There was still an hour and a half of daylight left when I reached the old county medical complex. From the number of parking spaces available, it was clear that most of the offices were closed, personnel gone for the day. Kelly had told me there was a second parking lot around the side that was used by the janitorial staff at night. I didn't see any reason to park that far away. I pulled into a slot as close to the entrance as I could get, noting with interest that there was a bicycle chained to a rack just off to my left. It was a banged-up old Schwinn with fat tires and a fake license plate wired onto the rear, reading "Alfie." Kelly had told me the building was generally locked up by seven, but that I could buzz in and Alfie would buzz back to admit me.
I grabbed my flashlight and my key picks, pausing to pull a sweatshirt over my tank tbp. I remembered the building as chilly, even more so, I imagined, if I was there after sunset. I locked my car and headed for the entrance.
I paused at the double doors in front and pressed a bell to my right. After a moment, the door buzzed back, releasing the lock, and I went in. The lobby was already accumulating shadows and reminded me vaguely of an abandoned train station in a futuristic movie. It had that same air of vintage elegance: inlaid marble floors, high ceilings, beautiful woodwork of buffed oak. The few remaining fixtures must have been there since the twenties, when the place was built.
I crossed the lobby, glancing idly at the wall directory as I passed. Almost subliminally, a name caught my eye. I paused and looked again. Leo Kleinert had an office out here, which I hadn't realized before. Had Bobby driven this far for weekly psychiatric sessions? Seemed a bit out of the way. I went downstairs, footsteps scratching on the tile steps. As before, I could feel the temperature dropping, like a descent into the waters of a lake. Down here, it was gloomier, but the glass door to the morgue was lighted, a bright rectangle in the gathering darkness of the hall. I checked my watch. It wasn't even 7:15.
I tapped on the glass for form's sake and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. I opened the door and peered in.
"Hello?"
There was no one in evidence, but that had happened to me before when Dr. Fraker and I had visited. Maybe Alfie was in the refrigerated storage room where the bodies were kept.
"Heellloo!"
No response. He'd buzzed me in, so he had to be around here someplace.
I closed the door behind me. The fluorescent lighting was harsh, giving the illusion of winter sunlight. There was a door to my left. I crossed and knocked before I opened it to find an empty office with a dark brown Naugahyde couch. Maybe the guy on the graveyard shift snagged some shut-eye in here when nothing else was going on. There was a desk and a swivel chair. The outside of the window was covered with ornamental wrought-iron burglar bars, the daylight blocked out by a mass of unruly shrubs. I closed the door and moved over to the refrigerated room where the bodies were kept, peering in.
No Alfie in sight. Inside, the light was constant, occupants laid out on blue fiberglass berths, engaged in their eternal, motionless naps, some wrapped in sheets, some in plastic, necks and ankles wound with what looked like masking tape. Somehow, it reminded me of quiet time at summer camp.
I returned to the main room and sat for a while, staring at the autopsy table. My customary procedure would have been to snoop into every cabinet, drawer, and storage bin, but it felt disrespectful here. Or maybe I was afraid I'd stumble onto something grotesque: trays of dentures, a Mason jar chock-full of floating eyeballs. I don't know what I thought I'd see. I shifted restlessly. I felt as if I were wasting time. I went to the door and looked out into the hall, tilting my head to listen. Nothing.
"Alfie?" I called. I listened again, then shrugged and closed the door. It occurred to me that as long as I was there, I could at least verify that the number Bobby'd written down was, in fact, the same as the number on Franklin s toe tag. That wouldn't do any harm. I took the address book out of my handbag and turned to the penciled entry on the back cover. I went into the cold-storage room again, moving from body to body, checking I.D. tags. This was like some kind of bargain-basement sale only nothing was marked down.
When I got to the third body, the numbers matched. Kelly was right. Bobby'd shifted the hyphen over so the seven-digit code looked like a telephone number. I stared at the body, or what I could see of it. The plastic that Franklin was wrapped in was transparent but yellowing, as though stained with nicotine. Through the swaddling, I could see that he was a middle-aged black man of medium height, slim, with a face of stone. Why was this corpse significant? I was feeling anxious. I figured Alfie would be back shortly and I really didn't want to be caught nosing around in here. I went back to my chair.
