me, I wouldn’t have been able to move quickly enough or slip
noiselessly under the hearse.
Apparently no one had noticed the suitcase yet. Maybe they would
continue to overlook it.
The two orderlies-whom I could identify by their white shoes and white
pants-rolled a second gurney out of the holding room.
The wheels on this one did not squeak.
The first gurney, pushed by the bald man, reached the back of the white
van. I heard him open the rear cargo doors on that vehicle.
One of the orderlies said to the other, “I better get upstairs before
someone starts wondering what’s taking me so long.” He walked away,
toward the far end of the garage.
The collapsible legs on the first gurney folded up with a hard clatter
as the bald man shoved it into the back of his van.
Sandy opened the rear door on the hearse as the remaining orderly
arrived with the second gurney. On this one, evidently, was another
opaque vinyl bag containing the body of the nameless vagrant.
A sense of unreality overcame me-that I should find myself in these
strange circumstances. I could almost believe that I had somehow
fallen into a dream without first falling into sleep.
The cargo-hold doors on the van slammed shut. Turning my head to the
left, I watched the bald man’s shoes as he approached the driver’s
door.
The orderly would wait here to close the big roll-up after the two
vehicles departed. If I stayed under the hearse, I would be discovered
when Sandy drove away.
I didn’t know which of the two orderlies had remained behind, but it
didn’t matter. I was relatively confident that I could get the better
of either of the young men who had wheeled my father away from his
deathbed.
If Sandy Kirk glanced at his rear-view mirror as he drove out of the
garage, however, he might see me. Then I would have to contend with
both him and the orderly.
The engine of the van turned over.
As Sandy and the orderly shoved the gurney into the back of the hearse,
I slid out from under that vehicle. My cap was knocked off. I
snatched it up and, without daring to glance toward the rear of the
hearse, crabbed eight feet to the open door of the cold-holding
chamber.
Inside this bleak room, I scrambled to my feet and hid behind the door,
pressing my back to the concrete wall.
No one in the garage cried out in alarm. Evidently I had not been
seen.
I realized that I was holding my breath. I let it out with a long hiss
between clenched teeth.
My light-stung eyes were watering. I blotted them on the backs of my
hands.
Two walls were occupied by over-and-under rows of stainless steel
morgue drawers in which the air was even colder than in the holding
chamber itself, where the temperature was low enough to make me
shiver.
Two cushionless wooden chairs stood to one side.
The flooring was white porcelain tile with tight grout joints for easy
cleaning if a body bag sprang a leak.
Again, there were overhead fluorescent tubes, too many of them, and I
tugged my Mystery Train cap far down on my brow.
Surprisingly, the sunglasses in my shirt pocket had not been broken. I
shielded my eyes.
A percentage of ultraviolet radiation penetrates even a highly rated
sunscreen. I had sustained more exposure to hard light in the past
hour than during the entire previous year. Like the hoofbeats of a
fearsome black horse, the perils of cumulative exposure thundered
through my mind.
From beyond the open door, the van’s engine roared. The roar swiftly
receded, fading to a grumble, and the grumble became a dying murmur.
The Cadillac hearse followed the van into the night. The big motorized
garage door rolled down and met the sill with a solid blow that echoed
through the hospital’s subterranean realms, and in its wake, the echo
shook a trembling silence out of the concrete walls.
I tensed, balling my hands into fists.
Although he was surely still in the garage, the orderly made no
sound.
I imagined him, head cocked with curiosity, staring at my father’s