Clive was impressed. He circled me, brandishing the needle like a switchblade. He feinted and I ducked. He stabbed and I slipped to the side. He aimed high and I dropped to the floor, throwing my shoulder at his knees in a chop block. I rolled into him, my body pinning his left foot to the floor while my shoulder turned his leg sideways. I heard the crack and knew his anterior cruciate ligament was blown into shreds of spaghetti. He hollered and clutched the knee, rolling from side to side. I heard Stephanie screaming.
I struggled to my feet and saw a shadow over my shoulder. I swung at it and it disappeared. I swung again and missed again. Twisting my neck, I saw it once more. It seemed to be attached to me. I turned the other way, and the shadow became the plunger of a syringe. The business end was stuck into my shoulder just behind the blade. Clive must have taken a shot at me as I went for his knees. I hadn't felt it. My hands were still cuffed in front, and I couldn't reach it.
Francis was still on the floor. If he was conscious, he wasn't solving ten-digit logarithms. I tested him with a foot. He groaned but didn't move. I knelt down, fumbled with his belt, and removed a key ring. After seven keys, I still hadn't found the right one, so I said to hell with it. I managed to push a couple of buttons on the wall, and I the door opened with a buzz and a clang.
I bolted into the corridor, possessed of no particularly brilliant ideas. I was handcuffed, panting, covered with blood, and had a needle sticking out of my shoulder. Two men in white coats were walking thirty yards down the corridor. I waved to them with my cuffed hands. One waved back, did a double take, then they started for me. I used the good shoulder to push through some swinging doors and headed up a set of steep metal stairs. I was dizzy and nauseous. I thought I heard shouts behind me as I took the stairs two at a time, my footsteps resounding like distant echoes.
Three flights up, I heard the roar of amplified words that seemed to envelop me. I stopped, my heart pounding in my ears, my vision hazy.
A dignified voice proclaimed: "There are four manners of death…" For a moment, in my wooziness, I envisioned the PA announcer at the Pearly Gates. Have your admission tickets ready. Lassiter, Jacob Lassiter? We have no record of your reservation. I took a deep breath and let an invisible force lead me up the stairs to a peaceful hereafter. I was vaguely aware of a secret pleasure that I hadn't headed toward the basement.
The electronic voice recited: "Accident, suicide, homicide, and natural. Distinguishing them is the first task of the medical examiner."
Wait. I had heard the voice before. The words too. Authoritative, though hardly heavenly.
"If the body has a black eye, is it from a punch, or from a fall after a heart attack?"
I was so sleepy. So ready for rest.
"An autopsy can only tell you so much. You must take as much care at the scene of the crime as in the morgue. Take precise photographs. Measure and diagram the scene. Preserve the evidence, including hair and fibers at the scene. We all remember the Wayne Williams murder trial in Atlanta. Fiber evidence from Williams' car was crucial to the conviction. And, of course, bullets. You have no idea how many times I've seen bullets crushed by a physician's instruments. We even had one assistant ME who would etch his initials onto bullets he removed. That's one way to lose friends in ballistics."
Good old Charlie Riggs, his voice booming over a loudspeaker. He would take care of me. Put me to sleep. Whoops, all his patients were sleeping the big sleep. On stainless steel tables with wooden pillows in a room that could give you-but not them-a cold.
I stumbled through a door, up three more steps onto the skirt of a wooden stage. Heavy purple drapes separated me from my old friend. I peeked through an opening and saw him, a blaze of lights at his feet, an unseen audience beyond.
"A medical examiner must never be surprised. Neither by physical evidence nor human behavior. The medical examiner remains objective, cool, dispassionate, unfazed in the face of horror and…"
I burst through the curtain with my last reserve of strength and collapsed at Charlie's feet. I heard a gasp from beyond the footlights. For some reason, I pictured Gerald Prince playing Julius Caesar.
I looked up at my old friend. "Et tu, Charles?" I asked.
Charlie Riggs looked down at the bloody, sweaty, needle-stuck body at his feet. " Mea culpa, " he whispered. "I never should have left you alone here."
I brought myself to my knees, looked up at him, and smiled a peaceful smile. Then I promptly vomited on his genuine L.L. Bean hiking boots.
"Perhaps," I heard him say into the microphone as I rolled free of the mess and rested my face on the cool floorboards, "we should take a five-minute break before the slide show."
CHAPTER 22
"Do you really feel up to driving?" Pamela Maxson asked. I gave her my steely-eyed confident look. "You're not groggy at all?" I shook my head.
"Why should he be groggy?" Charlie Riggs scoffed. "He slept fourteen hours, then called room service at six a.m. and ordered french fries and a chocolate shake."
"Chips for breakfast." Pam clucked with disapproval.
"With vinegar," Charlie tattled.
We were standing in front of the hotel, waiting for the Land Rover to emerge from the car park. It was a fine summer day in London, which is to say it was dark, wet, and cold. "I'm fine," I said. "A little headache, that's all."
"Better than those poor lads at the hospital," Pam scolded. "Knee surgery for Clive, a broken nose for Francis. I must say, your conduct required some creative explanations to the administrator."
Those two knuckleheads wouldn't listen to me."
"So you created an affray?"
"They were going to lock me up."
"They would have put you in the ward. How long do you think it would have taken to straighten it all out? An hour, two?"
"I wasn't thinking that far ahead."
"At the first provocation, at the first excuse to act out your hostility, you battered those working-class lads who haven't had the benefits you've enjoyed."
I felt my bruised face redden. "Those working-class lads are a couple of thugs."
"Did you enjoy hurting them?"
"Look, lady-"
Charlie stepped between us just as the valet swung the Land Rover under the portico. "Now, now. I see the truce lasted all of one day. Jake, why not let Dr. Maxson drive? She knows the route and…"
I ran a Z-pattern that Jerry Rice would admire and grabbed the keys from the valet. The doorman, a tall fellow in a red tunic and a fur hat two feet high, tried to stow our bags, but I grabbed those, too, and tossed them unceremoniously in back. Then I boldly opened the door, slid behind the steering wheel, and slammed the door behind me like a spoiled brat who's fled to his room.
Only I wasn't behind the steering wheel at all. Because the wheel was on the right, and I had gotten in on the left. This wasn't my ancient convertible in the good old U.S. of A. This was a lady psychiatrist's thirty-grand-plus glorified jeep in a country where they talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road. I remembered all the movies where the guy walks into the closet, thinking it's the front door. No wonder they stay inside. There's no graceful way out.
Finally Pam Maxson came around to my side, opened the door, and showed the barest hint of a smile. Not a supercilious or condescending smile. More of a tolerant one. I got out without pouting and she got in without any help from me. I headed to the other side while Charlie climbed into the back. The doorman watched with as much amusement as they allow and gave me a "very good, sir" when I palmed him a two-quid tip.