Coming out of the cold-storage room was like leaving an air-conditioned theater. It made the autopsy room feel balmy by comparison. I was getting itchy to explore. I couldn't help myself. I was irritated that no one was there to help me and feeling edgy from the quiet. This was not a fun place. Ordinarily, I don't hang out in morgues and it was making me tense.
Just to soothe my nerves, I peered into a drawer, testing the contents against the grisly images I'd conjured up. This one contained scratch pads, order blanks, arid miscellaneous paper supplies. Reassured, I tried the next drawer: small vials of several drugs, the names of which I did not recognize. I was warming up here and I checked on down the line. Everything appeared to be related to the business of dissecting the dead; not surprising, given the locale, but not very enlightening.
I straightened up and looked around the room. Where were the files? Didn't anybody keep records around this place? Somebody had mentioned that there were medical charts stored out here, but where? This floor? Somewhere on one of the floors above? I didn't relish the idea of creeping through the empty building by myself. I'd been picturing Alfie Leadbetter at my side, telling me what was accessible and where I might start. I'd even pictured slipping him a twenty-dollar bill if that's what it took to enlist his aid.
I glanced at my watch. I'd now been here forty-five minutes and I wanted some results. I grabbed my handbag and went out in the hall, looking in both directions. It was getting darker down here, although I could see through a window at the end of the hall that it was still light outside. I found a wall switch and flipped on the lights and then I wandered along the corridor, reading the small white signs mounted above each office door. The radiology offices were right next to the morgue. Beyond that, Nuclear Medicine, and nursing offices. I wondered if Sufi Daniels had occasion to come out here.
Something was beginning to stir at the back of my brain. I was thinking about the cardboard box full of Bobby s belongings. What was in it? Medical texts and office supplies and two radiology manuals. What was he actually doing with those? He hadn't even been a medical student and I couldn't think why he'd need the manuals for equipment he might not be using for years, if ever. He'd indicated no particular interest in radiology.
I went upstairs. It wouldn't hurt to look at that stuff again. When I reached the front entrance, I slipped off my sweatshirt and wedged it in the opening. I could push the door open with no problem, but I didn't want the lock snapping shut behind me as I went out. I crossed to my car and unlocked it, wrestling the carton out the backseat. I removed the two radiology books and leafed through them quickly. These were technical manuals for specific equipment, information about the various gauges and dials and switches, with a lot of esoteric talk about exposures, rads, and roentgens. At the top of one page was a penciled number, like a doodle, surrounded by curlicues. Franklins again. The sight of the now familiar seven-digit code seemed eerie, like the sound of Bobby's voice on my answering machine five days after he died.
I tucked the two manuals under my arm and locked my car again, leaving the box on the front seat. Slowly, I returned to the building. I let myself in, pausing to pull on my sweatshirt. As long as I was on the first floor, I did a superficial survey. I kept thinking it was medical records I was looking for, the handgun tucked down in a bankers box packed with old charts. This had been a working hospital at one time and there had to be a records department somewhere. Where else would old charts be kept? If my memory of St. Terry's served me, the Medical Records Department was fairly centrally located so that doctors and other authorized personnel would have easy access.
Not many offices on this floor appeared to be occupied. I tried door handles randomly. Most were locked. I rounded the corner at the end of the hall and there it was, "Medical Records" painted above a set of double doors in a faded scrawl. I could see now that many of the old departments were similarly marked: florid lettering on a painted scroll, as though by declaration of the conquistadors.
I tried the knob, expecting to have to experiment with my key picks. Instead, the door swung open with a low-pitched creak that might have been contrived by a special-effects man. Waning daylight filtered in. The room yawned before me, barren, stripped of everything. No file cabinets, no furniture, no fixtures. A crumpled cigarette pack, some loose boards, and a couple of bent nails were scattered across the floor. This department had literally been dismantled at some point and God only knew where the old records were now. It was possible they were somewhere in one of the abandoned hospital rooms above, but I really didn't want to go up there by myself. I'd promised Jonah I wouldn't be stupid and I was trying to be a good scout on that score. Besides, something else was nagging at me.
