Authors: Ken Goddard
“Well, that may be true, but they’ve certainly managed to keep it a secret from the Oregon State Police.”
“Really?”
“As far as I’m aware, this the first time any of us have heard about it,” Cellars said. “And, for all the obvious reasons, we’d certainly like to know more … whatever you can tell us, that is, without violating security rules.”
“I’ll tell you everything I know, Sergeant. The Oregon State Patrol, of all people, should be aware of what’s going on in this County. As it happens, the United States Army is out there right now, on the Bancoo Reservation, supposedly looking into … well, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“I’m afraid my average day is pretty much a parade of things I find difficult to believe,” Cellars said, hoping that the last twenty-four hours really wasn’t an example of his ‘average’ day.
“Well, the person you really ought to be talking with is General Byzor — a terrible man who seems to be in charge of the Army investigation — but don’t count on being able to do that because he refuses to return calls, or speak to the press, or talk with anyone, as best we can tell. ‘A matter of National Security’ … that’s the only thing the duty officer will say when we call. Can you believe that — a ranking military officer refusing to talk with a U.S. Senator’s special administrative assistant?”
“General Byzor … how do you spell that?” Cellars asked.
“B-Y-Z-O-R. I believe his full name and rank is ‘Brigadier General Malcom Byzor.’ I don’t know the name of the unit he commands. That’s another thing that the duty officer refuses to divulge. I mean, how can
that
be a military secret, for God’s sake?”
“Do you have a contact number for the General?”
“Here’s what I have,” Tillman said as she peeling a colorful note off of her phone and held it out for Cellars to see. “It’s certainly not his direct line, much less a cell phone, but it may give you a place to start.”
He hurriedly jotted down the information
“It sounds like I’m definitely going to have to talk with the General if I’m going to make any sense out of all this,” Cellars said, looking up from his notebook. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”
“Not really,” Tillman shook her head as she put the colorful note back onto her phone. “He’s seems more like a fictional
will-o-the-wisp
than a typical military officer who cares anything at all about his career. We’ll certainly know more once we get him in front of our subcommittee; but that may take a while if we have to send our subpoena all the way up to the Department of the Army.”
“Sounds like a … uh, difficult process,” Cellars said uncertainly.
“Oh, it will definitely take some political ‘wheel-greasing’ to make it happen; but can you imagine the incredible media impact of having Byzor and Cellars both sitting before our Subcommittee and being forced to answer the Senator’s questions?”
“It ought to be quite a show,” Cellars said agreeably, thinking:
oh boy, this just keeps on getting more bizarre by the hour.
“Oh, it will be,” Tillman promised. “And just wait until the Senator demands to know how that lake got there. We’ll see what the General has to say then.”
Cellars looked up from his notebook.
“Lake?”
“Yes,
lake
, and a big one too, or so we believe,” Tillman nodded, her eyes wide. “It simply wasn’t there last week, but now it is … right in the middle of where all of those mini-quakes are occurring. And our scientific advisers are telling us that —”
At that moment, the young receptionist burst into the office.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tillman, but Senator Mariott is on line one for you, and I know you wanted to speak with her.”
Tillman blinked in surprise, apparently having completely forgotten about her earlier directive, and then turned to look at Cellars with a look of decidedly-mixed emotions on her face.
“That sounds like a political call, which is definitely none of my business,” Cellars said, quickly getting up from his chair.
“I do need to speak with the Senator urgently,” Tillman said, reaching for the hand set to her phone, and holding her finger over the first flashing button, “but you and I also need to finish our conversation, Sergeant. We really do.”
“I’m sure we’ll have that opportunity, ma’am,” Cellars said, and then walked out of the office.
CHAPTER 15
It was 9:05 AM, according to Cellars’ j-Connector clock, when he found himself back in Sergeant Bauer’s Crown Vic patrol car, wondering who he should try to contact next … and how long he could expect to stay ahead of all the law enforcement agencies who were now undoubtedly looking for him.
Probably not very long
, he thought morosely, tempted to put his ear phones back in and get lost to the beautiful music …
A good idea … we need a break … let’s do it!
… but knowing that didn’t dare let up now, because he was definitely running on borrowed time. He didn’t think it would take long for the OSP to put out an All Points Bulletin on Bauer’s assigned vehicle. And once that happened, it was just a matter of time until a patrolling officer from some agency spotted the all-too-visible OSP Unit Designation number and called it in … unless he could get himself another vehicle before that happened.
Can’t worry about that right now
, he told himself.
Need to concentrate on the list. Need a plan.
He thumbed his way to a page in Bauer’s notebook near the back where he’d been recording the names of the people he needed to contact … at least one of whom hopefully knew why and how he’d ended up in the VA Clinic with no memory of his past.
Okay, we’ve got Eleanor Patterson and Ann Tillman — got to talk with both of them again, but not now. Bobby Dawson, definitely … but who the hell knows where he’s at? Lisa Marcini, just to hear her voice again, if nothing else … but not until she’s had a chance to catch a few hours of sleep after her night shift. Captain Talbert, somewhere along the line, and better sooner than later … but I’m probably going to need Marcini’s help for that one. General Byzor, who may be a better source of info than all the others combined … but I can’t get near him until I resolve my problems with MacGregor, and I’m definitely going to need Talbert for that. And Dr. Elliott Sutta … whenever I can get back to the Morgue, to find out more about Jeremiah Carter. Am I forgetting anyone?
He didn’t think so … but he really didn’t know … and
that
, he reminded himself with a sigh as he put the Crown Vic into gear, was really the whole crux of the problem.
* * *
When Cellars walked into the front office of the Jasper County Morgue, the first thing he noticed was the faint odor of something distinctively familiar that he couldn’t quite make out.
