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.