I returned to the stairs, descending. What was that little voice in the back of my head murmuring? It was like a radio playing in the next room. I could pick up only a faint phrase now and then.
When I reached the basement, I crossed to the radiology office and tried the knob. Locked. I got out my key picks and played around for a while. This was one of those "burglar-proof locks that can be picked, but it really is a pain in the ass. Still, I wanted to see what was in there and I worked patiently. I was using a set of rocker picks, with random depth cuts spaced along the top, the back side of each pick ground to an oval. The whole idea is that with enough different cut combinations, together with an applied rocking motion, somewhere along the way all the pins will, by chance, be raised to the shear line at the same time, popping the lock.
Like hiding, the only way to approach the whole process is to give oneself up to it. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes, easing the pick forward, rocking it, applying slight pressure when I felt movement of any sort. Lo and behold, the sucker gave way and I let out a little exclamation of delight. "Oh, wow. Hey, that's great." It's this sort of shit that makes my job fun. Also illegal, but who was going to tell?
I eased into the office. I flipped the overhead light on. It looked like ordinary office space. Typewriters and telephones and file cabinets, plants on the desks, pictures on the walls. There was a small reception area where I imagined patients seated, waiting to be called for their X rays. I wandered through some of the rooms in the rear, picturing the procedures for chest X rays and mammograms, upper G.I. series. I stood in front of the machines and opened one of the manuals I'd brought in from the car.
I checked the diagrams against the various dials and gauges on the X-ray equipment itself. It was a match, more or less. Maybe some variation according to year, make, or model of the actual machinery installed. Some of it looked like the stuff of science fiction. Massive nose cone on a swinging arm. I stood there, manual open in my arms, pages pressed to my chest while I stared at the table and the lead apron that looked like a baby bib for a giant. I thought about the X rays I'd had taken of my left arm two months ago, just after I'd been shot.
It wasn't as if the idea came to me all at once. It formed around me, like fairy dust, gradually taking shape. Bobby had been out here all by himself, just like this. Night after night, searching for the handgun that had Nola's fingerprints on it. He knew who had hidden it, so he must have formed some kind of theory about the hiding place. I had to guess that he'd found the gun and that's why he was killed. Maybe he'd actually retrieved it, but I didn't think so. I'd been operating on the assumption that it was still hidden out here and that still seemed like a good bet. He'd made some little notes to himself, doodling the I.D. number of a corpse in his little red book and again in the pages of a radiology manual he'd acquired.
The phrases running through my head began to connect. Maybe you should X-ray the corpse, said I to myself Maybe that's what Bobby did and maybe that's why he made the penciled notation in the radiology book. Maybe the gun is inside the corpse. I thought about it briefly, but I couldn't see why I shouldn't give it a try. The worst that could happen (aside from my getting caught) was that I'd be wasting time and making a colossal fool of myself This would not be a first.
I left my handbag and the manuals on one of the X-ray tables and went next door to the morgue. In the refrigerated storage room, I spotted a gurney against the right wall. I was on automatic pilot by now, simply doing what I knew had to be done. There was still no sign of Alfie Leadbetter and no one was going to help me. I might be wrong, so maybe it was just as well that no one knew what I was up to. The building was deserted. It was early yet. Even if I fumbled the X-ray procedure, it couldn't hurt the dead man.
I rolled the gurney over to the fiberglass bunk where the body lay. I pretended I was a morgue attendant. I pretended I was an X-ray technician or a nurse, some thoroughly professional person with a job to do.
"Sorry to disturb you, Frank," I said, "but you have to go next door for some tests. You're not looking so good."