His frontal lobes were still mulling over that identity linkage when a dark-brown-haired woman in her mid-forties wearing a blue wrap-around lab coat and writing something on a clip board hurried into the front office from a back door.
“Sorry, there should have been someone here to greet you, but several of our staff got snowed in and we’re pretty short-handed today. Can I help —?” she started to ask, and then blinked in apparent shock … her mouth dropping open as the clipboard rattled to the floor.
“Oh, my God, it
is
you!” she said in a hushed voice … and then rushed forward and enveloped Cellars in a bear hug. “Nick told us he logged in a body from a U.S. Army Major Colin Cellars this morning … and it was such a weird coincidence … but I couldn’t believe it was you … because I was sure the next time I’d see you was when they brought your body in for a post … and I told Dr. Sutta that I didn’t even want to be here when that happened because I just knew I couldn’t …”
“Bucky,” a loud voice boomed out from an adjoining room, “who is that out there?”
“It’s Colin Cellars, doctor. The real one, not the Army —”
“WHAT?!”
Two seconds later, a sixtyish-looking grey-haired man in a white lab coat came stomping into the front office like a pissed-off bull looking for something to gore.
“Detective Sergeant Colin Cellars? The man who shoots at shadows and apparently disobeys every direct order from a superior that he’s ever been given?
That
Colin Cellars?”
Shoots at shadows? Oh Jesus …
The white-coated doctor walked right up to Cellars, glared directly into his eyes, pointed a gloved finger at his nose, and started to say something else … and then hesitated.
“What the hell happened to your head?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Who the hell are you?” Cellars said calmly, trying not to think about shooting at shadows as he returned the glare … as he did so, having the sense that he’d heard both of their voices before. But it was a distant sense, exactly the way he’d felt when he first heard Bauer’s voice.
“What the hell do you mean, who the hell am I?!” Sutta almost shrieked. “You know who the hell I am. I’m the guy you dumped that rotten smelling carcass on this morning, without so much as a thank-you note, or a ‘kiss my ass’ … much less a nice bottle of —”
It must have been the lack of recognition in his eyes that caused the doctor to stop his ranting and go back to staring, Cellars decided.
“Sir, doctor whatever-your-name-is, I have no idea who you are — I just walked in here not two minutes ago, for the first time — and I’ve been having a real bad day, so you’ll just have to forgive me if —”
Then Cellar blinked as his olfactory sensors kicked in, sending a much more intense signal to his limbic system. “No, wait, that’s not right. I have been here before. That smell —”
“Sit down,” Sutta growled.
“What?”
“I said sit down — on that desk — right there,” Sutta repeated in a much softer and restrained voice as he guided Cellar’s over to the receptionist’s desk. Then: “Bucky.”
“Yes, doctor?”
“Get me an ophthalmoscope, right now.”
“A what?”
“An ophthalmoscope, a device to examine … to hell with it, get me a flashlight … a bare light bulb, if that’s all you can find. But get it right now!”
“Yes, doctor.” Bucky scurried out of the room.
“You’re a real ornery old fart, aren’t you?”
“Why would you think that?” Sutta asked with apparent indifference as he took off his gloves and then rubbed the fingertips of his right hand over some of the scars in Cellars’ head and neck. Then he put his right thumb up against Cellar’s brow and then gently raised his left eyelid.
“For one thing, you never did answer my question.”
“Which was?” Sutta moved his thumb across Cellar’s forehead and lifted is right eyelid.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Doctor Elliott Sutta, supervising pathologist for the Jasper County Coroner’s Office.”
“You said that like I should know who you are.”
“Damn right you should, because your olfactory recognition system is absolutely correct, you have been here before … several times, in fact,” Sutta replied calmly. “And, to put it mildly, we have had some interesting times together over the past couple of weeks. But let’s get back to the much more relevant question: who do you think
you
are?”
“I’m Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars … and why the hell should I —?”
“Really? That’s not what it says on your name tag,” Sutta pointed out.
At that moment, Bucky ran back into the front office with a small flashlight. Sutta took from her wordlessly, and then began to examine Cellars’ eyes again, starting with the right one.
“Yeah, well, this is a borrowed uniform,” Cellars explained hesitantly. He didn’t like the tone in Sutta’s voice. “I wasn’t able to get back to the station, so I —”
“You mean like the borrowed U.S. Army uniform you were wearing when you dropped off the extremely odorous body of Mr. Jeremiah Carter — or whoever the hell he really is — here at the morgue this morning?”
“That’s … a completely separate and very long story,” Cellars said.
“I don’t doubt that for a minute. Do you have any idea at all how you got these head wounds?” Sutta asked, apparently willing to set the smelly body and the Army uniform issues aside for the moment.
Cellars hesitated again, aware that Sutta had taken his left wrist and was checking his pulse.
“We
have
met before … worked together, haven’t we?” he said suspiciously.
“Yes, like I said, starting a couple of weeks ago, when you brought me two other decidedly strange bodies to work on — one of which was a dog, and another that turned out to be a friend of yours who actually didn’t exist, or at least was never here; after which, you asked me to draw a sample of your blood for a tox-workup,” Sutta said. “All in all, you seem to be making a habit out of doing and saying some extremely weird-shit things at my morgue.”
“I … brought you the body of a dog? Why would I do that?”
“I have no idea why crime scene investigators do what they do; they’re a strange group. You just happen to be a little more over-the-top than the rest. No, wait,” Sutta corrected, “make that a
lot
more over-the-top … world-class, in fact.”
“What did you do with it?”
“The dog?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t do anything with it … because I don’t conduct necropsies on non-humans in this morgue. I conduct autopsies on humans. It’s my specialty. So kindly remember that next time you’re wondering what to do with the next dead creature you happen to find.”