Chapter 13

I got a text from Diane Tierney half a minute before a phone call from the chief of detectives, Ed St. Pierre. I responded to Diane’s text and let Ed go into voice mail.

Diane’s simply said, “One of my dancers was murdered last night. They want me to go to the morgue to identify her. Could use a friend.” I responded, ‘Will be there.’

I played Ed’s voice mail. “Devereaux. One of the dancers from that strip club your buddy Ceasare runs down on Fountain St got herself killed last night. Call me.”

I hate hospitals. They’re like churches. They have a smell that you never encounter anywhere else, the lighting never seems to change, no matter the time of day and everyone who works there has a uniform of some sort. The worst thing about hospitals, and hell, for that matter, churches, is the politeness. Everyone in uniform blasts it at everyone not in uniform, and it feels more like pity than friendliness. I suspect the priest or rabbi, looking out over the congregation, feels the same way, You people better pay attention or something bad is gonna happen …and it won’t be my fault.

Like a church, no one who visits a hospital gets to go in any door other than the one they want you to and you do not, ever, enter un-noticed. As I approached the reception desk, I had the odd impulse to announce myself, ‘Ian Devereaux. For the morgue.’

I nodded when the very polite woman tilted her head towards the bank of elevators and said, ‘Basement 1’, and headed towards the four elevators. I slowed my pace and approached the doors at an angle, hoping to win this particular round of empty-elevator-car-roulette. Not sure why. No luck at being alone.

At least the other person, stepping into the car as the doors slid shut on my almost-empty elevator was in uniform. Stepping in, he looked towards me, his hand hovering over the keypad, I said, ‘Morgue’ and, in some secret professional deference he nodded and moved his dark tan hand downwards and punched B1.

Elevators have a special, Silence is Golden rule that most adult passengers respect. My short ride down to the morgue with the orderly was like sitting in a church confessional with a deaf-mute priest. I knew there was someone accompanying me and, if I felt a need to talk, I was free to. I choose to nod towards the man as the stainless-steel doors slid shut.

I walked down the corridor towards the morgue. Completely devoid of the creature comforts found on the ten floors above, things like cushioned seating in waiting rooms, wheelchairs or even windows, it felt as dead as the subjects of those who worked down here. I could see Lou standing in front of a cop and Diane, who was simply staring at the green-on-light-green wall, opposite her. Lou looked like he was trying to talk himself out of punching the cop and Diane looked like a kid in a Christmas-crowded department store trying to act like she wasn’t lost.

Lou Ceasare has a habit of talking to himself. Out loud. And, when the topic was important enough, he would gesture and raise his voice, nothing subtle or artistic, like an eccentric intellectual muttering soto voce, no sir. As I watched, he turned away from the cop who was trying to get information for his report and I could hear the ‘motherfuckers’ from thirty feet away. The young cop looked like an apprentice lion tamer. He knew he was supposed to be in charge, but couldn’t quite convince himself it was even possible. Every bit the chair used in the old days of circuses, he held up his small note pad and approached Lou.

I got within open-arm distance before Diane came back from whatever unpleasant place she appeared to be trapped in. Without a word, I pulled her close and rested my face in her hair. I let the soundless shaking of her body begin without a word.

I hated morgues even more than I hated hospitals.

*****

Starr Tudor-Prendergast sat in the stolen luxury car parked in a autumn-deserted beach parking lot in Crissfield, Maryland and hoped that someone would soon tell her what to do.

Like a light bulb over the head of a character in a cartoon, the interior light blazed into an impersonally warm light as the passenger side door opened ahead of an avalanche of black and white cloth.

“My God, you look like a cameo my great-grandmother left me when I was seven years old!” Starr leaned back against the drive-side door and looked at her friend and former college roommate.

“Good to see you, too, Starr,” Margaret Ryan smoothed out the folds of her habit and smiled at her friend. “From your email I gather you’re here to complicate my life?”