Tentatively, I reached out and eased a hand under Franklin's neck and knees and pulled, slipping him from his resting place onto the gurney. He was surprisingly light, and cold to the touch, about the consistency of a package of raw chicken breasts just out of the fridge. God, I thought, why do I plague myself with these domestic images? I'd never be motivated to learn to cook at this rate.
It took incredible maneuvering to get the gurney through the morgue and out into the corridor, then into the reception area of the radiology offices and into one of the X-ray rooms in the rear. I lined the gurney up parallel to the X-ray table and shoved the body into place. I raised and lowered the nose cone a couple of times experimentally, sliding it along its overhead track until it was right over Franklin's abdomen. At some point, I was going to have to figure out how far away from the body it should be. Meanwhile, since I intended to take some pictures, I thought I better find some film of some kind.
I looked through the four cabinets in the room and found nothing. I circled the room. There was a shallow cupboard mounted on the wall, like a fuse box with double doors. A strip of masking tape was pasted on one side, with the word exposed printed on it in ballpoint pen. A second strip of tape said unexposed. I opened that door. There were film cassettes of varying sizes lined up like serving trays. I took one out.
I went over to the table and studied the layout of the machinery. I didn't see any way to slide the cassette into the apparatus above the table, but there was a sliding tray in the table itself, just under the padded edge. I pulled it out and inserted the cassette. I hoped I had guessed right about which side should be up. Looked right to me. Maybe I could fashion a whole new career out of this.
I figured Franklin didn't need protecting, so I picked up the full-length lead apron and put it on myself, feeling somehow like the goalie in a hockey match. Actually, I'd never seen an X-ray technician running around in one of these things, but it made me feel secure. I pointed the nose cone at Franklin's belly, about three feet up, and then went behind the screen in one corner of the room.
I checked the manual again, leafing through until I found diagrams that seemed relevant. Thefe were numerous gauges with little arrow-shaped pointers at rest, ready to whip into the green zone, the yellow, or the red at the flick of a switch. There was a lever on the right marked "power supply," which I flipped to the "on" position. Nothing went on. A puzzlement. I flipped it off and then checked the wall to my left. There were two breaker boxes with big switches that I shifted from "off" to "on." There was a murmur of power being generated. I flipped the power supply lever to "on" again. The machine came on. I smiled. That was great.
I studied the panel in front of me. There was a timer that would apparently have to be set on a scale from 1/120 of a second to six seconds. A gauge for kilovolts. One marked "milliamperes." God, three rows of lighted green squares to choose from. I started with a midrange setting on everything, figuring I could use one gauge as a control and adjust the other two in some sort of rotating system. In between, I would check my results on the finished film and see what kind of picture I was getting.
I peered around the screen. "O.K., Frank, take a deep breath and hold."
Well, at least he got the "holding" part right.
I pressed the switch on the handgrip. I heard a brief bzzt. Cautiously, I came out from behind the screen as though X rays might still be flying around the room. I crossed to the table and removed the cassette. Now what? There had to be some kind of developing process, but it didn't appear to be in here. I left the machine on and carried the cassette with me, checking into rooms nearby.
Two doors away, I found what looked right to me. On the wall was a flow chart, giving the step-by-step procedure for developing plates. I could get a job out here after this.
Again, it was necessary to switch the power on. After that, I worked in the dull red glow of the safelights, squinting my way through the process slowly. I filled the wall-mounted tank with water as specified. I flipped the cassette over and unlatched the back, removing the film, which I eased into the tray. It disappeared into the machine with a sound.
Shoot, where'd it go? I couldn't see anything in the room that looked like it would produce a piece of processed film. I felt like a puppy learning what happens when a ball rolls under the couch. I left the room and went next door. The hind end of the automatic developer was there, looking like a big Xerox machine with a slot. I waited. A minute and a half later, a finished piece of film slid out. I looked at it. Pitch black. Shit. What had I done wrong? How could it be overexposed when I'd been so careful? I stared at the developer. The lid was open a crack. I peered at it. Experimentally, I gave it a push. It snapped shut. Maybe that would do it.
