A MAN IN A hospital coat came up to her in the Bellevue lobby, wearing a Secret Servicetype transmitter in his ear. Ms. Manfreda?
Yes.
Im Lawrence Travis. Dr. Rosen asked me to escort you to the morgue. Hes in an urgent meeting he couldnt avoid, but hell meet you as soon as hes finished.
Hes probably with Pederson, deciding his fate.
I can find the morgue easily enough. No need to come with me.
Its no trouble. Its the old morgue, a creepy place. I promise youll be grateful for the company.
She smiled. Thank you. Thats very nice of you.
They took the elevator to the basement, where he led her down a cheerless, brightly lit corridor until they came to a door. She shivered. Its cold down here.
Itll be warmer inside, Travis said. He opened the door. Manny saw a wall of numbered silver metal boxes, four boxes high and about fifteen rows wide.
A gurney holding a corpse stood in front of them.
This is where we keep the bodies until the funeral director picks them up or they go to potters field, Travis explained as they entered. We refrigerate the bodies that have to remain here for a while. Theyre on trays in the drawers at the back. One body per tray, about half of them in use at any one time, unless theres been a disaster and the corpses pile up.
Hes enjoying himself. Creepy is right.
All unidentified and unclaimed bodies in Manhattan end up here before going to Hart Island for burial. Cant recognize most of them theyre too decayed. Many are old people whove outlived their friends and relatives. The police have a Missing Persons Bureau office in the back there, next to the old autopsy room. Its hardly ever manned, though.
The old autopsy room? Is that where Dr. Rosen wants to meet me? He didnt answer her. She asked again.
I guess so. He just told me the old morgue.
Since theres an old one, there must be a new one. Why wouldnt he meet me there?
Travis shrugged. Youll have to ask him. This used to be the ME morgue, but now theyre across the street in their own building, where Dr. Rosen works.
Suspicion leeched into her brain. Have you been working for Dr. Rosen a long time?
No, maam. Threefour weeks is all. I heard him give a lecture on blood splatter and decided he was the person I wanted to be transferred to.
Mannys ears tingled. A lecture on what?
Blood splatter.
Blood splatter. Jakes laughed a dozen times at laymen who make that mistake:
Splatter
is a sound, not the description of blood evidence.
Spatter
is the word for evidence.
This mans never been to Jakes lecture. This mans not with the MEs office.
She turned to face him, fear whipping at her like a cold wind. She looked intently at his feet. Through his paper booties she could see lizard boots.
Its the same person who attacked me outside my office!
I warned you, Ms. Manfreda, not to continue your investigation.
She had felt his breath before at Turner. Who are you? she whispered.
Daniel Markis. His voice was unnaturally loud.
Elizabeths husband! Manny understood. Jake had told her Markis was in Elizabeths thrall, so much in her shadow he was practically invisible. She must have sent him to Turner; he was the cleaning lady outside her office. Jake says youre a high school football coach.
What?
She raised her voice. A high school coach.
He grinned. Among other things. Mostly, I work for my wife.
A knife glinted in his hand. She recognized it with a spasm of terror. I spared you on Elizabeths orders, he said. We had to kill Pete he
knew
but she thought you and Jake should live. Just so long as you dropped the investigation. A sentimental mistake. A mistake we arent prepared to make twice, he hissed, stepping toward her.
Help! Her shout echoed off the trays.
Help!
Jake, Rose, Kenneth, Mycroft their faces were vivid in her brain, and Manny was empowered by their love.
She screamed and slammed the gurney into him, and he fell to the ground backward, momentarily dazed.
You little bitch! he howled, as he struggled to stand up.
She ducked behind the first row of metal boxes, stumbling on her high heels. She took off her shoes, barely registering that they were the same ones she had worn to the Carramia trial, and held them as she edged toward the body refrigeration unit. She grabbed the handle of one of the boxes, opened it, climbed onto the tray, then pulled it closed from the inside. A corpse stared at her through decomposing eyes, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from screaming.
She could hear Markis approach. Where are you, bitch?
Inside it was one big cold storage refrigerator with no barriers. She could move between the many trays in the massive refrigeration unit, impeded only by dead bodies. Maybe Markis didnt know this. She moved to another tray, its inhabitant covered by a sheet. Markis pulled out the drawer she had just left, then another and another. You cant hide for long, he muttered. She felt the anger of his frustration.
She crawled to another tray, one level up, the hum of the refrigerator unit masking the noise. Her clothes were wet with decomposition fluids from the bodies; the stench of decaying flesh was awful.
She could hear Markis coming closer and darted to an empty drawer on the other side of the unit. She heard another drawer open and slam shut. She moved to another tray. As the drawer was opened she was unable to see him in the gloom.
Then his hands were around her throat ice-cold hands, a corpses hands and he was choking her. This way is better, he whispered. No knife wound, no marks. Ill put you in a body bag and youll be no different from any of the other bodies. Youll be buried in potters field with the rest of them.
