“Yes, I was,” Terese said. She sighed and looked out her window. “But I don’t like talking about it either.”
“Now we have two things we agree on,” Jack said. “We both feel the same about nightclubs and talking about our former marriages.”
Jack had given directions to be dropped off at the Thirtieth Street entrance of the medical examiner’s office. He was glad to see that both mortuary vans were gone. He thought their absence was a sign that there wouldn’t be any fresh corpses lying around on gurneys. Although Terese had insisted on the visit, he was afraid of offending her sensibilities unnecessarily. Terese said nothing as Jack led her past the banks of refrigerated compartments. It wasn’t until she saw all the simple pine coffins that she spoke. She asked why they were there.
“They’re for the unclaimed and unidentified dead,” Jack said. “They are buried at city expense.”
“Does that happen often?” Terese asked.
“All the time,” Jack said.
Jack took her back to the area of the autopsy room. He opened the door to the washroom. Terese leaned in but didn’t enter. The autopsy room was visible through a windowed door. The stainless-steel dissecting tables glistened ominously in the half-light.
“I expected this place to be more modern,” she said. She was hugging herself to keep from touching anything.
“At one time it was,” Jack said. “It was supposed to have been renovated, but it didn’t happen. Unfortunately the city is always in some kind of budgetary crisis, and few politicians balk at pulling money away from here. Adequate funding for normal operating expenses is hard to come by, much less money to update the facility. On the other hand we do have a new, state-of-the-art DNA lab.”
“Where’s your office?” Terese asked.
“Up on the fifth floor,” Jack said.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“Why not?” Jack said. “We’ve come this far.”
They walked back past the mortuary office and waited for the elevator.
“This place is a little hard to take, isn’t it?” Jack said.
“It has its gruesome side,” Terese admitted.
“We who work here often forget the effect it has on laypeople,” Jack said, though he was impressed with the degree of equanimity Terese had demonstrated.
The elevator arrived and they got on. Jack pressed the fifth floor, and they started up.
“How did you ever decide on this kind of career?” Terese asked. “Did you know back in medical school?”
“Heavens, no,” Jack said. “I wanted something clean, technically demanding, emotionally fulfilling, and lucrative. I became an ophthalmologist.”
“What happened?” Terese asked.
“My practice got taken over by AmeriCare,” Jack said. “Since I didn’t want to work for them or any similar corporation, I retrained. It’s the buzzword these days for superfluous medical specialists.”
“Was it difficult?” Terese asked.
Jack didn’t answer immediately. The elevator arrived on the fifth floor and the doors opened.
“It was very difficult,” Jack said as he started down the hall. “Mostly because it was so lonely.”
Terese hazarded a glance in Jack’s direction. She’d not expected him to be the type to complain of loneliness. She’d assumed he was a loner by choice. While she was looking, Jack furtively wiped the corner of an eye with his knuckle. Could there have been a tear? Terese was mystified.
“Here we are,” Jack announced. He opened his office door with his key and flipped on the light.
The interior was worse than Terese had expected. It was tiny and narrow. The furniture was gray metal and old, and the walls were in need of paint. There was a single, filthy window positioned high on the wall.
“Two desks?” Terese questioned.
“Chet and I share this space,” Jack explained.
“Which desk is yours?”
“The messy one,” Jack said. “This plague episode has put me farther behind than usual. I’m generally behind because I’m rather compulsive about my reports.”
“Dr. Stapleton!” a voice called out.
It was Janice Jaeger, the PA investigator.
“Security told me you were here when I just came through the receiving bay,” she said after being introduced to Terese. “I’ve been trying to reach you at home.”
“What’s the problem?” Jack asked.
“The reference lab called this evening,” Janice said. “They ran the fluorescein antibody on Susanne Hard’s lung tissue as you requested. It was positive for tularemia.”