I went back into the other room and got a second cassette out and went through the entire process again. Two rounds later, I found what I was looking for. The overall quality of the picture was poor, but the image was distinct. In the center of Franklin's belly was the solid white silhouette of a handgun. It looked like a large-frame automatic, arranged at an angle, maybe to accommodate his skeletal structure or internal organs. There was something unnerving about the sight. I rolled up the X ray and put a rubber band around it. Time to get out of here.
Hastily, I shut down the machinery and shifted Franklin onto the cart for the ride back to the morgue, turning off lights and locking up the office in my wake.
I navigated the gurney back through the hall and into the morgue. I was easing Franklin onto his berth again when something caught my eye. I glanced over at the next tier of bunks. A man's hand was resting just about at eye level and it didn't look right. The bodies I'd seen had been deadly pale, the flesh like a doll's skin, rubbery and unreal. This hand seemed too pink. I could see now that the body itself was only loosely covered with plastic sheeting. Had it been there before? I moved closer, reaching out hesitantly. I think I made that little humming sound you make when you're close to a shriek, but haven't yet committed yourself.
Tentatively, I lifted the plastic away from the face. Male, white, in his twenties. There was no pulse evident but that was probably because there was a ligature wound around his neck so tightly that it had all but disappeared, sinking into the flesh until his tongue bugged out. The body was cool, but not cold. I stopped breathing. I thought my heart would stop as well. I was reasonably sure I'd just made the acquaintance of Alfie Leadbetter, newly deceased. At that instant I wasn't as worried about who had killed him as who had buzzed the door open to let me in. I didn't think it was Alf. I suddenly suspected that I'd been cruising around that deserted building in the company of a killer who was undoubtedly still there, waiting to see what I was up to, waiting to do to me what had been done to the hapless morgue attendant who'd gotten in the way.
I backed out of the room as fast as I could, my heart banging away, sending sick spurts of fear through my electrified frame. The morgue was reassuringly bright, but so deadly still.
Mentally, I traced an escape route, wondering what choices I had. The windows down here were covered with burglar bars too narrow to slip through. The exterior doors were heavy glass, embedded with wire that I might or might not be able to penetrate. I certainly wasn't going to smash through them without calling attention to myself. I'd have to try for the stairs, pushing out of the same double doors I'd come through in the first place, though the idea of even going out into the hall at this point was nearly more than I could bear.
Somewhere above me, a door slammed and I jumped. I heard someone coping down the stairs, whistling aimlessly. A security guard? Someone coming back after work? I absolutely could not move. It was too late for action, too late for escape, and there was no place to hide. Transfixed, I stared at the door as footsteps approached. Someone paused in the corridor, singing the first few snatches of "Someone to Watch over Me." The knob turned and Dr. Fraker came in, glancing up, startled, at the sight of me.
"Oh! Hello. I didn't expect to see you here," he said. "I thought you were off talking to Kelly."
I let out a breath and found my voice. "I did that. A little while ago."
"Jesus, what's wrong? You're as white as a ghost."
I shook my head. "I was just on my way out when I heard the door slam. You scared the shit out of me." My voice cracked in the middle of the sentence as if I'd just reached puberty.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to spook you like that." He had on his surgical greens. I watched him cross the counter and open a drawer, taking out instruments. From the next drawer down, he took out a vial and a syringe.
"Listen, we've got a problem," I said.
"Oh really. What's that?" Dr. Fraker turned to smile at me and Nola's line popped into my head. "We're talking about a lunatic. Someone so crazy," she had whispered. Dr. Fraker's eyes were fixed on mine as he filled the syringe. The penny dropped. She hadn't wanted to stay in the marriage. She had wanted out. Bobby Callahan in his naivete had thought he could help.
It was there in his face and the lazy way he moved. This man meant to kill me. Judging from the tools he'd assembled, he had all of the equipment he needed-nice table with a drain, hacksaws, scalpels, a working disposal just under the sink. He knew anatomy too, all the tendons and ligaments. I pictured a turkey wing, how you have to bend it backward to ease the blade into that joint.
