Devil’s Waltz. By: Jonathan Kellerman

were walled with white tile and floored with gray linoleum patterned

with black-and-pink triangles. Gray doors, red plaques.

The hallway was fluorescent-lit and had the vinegary smell of a chem

lab.

SPI was in the center of the webwork. Small box. Hard to extrapolate

from two dimensions to the long stretch of corridor before me.

I began walking and reading door signs. BOILER ROOM. FURNITURE

STORAGE. A series of several doors marked SUPPLIES. Lots of others

that said nothing at all.

The hallway angled to the right.

CHEMICAL SPECTROGRAPHY. X-RAY ARCHIVES. SPECIMEN FILES.

A double-width slab that said: MORGUE: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE.

I stopped. No smell of formalin, not a hint of what existed on the

other side. Just silence and the acetic bite, and a chill that could

have been due to a low thermostat setting.

I pictured the map in my head. If my memory was functioning properly,

SPI was another right turn, a left, then a short jog. I started

walking again, realized I hadn’t seen another person since I’d been

down here. The air got colder.

I picked up my pace, had managed to slip into a thought-free speed-walk

when a door on the right wall swung open so suddenly I had to dodge to

avoid getting hit.

No sign on this one. Two maintenance men in gray work clothes emerged

from behind it carrying something. Computer. PC, but a big one-black

and expensive-looking. As they huffed away, two more workers came

out.

Another computer. Then a single man, sleeves rolled up, biceps

bunched, carrying a laser printer. A five-byeight index card taped to

the printer’s console read L. AsHMORE, M.D. I stepped past the door and

saw Presley Huenengarth standing in the doorway, holding an armful of

printout. Behind him were blank beige walls, charcoal-colored metal

furniture, several more computers in various states of disconnection.

A white coat on a hook was the sole hint that anything more organic

than differential equations had been contemplated here.

Huenengarth stared at me.

I said, “I’m Dr. Delaware. We met a couple of days ago. Over at

General” He gave a very small nod.

“Terrible thing about Dr. Ashmore,” I said.

He nodded again, stepped back into the room, and closed the door.

I looked down the hall, watching the maintenance men carry off

Ashmore’s hardware and thinking of grave robbers. Suddenly a room full

of post-mortem files seemed a warm and inviting prospect.

Status permanently inactive was a long narrow room lined with metal

floor-to-ceiling shelves and human-width aisles. The shelves were

filled with medical charts. Each chart bore a black tab. Hundreds of

consecutive tabs created wavy, inch-thick black lines that seemed to

cut the files in half.

Access was blocked by a waist-high counter. Behind it sat an Asian

woman in her forties, reading a tabloid-sized Asian-language

newspaper.

Rounded characters-Thai or laotian, I guessed. When she saw me she put

it down and smiled as if I were delivering good news.

I asked to see the chart for Charles Lyman Jones Iv The name didn’t

appear to mean anything to her. She reached under the counter and

produced a three-by-five card titled SPI REQUISITION. I filled it out,

she took it, said “Jones,” smiled again, and went into the files.

She looked for a while, walking up and down the aisles, pulling out

charts, lifting tabs, consulting the slip. When she returned she was

empty-handed.

“Not here, Doctor.”

Any idea where it might be?”

She shrugged. “Someone take.”

“Someone’s already checked it out?”

“Must be, Doctor.”

“Hmm,” I said, wondering who’d be interested in a two-year-old death

file. “This is pretty important-fur research. Is there any way I

could talk to that someone?”

She thought for a moment, smiled, and pulled something else out from

under the counter. El Producto cigar box. Inside were stacks of SPI

requisition forms held together with spring clasps. Five stacks She

spread them on the counter. The top slips all bore the signature of

pathologists. I read the patients’ names, saw no evidence of

alphabetization or any other system of classification.

She smiled again, said “Please,” and returned to her newspaper.

I removed the clasp from the first pile and sifted through the forms.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *