C is for Corpse

Chapter 9

The Pathology Department at St. Terry's is located below ground in the heart of a maze of small offices. Miles of corridors branch out in all directions, connecting the non-medical departments charged with the actual running of the facility: maintenance, housekeeping, engineering, plant operations. Where the floors above are renovated and tastefully done, the decor down here runs to brown viny! tile and glossy paint the color of vanished bones. The air smells hot and dry and certain open doorways reveal glimpses of ominous machinery and electrical ducts as big as sewer pipes.

There was a steady flow of pedestrian traffic that day, people in hospital uniforms, as pale and expressionless as residents of an underground city, starved for sunlight. The Pathology Department itself was a pleasant contrast: spacious, well lighted, handsomely appointed in royal blue and gray, with fifty to sixty lab technicians working to accommodate the blood, bone, and tissue specimens that filtered down from above. The computerized equipment seemed to click, hum, and whir: efficiency augmented by an army of experts. Noise was muted, telephones pinging daintily against the artificial air. Even the typewriters seemed to be muffled, recording discreetly the secrets of the human condition. There was order, proficiency, and calm, the sense that here, at least, the pain and indignation of illness was under control. Death was being held at bay, measured, calibrated, and analyzed. Where it had claimed a victory, the same crew of specialists dissected the results and fed them into the machinery. Paper poured out in a long road, paved with hieroglyphics. I stood in the doorway for a moment, struck by the scene. These were microscope detectives, pursuing killers of another order than those I hunted down.

"May I help you?"

I glanced over at the receptionist, who was watching me.

"I'm looking for Dr. Fraker. Do you know if he's here?"

"Should be. Down this aisle to the first left, then left again and you can ask somebody back there."

I found him in a modular compartment lined with bookshelves, furnished with a desk, a swivel chair, plants, and graphic art. He was tipped back in his chair, his feet propped up on the edge of his deck, leafing through a medical book the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. He had a pair of rimless bifocals in one hand, chewing on one of the stems as he read. He was substantially built-wide shoulders, heavy thighs. His hair was a thick, silvery white, his skin the warm tone of a flesh-colored crayon. Age had given his face a softly crumpled look, like a freshly laundered cotton sheet that needs to be starched and ironed. He wore surgical greens with matching booties.

"Dr. Fraker?"

He glanced up at me and his gray eyes registered recognition. He pointed a finger. "Bobby Callahan's friend."

"That's right. I wondered if I could talk to you."

"Sure, absolutely. Come on in."

He got to his feet and we shook hands. He indicated the chair near his desk and I sat down.

"We can make an appointment to talk later if I've caught you at a bad time," I said.

"Not at all. What can I do for you? Glen told me Bobby hired someone to look into the accident."

"He's convinced it was a murder attempt. Hit and run. Has he talked to you about that?"

Dr. Fraker shook his head. "I haven't seen him for months except for Monday night. Murder. Do the police agree?"

"I don't know yet. I've got a copy of the accident report and as nearly as I can tell, they don't have much to go on. There weren't any witnesses and I don't think they found much evidence at the scene."

"That's unusual, isn't it?"

"Well, there's usually something to go on. Broken glass, skid marks, transfer traces on the victim's vehicle. Maybe the guy jumped out of his car and swept up all the soil and paint flecks, I don't know. I do trust Bobby's intuition on this. He says he was in danger. He just can't remember why."

Dr. Fraker seemed to consider that briefly and then shifted in his seat. "I'd be inclined to believe him myself. He's a bright boy. He was a gifted student, too. It's a damn shame there's so little left of that. What's he think is going on?"

"He hasn't any idea and, as he points out, the minute he remembers, he's in more trouble than he is now. He suspects somebody's still after him."

He cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief, contemplating the matter. He was a man apparently accustomed to dealing with puzzles, but I imagined his solutions were derived from symptoms instead of circumstances. Diseases don't require an underlying motivation in the same way homicide does.

He shook his head slightly, his eyes meeting mine. "Odd. The whole thing's a little bit out of my range." He put his glasses on, turning businesslike. "Well. We better figure out what's going on, then. What do you need from me?"

I shrugged. "All I know to do is start back at square one and see if I can determine what kind of trouble he was in. He'd worked for you for what? Two months?"

"About that. He started in September, I believe. I can have Marcy look that up if you want exact dates."

"I gather he was hired here because of your relationship with his mother."

"Well, yes and no. We generally have a slot available for a premed student. It just happened that Bobby filled the bill in this case. Glen Callahan's a very big cheese around here, but we wouldn't have hired him if he'd been a dud. Can I get you some coffee? I'm about to have some."

"All right, sure."

He leaned sideways slightly, calling to the secretary, whose desk was in his line of sight. "Marcy? Can we get some coffee in here, please?"

To me, he said, "You take cream and sugar?"

"Black is fine."

"Both black," he called out.

There was no reply, but I assumed it was being taken care of He turned his attention back to me. "Sorry to interrupt."

"That's all right. Did he have desk space down here?"

"He had a desk up front, but that was cleared out, oh, I'd say within a day of the accident. Nobody thought he'd survive, you know, and we had to bring somebody else in pretty quickly. This place is a madhouse most of the time."

"What happened to his things?"

"I dropped them by the house myself. There wasn't much, but we put what we came across in a cardboard box and I passed it on to Derek, I don't know what he did with it, if anything. Glen was at the hospital twenty-four hours a day at that point."

"Do you remember what was in it?"

"His desk? Odds and ends. Office things."

I made a note to myself to check for the box. I supposed there was a chance it was still at the house somewhere. "Can you walk me through Bobbys day and show me what sorts of things he did?"

"Sure. Actually, he divided his time between the lab and the morgue out in the old county medical facility on Frontage Road. I've got to make a run out there anyway and you can ride along if you like, or follow in your car if that's easier.

"I thought the morgue was here."

"We've got a small one here, just off the autopsy room. We've got another morgue out there."

"I didn't realize there was more than one."

"We needed the added space for the contract work we do. St. Terry's maintains a few offices out there, too."

"Really. I didn't think that old county building was still in use.

"Oh yes. There's a private radiology group that works out there, and we've got storage rooms for medical records. It's a bit of a hodgepodge, but I don't know what we'd do without it."

He glanced over as Marcy came in with two mugs, her gaze carefully affixed to the surface of the coffee, which was threatening to slop over the sides. She was young, dark-haired, no makeup. She looked like the sort of person you'd want holding your hand if the lab techs did something excruciating.

"Thank you, Marcy. Just on the edge of the desk here is fine."

She set the mugs down and gave me a quick smile on her way out.

Dr. Fraker and I discussed the office procedures while we drank the coffee and then he took me on a tour of the lab, explaining Bobby's various responsibilities, ajl of whjch seemed routine and not very important at that. I made a note of the names of a couple of his co-workers, thinking I might talk to them at a later date.

I waited while he took care of a few details and signed out, telling Marcy where he'd be.

I followed him to the freeway in my car, heading toward. the former county hospital. The complex was visible from the highway: a sprawling labyrinth of yellowing stucco and red tile roofs that had turned nearly rust-brown with age. We passed it, took the next off-ramp, and circled back along Frontage Road, turning left into the main driveway.

County General had once been a flourishing medical facility, designed to serve the entire Santa Teresa community. It was secondarily earmarked as the treatment center for the indigent, funded through various social-service agencies. As the years passed, it came to be associated with the underprivileged: welfare recipients, illegal aliens, and all the unfortunate victims of Saturday-night crime sprees. Gradually, County General was shunned by both the middle class and the well-to-do. Once MediCal and Medicare came into effect, even the poor opted for St. Terry's and other local private hospitals, turning this place into a ghost town.

There was a sprinkling of cars in the parking lot. Temporary wooden signs shaped like arrows directed the visitor to Medical Records, nursing offices, Radiology, the morgue, and departments representing obscure branches of medicine.