I usually cry when I'm scared and I could feel tears well up. Not sorrow, but horror. Given all the lies I'd told in my life, right then I couldn't think of one. My mind was empty of thought. There I stood with the X ray in my hand, the truth, I'm sure, written all over my face. My only hope was to act before he did and move twice as fast.
I dove for the door, fumbling with the knob. I yanked it open and ran for the stairs, taking two at a time, then three, looking back with a moan of raw fear. He was coming out of the door, syringe held loosely in one hand. What scared me was that he was moving slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. He'd taken up the song lyric where he left off, a sort of tuneless rendition that didn't do the Gershwins justice.
"Like a little lamb who's lost in the wood… 1 know I could always be good… to one who'll watch over me…"
I reached the top of the stairs. What did he know that I didn't know? Why did he feel that this leisurely pace would suit when I was flying toward the entrance? I lowered a shoulder and slammed up against the double doors, but neither gave way. I rammed them again. The entranceway, locked like this, formed a small cul-de-sac. If I gave him time to reach the corridor, I'd have no way out. I reached the hall just as he got to the top of the stairs.
Chit, chit. I could hear his footsteps scratch on the tile while he sang on.
"Although he may not be the man some girls think of as handsome, to my heart he'll carry the key…"
Still taking his time. I wanted to scream, but what was the point? The building was empty. It was locked up tight. Dark except for the pale light filtering in from the parking lot. I needed a weapon. Dr. Fraker had his little syringe filled with whatever he meant to pop me with. He was a big guy too, and once he made contact, I was in trouble.
I flew down the hall to the old medical-records room and slammed the door back on its hinge. I snatched up a two-by-four, still running, and headed back out into the corridor, racing for the far end. There had to be stairs. There had to be windows to smash, some way out.
Behind me, from a man who couldn't even carry a tune, I heard… "Won't you tell him please to put on some speed, follow my lead, oh how I need, someone to watch over me…"
I reached the stairwell and headed up, beginning to analyze the situation as I ran. At this rate, he could chase me all over the building. I'd soon be exhausted and he wouldn't even be breaking a sweat. Not a good idea, this form of pursuit. I reached the landing and snatched for the door. Locked. There was just one more floor. Was I being trapped or herded? In either case, I had the feeling he was in charge, that he'd set this all up in advance.
He was just coming into the stairwell below me as I took to the stairs again, heading toward the third floor, the two-by-four clutched in my hot little hand. I didn't like this. The door at the third floor flew back at a touch and I stepped into the darkened hall. I took off to my right, forcing myself to slow my pace. I was out of breath from climbing the stairs, bathed in sweat. I considered searching out a place to hide, but my choices were limited. There were rooms opening off on either side of me, but I was afraid I was going to get cornered in one. All he had to do was check each one in turn and pretty soon he'd figure out where I was. Also I hate hiding. It turns me into a six-year-old and I'm sick of that. I wanted to be on my feet, in motion, taking action instead of crouching down with my hands held over my face hoping God had rendered me transparent.
I made another right-hand turn. Behind me, I heard the door to the third-floor landing slam shut. I spotted an elevator halfway down the corridor on the right-hand side. I sprinted, and when I reached it, pounded on the "down" button with my palm.
Dr. Fraker had just taken up a new tune, this time whistling the first few bars of "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You." Was this man sick or what?
I banged on the button again, listening fervently as the elevator cable whirred softly on the other side of the door. I looked to my right. There he came, his surgical greens showing up as a pale glow in the shadows. I heard the mechanism stop. He seemed to be moving faster, but he was still twenty yards away from me. The elevator doors slid open. Oh fuck!
I stepped forward just as I flashed on the fact that there was nothing there except a yawning shaft and a gust of cold air wafting up from below. I caught myself half a second from tumbling into that pitch-black hole. A low cry escaped me as I caught at the doorframe, swinging out over the pit for an instant before I managed to right myself. I stumbled backward to safety but I'd lost my purchase. I was down and the two-by-four flew out of my hand, skittering off. I flipped over on my hands and knees scrambling toward it.