Markiss fingers tightened. Dizzy, unable to breathe, she let one of her shoes drop from her hand but gripped the other with desperate strength and slammed it into the top of his skull. Metal heel met bone. He groaned and she felt his hands relax; warm blood dropped from his head across her face. He stepped back into the light and slowly crumpled, her prized stiletto sticking out of the top of his head. She gulped air, gulped again, closed her eyes.
A sound. A gust of warm air. His breath? No, air from the outside corridor. A doctor limped to her side, two Bellevue security guards in tow. Are you all right? he asked, his eyes wide with anxiety. Dr. Rosen told me to follow you, but I went to the new morgue, not this one. She managed a smile. Wally, she realized.
Kenneth rushed in, mouthed the words product placement, then fainted dead away. Then, finally, Jake was at the door, his joy fresher than the air they breathed. He took a step toward her, arms outstretched. She fended him off with a mock glare.
I know youd be late for your own funeral. But couldnt you have tried to be on time for mine?
SPINOSA HAD IT RIGHT:
Ambition is a species of madness,
Jake said. In Elizabeths case, the madness was extreme it led to patricide. Proud of his erudition, Jake glanced at Manny to see if she was impressed.
Didnt he say the same thing about lust? she asked, keeping her eyes steadfastly on the road.
One-upped.
God knows my lust is madness.
She gave his knee a squeeze. Mine seems to me perfectly sane.
They were driving to Turner once more, Manny at the wheel, Mycroft in Jakes lap: For a date with Sheriff Fisk, he had announced when hed asked her if she wanted to come along, only he doesnt know were coming. She had wholeheartedly agreed.
It was more than just ambition, Jake went on. Shes about the coldest woman Ive ever met, and my guess is it stemmed from her childhood. She probably got the mothering she needed, but not the fathering.
That doesnt jibe. He was compassionate, loving, a good husband to Dolores, a marvelous friend to you, and he never forgot he was Wallys father.
Jake had spent the previous night thinking it through. I think he poured all his love onto his son, even before he traced him to the Winnicks, as compensation for his shame. Another child, even of a different sex, was tough for him. He might have been afraid of loving her too much when she was little, afraid hed lose her like he lost Isabella and Wally, so he kept distant and she turned against him. It made it easier for her to kill him. After all, he was dying anyway. She just hurried it along.
They had reached the outskirts of Turner. The autumn leaves still retained their color, but today she was too engrossed in his words to notice them. You could be right; it makes psychological sense.
Theres one thing more. Lets assume Hans Galt is right and bacteriological experiments, at least, are still going on. Elizabeth spent much of her career at the Justice Department. She could have known about the experiments or covered them up by sitting on the evidence. Petes discovery of the radioactive bones her
fathers
discovery might have quickly led to her.
She shuddered. Its too horrible, but possible all the same. Dr. Ewing told me he was following government orders. Maybe she was, too. You know how I am about government conspiracies.
Or maybe, Manny, it was only about family. Poor Wally. Hes taken a leave of absence after learning about all of this. Gone back to Santa Fe for a while.
She glanced at him. His expression was the same as it had been in the autopsy room with Mrs. Alessiss body; now she realized he could dissect facts as well as flesh.
Not a geeky scientist a sexy scientist!
Why did she ask you to clean out Petes study? Anybody could have done it, and look what it led to.
Jake had asked himself the same question. To deflect me. I was the only person who might not have bought the cancer story, so to her, asking my help was an indication of her innocence. Remember, she didnt know Pete had the bones in his possession. He smiled at her, noting how relaxed she was
amazing, after all shes been through
and felt a warriors urge to keep her from further harm.
But she did know about the bones themselves, Manny said.
Yes. Pete must have told her about them when she visited him just before he died. He was going to confess to me; surely he confessed to her, his child. It was a last-minute attempt to get close to her.
So she poisoned him.
She knew about the experiments, about Isabella, maybe even about Wally. If any part of the story got out about her own involvement, her cover-up, her political career was finished. She was afraid it would destroy her future. He looked at Manny again. She was frowning, but her hair black today shone in the morning sunshine, and he thought shed never been so beautiful. Shed told him shed decided on black hair to go with her black Sevens jeans and cropped-leather Gaultier jacket over a black T-shirt.
We may never know if she put the poison in the scotch bottle or if Markis did, he continued. Both Markis and Elizabeth knew that the jaundice in Petes eyes from the cancer would conceal the jaundice created by the poison. My guess is she did it after Markis went home. She had a lot of experience learning the how-to of murder because of her position as a prosecutor for so many years. For sure Markis was the son who showed up at Shady Briar, and certainly she used Markis to scare you. Among other things, you didnt know what he looked like and you might have recognized her face, however disguised, from television.