I saw Solis stand, returning his attention to the scene and the removal of the body. By the pulsing line of color around him I knew he was more upset than he let on. I’d have to dodge him, since I couldn’t answer the questions he’d surely ask. I turned and stepped behind the orca totem. Then I walked straight from it, keeping the tall wooden figure between me and Solis’s sharp eyes until I was too far away to recognize. Then I turned the corner and hurried back to my truck. If I could get to the morgue faster than the ME’s van, I might see the body brought in and that might tell me enough.
The slippery road was tricky driving. I wanted to gun it up the hill to Harborview, but I knew the wheels would only spin on the icy bricks and asphalt.
Luck was on my side: I had a small head start and just beat the van to the parking lot. Since I didn’t have a clumsy gurney to unload, I made it into the building and down to the basement ahead of the ME’s men and their burden.
The morgue always has its compliment of ghosts, though there were fewer this time than the last time I came and they ignored me. None of them seemed aware enough to want anything from me on this occasion. The area’s always a bit unwelcoming—old and sterile and furnished in institutional patchwork—and no one particularly notices the drafts, cold spots, and general sense of being in the presence of the unseen. In this dour atmosphere, the night shift was drawing to a post-Friday-night close. Looking drowsy and haggard, the night crew wasn’t terribly worried about me as I made my way toward the desk at the pace of a winter tortoise.
The elevator opened behind me and the men from the van came in with their gurney. They stopped at the desk and I stopped next to them. As they handed over paperwork, I stared hard at the bag enclosing the remains of Jennifer Novoy.
I couldn’t see through the plastic but there was enough of something clinging to the bag itself to know I’d guessed right. Soft strands of Grey curled from the zipper like fuzzy threads. The same sort of thread I’d seen on the hole in the tunnel wall and on Thursday night’s zombie. I hoped it wasn’t having the same effect on Jenny that it seemed to have had on him.
I needed to find out and took a risk.
“Hey,” I said. “Is that Solis’s Jane Doe from Oxy Park?”
The three men around the desk looked back at me, startled.
“Uh, yeah,” one of the gurney men replied. “Why?”
I pulled out my license and flipped it past them fast enough to blur the name.
“I have a related case. Solis said I should take a look.”
The two men with the body glanced at each other and shrugged. The man behind the desk sighed. “Let’s get her in the cooler first, huh? Richards will be pissed if she stays out here any longer than necessary.”
The men with the gurney agreed and pushed the cart through the swinging doors into the morgue work area. The other man—a rather stocky fellow with skin the color of madrone bark and short, thick, black hair dramatically streaked with white, making him look like a badger—picked up a clipboard to which he’d attached a pile of forms and followed them, motioning me along.
We went past doors to the autopsy rooms and back into the storage area. The chilly air of the cooler was actually warmer than the air outdoors—no one wanted to accidentally freeze the dear departed.
The van crew lifted the bag with care and transferred Jenny to a steel table.
Then they unzipped the bag and left it to the man with the clipboard to do the rest. He signed a sheet and handed it to them to sign before ripping off a copy for them and keeping the rest.
“OK, I got her. You’re done.”
The two men from the van grunted and left with their gurney.
The badger-faced man looked me over. “Don’t I know you?”
That threw me. I recognized him from the last time I’d been in the morgue, but I was surprised he remembered. “I’m a PI. Some of my searches end here.”
He frowned in thought. Then he snapped his fingers. “Yeah! Back… October I think it was. How many Does do you have to look at every year?”
“A lot less than you.”
He laughed. “I think I see more corpses in a week than most horror film freaks see in a year. So. You want to eyeball this one and we’ll get the hell out of here? Don’t know about you, but I’m cold!”
“Yeah, let’s get it over with.”
He put on indigo-colored latex gloves and peeled the edges of the bag down with big, gentle hands, as if to some silent ceremony he carried in his head. There was no sick delight in it, only a kind of sad reverence.
I looked down at Jenny’s pale blue face and flinched at the surprise there.
Whatever had killed her had come upon her too fast for screaming. The soft Grey strands I’d expected were curled around her face and chest, but frayed away as they went lower; they didn’t form the same kind of tangled web I’d seen on the zombie but looked more like a moth-eaten shawl that was falling away in broken threads. There was very little blood and she looked as if she might have simply frozen to death—if not for her startled expression. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t stand up and come looking for me later, and I breathed relief.
“Well?” the badger-man asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.” I let him take the answer as he pleased. I hated lying, but if I identified her, I’d have to sign a form that would bring Solis to my door in a hurry.
He nodded and leaned over to attach a temporary ID with a number to her. Then he gently closed the bag and led me out of the room.
“Have you seen any other bodies like that recently?” I asked.
“What do you mean, ‘like’? They’re all dead and we’ve had more homeless than usual, but that happens when the weathers severe.”
“Another body came in on Thursday in a similar condition—very little blood, very cold, extremities missing. A Robert Cristus?”
We stepped out through the swinging doors and stopped by the desk. The morgue attendant looked thoughtful.
“Yeah… Now you mention it, very similar—at least at first glance.” He turned a piercing gaze on me. “You’re interested in that case?”
“And this one. Actually I wonder if there have been any others like that—similar condition and circumstances.”
When he stopped to stare at me, I got a look at his badge, which read “Fishkiller” in large letters followed by two groups of smaller words I couldn’t read before he moved again.
He scowled in thought and went behind his desk, putting the clipboard down. He looked at his computer screen and sat. “I think so… I’m not sure without looking, but I think there have been a few others. All homeless, high blood loss with very little spatter or staining, chewed or missing extremities… We have a limb or two also. Similar condition, but no associated bodies.”
“Would one of those be the leg discovered in the hotel excavation on Occidental near Royal Brougham?” I asked.
“That’s the one. Very similar…” He was intrigued, squinting and staring to the side as he thought. I dangled some bait to see if he was the curious type he seemed.
“Do you think there might be older cases like this?”
His fingers slid to the keyboard without his looking at them. “Maybe…” He began to type, becoming absorbed in his search.
While he was a little distracted, I said, “That’s odd. What does your badge say?”
“Um… yeah. Just call me Fish—technically it’s Reuben Arthur Fishkiller, but… uh… Even for an Indian it’s kind of an embarrassment. Means, you know, ‘crappy fisherman.’ You’re not supposed to kill ‘em, just catch ‘em.”