He had caught up to me by then and he grabbed me by the hair, hauling me upright just as my hand closed around the board. I swung it up, whacking at him. I made contact but the angle was awkward and there was no force behind the blow. I felt the sting of the needle in my left thigh. Both of us barked out a sound at the same time. Mine was a shrill yelp of pain and surprise, his the low grunt as the impact from the two-by-four registered. I had the advantage of a split second and I took it, lashing out with a side kick that caught him in the shin. No good, too low. The wisdom of self-defense would have it that there's no point in simply inflecting pain on your attacker. It'll just piss him off. Unless I could disable him, I didn't have a chance.
He grabbed at me from behind. I snapped my left elbow back, but again I was slightly off the mark. I pushed at him, kicking repeatedly at his shin until he backed off, breathing hard. I cracked him one across the shoulder with the two-by-four and ran, pounding down the hall. I stumbled briefly, but regained my footing. I felt as if I'd stepped in a hole, and it occurred to me belatedly that whatever he'd injected me with was taking effect. My left leg was feeling wobbly, my kneecap loose, both feet going numb. The same fear that had sent adrenaline coursing through my body was speeding some drug on its way. Like snakebite. They say you shouldn't run.
I glanced back. He was clutching his shoulder, just beginning to move in my direction, coming slowly again. He didn't seem worried that I'd get away, so I had to guess that he had jammed the door to the stairwell as he came through. Either that or he knew that the shit he'd popped me with would soon knock me out. I was losing contact with my extremities and I could scarcely sense my own grip on the board. A chill was seeping from my skin toward my core as if I were being put through a quick-freeze process for shipping to God knows where. I was working as hard as I could, but the darkness had become gelatinous and I felt slow. Time was grinding down too as my body labored against the drug. My mind was working, but I felt myself distracted by the odd sensations I experienced.
Oh, the bothersome details that finally fall into place like a little right-brain joke. It did come to me, in a flash, like a bubble through my veins, that Fraker was the one supplying Kitty with drugs, probably in exchange for information about Bobby's search for the gun. The stash in her bed-table drawer was a plant. He'd been there that night. Maybe he thought it was time to take her out, lest she in her guilt admit to her own duplicity where Bobby was concerned.
The distance to the corner of the hallway had been extended. I'd been running forever. The simple commands I was managing to send to my body were taking too long and I was losing the feedback system that records a response. Was I, in fact, running? Was I going anywhere? Sound was being stretched out, the echo of my own footsteps coming belatedly. I felt as if I were bounding down a corridor with a floor like a trampoline. Flash number two. Fraker had rigged the autopsy report. No seizure. He'd cut the brake lines. Too bad I hadn't figured it out before now. God, what a dummy I was.
I reached the corner slowing, and I could feel my body folding down on itself. As I rounded the corner, I had to pause. I propped myself against the wall, working to breathe. I had to clear my head. Stay upright. I had to lift my arms if I could. Time had begun to stretch out like taffy, long strands, sticky, hard to manage.
He was singing again, treating me to some oldies but goodies in his own private hit parade. He'd moved on now to "Accentuate the positive… eliminate the negative"… vowels dragged out like a phonograph record slowing when the power shuts off.
Even the voice in my own brain got hollow and remote.
Crouch, Kinsey, it said.
I thought I might be crouching but I couldn't tell anymore where my legs were or my hips or much of my spine. My arms were feeling heavy and I wondered if my elbows were bent.
Batter up, the voice said and I believed, but couldn't have sworn to the fact, that I was drawing the two-by-four back, elbow crooked as my aunt had taught me long long ago.
Day was passing into night, life into death.
Fraker's voice droned out the song. "Acceeennntuate the pooosssitive, eeeellliiiimindaate the neeegatiiiive…"
When he came around the corner, I stepped into the swing, the two-by-four aimed straight at his face. I could see the board begin its march through space, like a series of time-lapse photographs, light against dark, closing down the distance. I felt the board connect with a sweet popping sound.
It was out of the ball park and I went down with the roar of the crowd in my ears.