From Potter's Field - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 36

The radio called the detective inside my building whose unit number was 711, and then Marino was saying, 'Ten-twenty-five me out back.'

'Ten-four.'

Marino next radioed for a tow truck. The van was to be processed for prints on the door handles. It was to be impounded and carefully processed inside and out after that. Unit 711 had yet to walk out the back door fifteen minutes later.

'He's dumb as a bag of hammers,' Marino complained, walking around the van, radio in hand. 'Lazy son of a bitch. That's why they called him Detective 711. Because he's so quick. Shit.' He glanced irritably at his watch. 'What'd he do? Get lost in the men's room?'

I waited on the tarmac, getting unbearably cold, for I had not changed out of my greens and was without a coat. I walked around the van several times, too, desperate to look in the back of it. Five more minutes passed and Marino got the dispatcher to call the other officers inside my building. Their response was immediate.

'Where's Jakes?' Marino growled at them the instant they came out the door.

'He said he was going to look around,' one of the officers replied.

'I raised him twenty damn minutes ago and told him to ten-twenty-five me out here. I thought he was with one of you.'

'No, sir. Not for the past half hour, at least.'

Marino again tried 711 on the radio and got no answer. Fear shone in his eyes.

'Maybe he's in some part of the building where he can't copy,' an officer suggested, looking up at windows. His partner had his hand near his gun and was looking around, too.

Marino radioed for backups. People had begun pulling into the parking lot and letting themselves into the building. Many of the scientists with their topcoats and briefcases were braced against the raw, cold day and paid no attention to us. After all, police cars and those who drove them were a common sight. Marino tried to raise Detective Jakes on the air. Still he did not answer.

'Where did you see him last?' Marino asked the officers.

'He got on the elevator.'

'Where?'

'On the second floor.'

Marino turned to me. 'He couldn't have gone up, could he?'

'No,' I said. 'The elevator requires a security key for any floor above two.'

'Did he go down to the morgue again?' Marino was getting increasingly agitated.

'I went down there a few minutes later and didn't see him,' an officer said.

'The crematorium,' I suggested. 'He could have gone down to that level.'

'All right. You check the morgue,' Marino said to the officers. 'And I want you staying together. The doc and I will look around the crematorium.'

Inside the bay, left of the loading dock, was an old elevator that serviced a lower level where at one time bodies donated to science were embalmed and stored and cremated after medical students were through with them. It was possible Jakes might have gone there to look. I pushed the down button. The elevator slowly rose with much clanking and complaining. I pulled a handle and shoved open heavy, paint-chipped doors. We ducked inside.

'Damn, I don't like this already,' Marino said, releasing the thumb snap on his holster as we descended.

He slipped out his pistol as the elevator bumped to a halt and doors opened onto my least favorite area of the building. I did not like this dimly lit windowless space even though I appreciated its importance. After I moved the Anatomical Division to MCV, we began using the oven to dispose of biological hazardous waste. I got out my revolver.

'Stay behind me,' Marino said, intensely looking around.

The large room was silent save for the roar of the oven behind a shut door midway along the wall. We stood silently scanning abandoned gurneys draped with empty body bags, and hollow blue drums that once contained the formalin used to fill vats in floors where bodies were stored. I saw Marino's eyes fix on tracks in the ceiling, on heavy chains and hooks that in a former time had lifted the vats' massive lids and the people stored beneath them.

He was breathing hard and sweating profusely as he moved closer to an embalming room and ducked inside. I stayed nearby as he checked abandoned offices. He looked at me and wiped his face on his sleeve.

'It must be ninety degrees,' he muttered, detaching his radio from his belt.

Startled, I stared at him.

'What?' he said.

'The oven's not supposed to be on,' I said, looking at the crematorium room's shut door.

I started walking toward it.

'There's no waste to be disposed of that I know of, and it's strictly against policy for the oven to run unattended,' I said.

Outside that door, we could hear the inferno on the other side. I placed my hand on the knob. It was very hot.

Marino stepped in front of me, turned the knob and shoved the door open with his foot. His pistol was combat ready in both hands as if the oven were a brute he might have to shoot.

'Jesus,' he said.

Flames showed in spaces around the monstrous old iron door, and the floor was littered with bits and chunks of chalky burned bone. A gurney was parked nearby. I picked up a long iron tool with a crook at one end and hooked it through a ring on the oven door.

'Stand back,' I said.

We were hit with a blast of enormous heat, and the roar sounded like a hateful wind. Hell was through that square mouth, and the body burning on the tray inside had not been there long. The clothes had incinerated, but not the leather cowboy boots. They smoked on Detective Jakes's feet as flames licked the skin off his bones and inhaled his hair. I shoved the door shut.

I ran out and found towels in the embalming room while Marino got sick near a pile of metal drums. Wrapping my hands, I held my breath and went past the oven, throwing the switch that turned off the gas. Flames died immediately, and I ran back out of the room. I grabbed Marino's radio as he gagged.

'Mayday!' I yelled to the dispatcher. 'Mayday!'