to a dark alleyway between the two hospital wings.
When the hearse from the funeral home pulled up to
the doorway, the funeral people did the paperwork
inside the pathology offices. A staff person then escorted them back to the hearse. Hospital personnel moved
cadavers from the storage chambers in Room 111-B directly to the awaiting hearse outside. An efficient operation, really, one that literally asked death to sneak out
through the back door.
The monitor’s camera swung to number 73 again,
and Will clicked the switch that stopped its movement.
Seen through the camera’s eye the cabinet seemed ordinary. But the medical examiners had this rule that
the monitor had to be switched off whenever a cabinet
was opened because most on the floor would find what
went on during an examination a tad disturbing. Will
pictured the young girl under the shroud inside the
cabinet, her full soft lips slightly parted, her skin white
and velvety. He wondered what her voice would have
sounded like, and he realized he would never know.
But he wanted to know...
***
At 6:45 a.m. the kid who delivered coffee and donuts to the morning shift nurses and orderlies dropped
the Colson County Daily News at Will's desk. Will
found the headline that read Unknown Girl Apparent
Suicide buried on page eight. The article mentioned
her body had been found hanging from a rafter at the
Interstate Motel off I-65. The manager had claimed
he thought the room was vacant because no one had
signed the register for that room. The girl had simply
walked in, closed the door behind her, and did her little
dance at the end of a rope. She left no identification. Beyond that the two paragraphs added nothing to what he
already knew, and that indicated no one else knew very
much either.
During the next few hours of the morning Allen
Roland would contact Dr. Philip Carliner in forensics
to supervise the girl’s post-mortem because of her questionable death. The two men would study the young
woman’s corpse like a textbook, analyze and scrutinize
the rope burns around her throat, reading her skin just
like Old Gus had said.
When they finished, they would return her to
drawer 73 and issue a coroner’s report to the police and
the press. If foul play were suspected, or if no one
stepped forward to claim her, they might later cut the
girl open to discover where and when she had eaten her
last meal. If she were alone, it might have been at a local
roadside diner. The coroner would analyze the food and
the police would follow the bread crumbs to their origin
just like the kids lost in the woods in the fairy tale. Soon
someone - a parent, a friend, perhaps a lover - would
claim the body, and she would have a name. She would
belong to someone else, and that person would sign the
papers that would take the girl from Room 111-B. A few
days later someone would bury her.
And Will would never see her again.
Looking down the long corridor, he saw no one.
He clicked off monitor 6 and followed the hallway to the
door marked Pathology Department. Selecting two keys
from the ring on his belt he slipped the first key into the
lock. He used the other key to open the unmarked door
that led to the morgue. Closing the door gently behind
him he leaned against it, taking a moment to adjust to
the liver-and-onions smell of frozen cadavers.
His shift still had ten minutes to go and if anyone
came in he could always explain he was doing one last
round before logging out. No one was supposed to be
inside the morgue unless given clearance, but he was the
night guard. They gave him the keys, so what excuse did
he really need?
…Unless, of course, someone happened to walk in
after he had pulled open the drawer to cabinet 73.
***
Ten minutes later Will returned to his station in
Corridor A to log out for the morning. Old Gus sat waiting for him behind the desk, and he did not look happy.
Will looked at monitor 6 and realized Gus had turned it
back on.
“Jesus, are you crazy or just plain stupid?” the old
attendant snarled as he spun in the chair toward him. “I
wondered why this one monitor’d been turned off with
no one in that room. Anybody would see what I just saw
on this screen and you’d be pickin’ up your pink slip on
your way out of here. Just what do you think you was
doin’ with that girl?”
Will knew Gus was too smart to buy anything that
was not the truth. “Gus, it’s not like that. I-”
“Save it! I know what I seen!” the old man hissed
and got to his feet. He poked Will in the ribs as he
spoke. “You was holdin’ on to her, swayin’ on that slab