Dr. Fraker parked his car and I pulled into the slot next to his. He got out, locked up, and waited while I did the same. A modest attempt was being made to maintain the grounds, but the driveway itself was cracked, coarse weeds beginning to sprout through the asphalt. The two of us headed toward the main entrance without saying much. He seemed to take the place for granted, but I found it all vaguely unsettling. The architecture was, of coarse, of the usual Spanish styling: wide porches along the front, deeply recessed windows faced with wrought-iron bars.

We went in, pausing in a spacious lobby. It was clear that over the years some attempt had been made to "modernize" the place. Fluorescent lighting was now tucked up against the high ceilings, throwing down illumination too diffuse to satisfy. Once-grand anterooms had been partitioned off. Counters had been built across two of the interior arches but there was no furniture in the reception area and no one awaiting admission. The very air was permeated with the smell of abandonment and neglect. From the far end of the dim hallway to our right, I could hear a typewriter clacking, but it sounded like an old manual, operated by an amateur. There was no other indication of occupancy.

Dr. Fraker gave me a perfunctory tour. According to him, Bobby had made the round-trip as needed between this place and St. Terry's, picking up inactive files for patients readmitted to the hospital after an interval of years, hand-delivering X rays and autopsy reports. Old charts were automatically retired to the storage facilities out here. Of course, most data was kept on computer now, but there was still a backlog of paper that had to be warehoused somewhere. Bobby apparently also did some moonlighting out here, taking the graveyard shift for morgue attendants who were out sick or on vacation. Dr. Fraker indicated that this was largely a babysitting function, but that Bobby had put in a considerable number of hours during the two months he was on the job.

We were on our way downstairs by then, descending a wide staircase of red Spanish tile, our footsteps resounding at a hollow, mismatched pace. Because the hospital is constructed against a hillside, the rear of the building is below ground, while the front portion looks out onto paths partially overgrown with shrubs. It was darker down here, as though the utilities had been cut back for the sake of economy. The temperature was cool and the air was scented with formaldehyde, that acrid deodorant for the deceased. An arrow on the wall pointed us to Autopsy. I began to armor myself against the images my senses were conjuring up.

Dr. Fraker opened the door with its frosted-glass panel. I didn't actually hesitate before entering, but I did do a quick visual scan to assure myself that we weren't interrupting some guy with a boning knife filleting a corpse. Dr. Fraker seemed to sense my apprehension and he touched at my elbow briefly.

"There's nothing scheduled," he said and led the way.

I smiled uneasily and followed. At first glance, the place seemed deserted. I noted walls of apple-green ceramic tile, long stainless-steel counters with lots of drawer space. This was like a high-tech kitchen in a decorator magazine, complete with a stainless-steel island in the middle that sported its own wide sink, tall crook-necked faucets, a hanging scale, and drainboard. I felt my mouth set in distaste. I knew what was prepared here and it wasn't food.

A swinging door on the far side of the room was pushed open and a young man in surgical greens backed in, pulling a gurney after him. The body on the cart was wrapped in a dense, tawny plastic that obscured age and sex. A toe tag was visible and I could see a portion of the dark head, blank face swaddled in plastic like a mummy's. It reminded me vaguely of the caution spelled out now on dry cleaners' bags: "WARNING: To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children. Do not use in cribs, beds, carriages, or playpens. This bag is not a toy." I averted my gaze, taking in a deep breath then just to prove I could.

Dr. Fraker introduced me to the attendant, whose name was Kelly Borden. He was in his thirties, big and soft-bodied, with fuzzy, prematurely graying hair pulled back in a fat braid that extended halfway down his back. He had a beard, a handlebar mustache, mild eyes, and a wristwatch that looked like it would keep time on the ocean floor.

"Kinsey s a private investigator looking into Bobby Callahan's accident," Dr. Fraker said.

Kelly nodded, his expression neutral. He rolled the gurney over to what looked like a big refrigerator case and eased it in beside a second gurney, also occupied. Roommates, I guessed.

Dr. Fraker looked back at me. "I've got some things to take care of upstairs. Why don't I leave you two alone and you can ask him anything you want. Kelly worked with him. Maybe he can fill you in and then we can talk again, when you see what's what."

"Great," I said.