With a click, the recorder stopped, and Martin swung around in his chair. He was wearing a mischievous smile and he rubbed his hands together like a Shakespearean rogue.
“Perfect timing,” he said.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked, pretending to be scared.
“Come,” said Philips, leading her outside. Against the wall was a loaded gurney complete with IV bottles, linen, and a pillow. Smiling at her surprise, Martin began pushing the gurney down the hall. Denise caught up to him at the patient elevator.
“I gave you this fabulous idea?” she asked, helping guide the gurney into the car.
“That’s right,” said Philips. He hit the button for the sub-basement and the doors closed.
They emerged in the bowels of the hospital. A tangle of pipes, like blood vessels, ran off in both directions, twisting and turning on one another as if in agony. Everything was painted gray or black, eliminating all sense of color. The light, which was sparse, came from wire-mesh encased fluorescent bulbs placed at distant intervals, causing contrasting patches of white glare to be separated by long stretches of heavy shadow. Across from the elevator was a sign: MORGUE: FOLLOW RED LINE.
Like a trail of blood, the line ran along the middle of the corridor. It traced a complicated route through the dark passages, winding sharply when the corridor branched. Ultimately it ran down a sloping incline, which nearly pulled the gurney from Martin’s hands.
“What in God’s name are we doing down here?” asked Denise, her voice echoing with their footsteps in the lifeless spaces.
“You’ll see,” said Philips. His smile had waned and his voice sounded tense. His original playfulness had given way to a nervous concern about the prudence of what he was doing.
The corridor abruptly opened up into a huge underground cavern. The lighting here was equally as meager as in the corridor, and the two-story-high ceiling was lost in shadow. On the left wall was the closed door to the incinerator, and the hiss of hungry flames could be heard.
Ahead were the double swinging doors leading into the morgue. In front of them the red line on the floor ended with abrupt finality. Philips left the gurney and advanced toward the entrance. Pushing open the door on the right he looked inside. “We’re in luck,” he said, returning to the gurney. “We have the place to ourselves.”
Denise followed reluctantly.
The morgue was a large neglected room, which had been allowed to decay to the point that it resembled one of those unearthed porticoes of Pompeii. A multitude of hooded lights hung on bare wires from the ceiling, but only a few had bulbs. The floor was constructed of stained terrazzo, while walls were surfaced with cracked and chipped ceramic tile. In the center of the room was a partially sunken pit containing an old marble autopsy slab. It had not been used since the twenties, and standing amid the debris, it appeared like an ancient pagan altar. Autopsies were currently done in the department of Pathology on the fifth floor, in a modern stainless steel setting.
Numerous doors lined the walls of the room, including a massive wooden one that resembled a meat refrigerator in a butcher shop. On the far wall was an inclined corridor that led up in utter darkness to a door opening on a back alley of the hospital complex. It was deathly quiet. The only noise was an occasional drip from a sink and the hollow sounds of their own footsteps.
Martin parked the gurney and hung up the IV bottle.
“Here,” he said, handing Denise a corner of one of the fresh sheets and directing her to tuck it around the pad on the gurney.
He went over to the large wooden door, pulled the pin from the latch, and with great effort opened it up. An icy mist flowed out, layering itself on the terrazzo floor.
After finding the light switch Martin turned and noticed Denise had not budged.
“Come on! And bring the gurney.”
“I’m not moving until you tell me what’s going on,” she said.
“We’re pretending it’s the fifteenth century.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to snatch a body for science.”