I walked through dim images of the buildings that had once flanked the hospital and crossed through the memories of sickness and health, birth and death. Ghostly accident victims lined the halls, lying on misty gurneys. The odors of illness and the sounds of newborn babies pushed on my attention and I moved aside without thinking for the shades of long-ago nurses bustling past me. The boring elevator was a small relief, though even it had a few lingering shadows that defied the lights. The doors opened on a throng of ghosts.
The morgue had been in the basement for a long time, collecting Grey, dead things. I'd been down there before—missing persons, insurance, and pretrial investigations sometimes led to the deceased— but I'd never before been able to see what everyone always imagines: the spirits that never leave the place. There were plenty of them, though as I stared, I realized there were fewer than I would have thought. Most were oblivious to me, but some had gathered around the elevator door, making the apparent crowd. Two or three looked at me as if they expected something.
"I don't have time for you right now," I muttered. "Go away.”
A few of them backed away or faded as I stepped out of the lift. Something whispered, "We don't know the way." I wondered if that was literal truth or something more spiritual in nature.
I thought I might regret it, but I murmured, "You can follow me out when I leave. But after that, you're on your own." The rest of the ghosts that could, moved aside and let me through, though I still had to step through a couple to get to the desk. Each phantom I touched had a different icy feel as they slid through me. I shivered and was glad of the cashmere sweater.
The sleepy clerk at the desk wasn't someone I knew, but she was a type I was familiar with—college student working an undemanding job late at night so she could make money and do homework at the same time. Since Harborview was the county hospital and administered by the University of Washington's medical center, the chances were good the clerk was a UW med student doing work study. She didn't even close her textbook when she looked up at me, a little puzzled by my natty appearance in such a place.
"Can I help you?”
"I hope so." I showed her my license. "I'm checking for a missing person and I wondered if you had any unidentified males who matched his description." I rattled off the information Cameron had given me, and tried to ignore the cold presence of the dead around me. It occurred to me that Mark Lupoldi's body was somewhere nearby, but I didn't want to see it again and didn't mention it.
It took some scuffling with papers and phones first, but I was escorted back to the cooler by a young man who called himself Fish and looked like a badger in blue scrubs. A small cortege followed me down the narrow hall. Most visitors saw the deceased on a monitor in a viewing room, but there wasn't time or personnel to set that up before the shift changed and everyone just wanted to get this over with, which I had counted on. I saw the body in person, my retinue of ghosts spreading around to look at him, maybe wondering why he was so important.
He didn't look like much lying on his metal tray. Just an old man, white-haired, dressed in ragged clothes, and dead. Just plain dead. I peered at him from several angles, but couldn't see anything, not even a mark of whatever Cameron had done to him. I sank as far into the Grey as I dared, but he had no gleam of living power to him at all and certainly nothing like the dark red coronas I'd seen around most of the vampires I'd met. I closed my eyes and thanked every god who might have an interest that he was only a cold husk of empty flesh with nothing Grey to him, not even a ghost.
I shook my head. "Not my guy.”
"You sure?" Fish asked. "You were looking pretty hard. . ”
"He's similar. The beard threw me a bit. But it's not him. I'm sorry for the trouble.”
He shrugged. "No biggie. At least someone's looking for someone. Makes me hope someone'll come looking for him, too.”
I glanced at Fish as he pushed the corpse back into the chilled drawer. "You care about these guys?”
He nodded. "Yeah. No one should have to stay in a drawer forever. Couple of these bodies have been unidentified for more than ten years. That's just wrong.”
I nodded, disturbed by the thoughts he'd started in my head, and took my leave. I was followed by a macabre parade, like the Pied Piper of the dead.
The ghosts trailed me all the way out the parking lot door, where they dispersed with a sigh. I looked back over my shoulder, but couldn't see a single one. They'd just wanted out of the morgue, I guessed, out of the hospital where some of them must have died. They had escaped at last. My good deed for the day, like the Girl Scout I'd never been. I wondered about the bodies that had lain so long unidentified and hoped the old man wouldn't be joining them.
CHAPTER 9
I drove down the hill to Pioneer Square and buried myself in work. I made phone calls, managing the usual cases that paid the rent and bills and hoped to forget about ghosts trapped in the morgue and unnamed corpses in cold steel drawers. I turned my mind to other problems and called the Danzigers. The phone rang twice and Mara answered.
"And how are you, Harper?" she asked, her Irish accent tumbling over the words like brook water on smooth stones. "We've not seen you in awhile.”
"I've been pretty busy," I hedged. I'd found their child a little harder to take lately and had, I admit, avoided them as a result. "I wanted to talk to Ben about an old ghost project and a few other things. Is he free today?”
"I'll ask him, shall I." She muffled the phone for a few moments before returning. Something was making a thumping and growling sound in the background. I had to concentrate to hear her. "Ben'll be here all day, he says. He's taking this term off to manage Brian while I've got the unholy course schedule, though how he'll survive it, I'm sure I don't know. Will you be dropping by, then?" "I will. When's good?”
She snorted. "As well ask the wind. Come by if you like and if you hear pounding and screaming, walk on by and return later. I swear some wag had the right of it when he said boys should be put into barrels at birth and fed through the bunghole.”
My eyebrows went up. Voluntarily and adamantly childless, I'd always assumed that most parents were blissfully unaware of the horrors their little darlings could be. I would have to apologize to a few parents, though not my own—we'd burdened each other with enough mutual horror to call the deal even, by now.
"Okaaaaay. .," I drawled.
Mara sighed. "Never mind me. Come when you can. You know you're always welcome and Ben'll relish a chance to chat up an adult who's not as shell-shocked as himself. I must fly—department meeting today with the head fossil, himself.”
"Thanks, Mara. Good luck with the fossil.”
She laughed her sudden whoop. "I'll need it!”
I'd put myself on the hook, but I'd manage. After all, I could leave anytime I wanted and not be arrested for child abandonment—Brian wasn't my kid.
Putting down the phone, I spent some time online trying to find information on faking a séance, but found little. I'd have to add that to my list of questions for Ben. I managed a few other details, then headed to the Danzigers' to get some background information on the Philip experiment that Tuckman had based his experiment on.
The Danzigers' house was in upper Queen Anne, just a short trip up the hill that looms over Seattle's famous Space Needle. In spite of the competition for parking spaces, there always seemed to be an empty one within twenty feet of the pale blue clapboard house. I wondered if Mara had put some kind of spell on the street or if it was just magic parking karma associated with the gentle glow of the Grey power nexus beneath the house. Whatever. I managed to park right in front.