde cushions.

It was probably just that when he looked down at her, Kevin was surrounded by a nimbus of sunlight. Molly didn't equate the couch with sunlight. But then, she didn't equate Pleiku with the sun either. Only the mud. The damn mud she could still smell twenty years later.