‘Mr. Evans.’ I waited until he held my gaze. ‘I’m the only other people you should worry about.’
He wiped away a tear. ‘I’m sorry about whatever it is I done. If I caused somebody to be hurt, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.’
‘You didn’t cause anything,’ Marino said. That son of a bitch with white hair did.’
Tell us about him,’ I said. ‘What exactly did he do when you let him in?’
‘He rolled the body in like I said, and left it parked in the hall in front of the refrigerator. I had to unlock it, you know, and I said he could roll the body on in there. Which he did. Then I took him in the morgue office and showed him what he needed to fill out. I told him he needed to put in for his mileage so he could get reimbursed. But he didn’t pay no attention to that.’
‘Did you escort him back out?’ I asked.
Evans sighed. ‘No, ma’am. I’m not going to lie to you.’
‘What did you do?’ Marino asked.
‘I left him down there filling out paperwork. I’d locked the fridge back up and wasn’t worried about shutting the bay door after him. He didn’t pull into the bay ’cause there’s one of your vans in there.’
I thought for a minute. ‘What van?’ I asked.
‘That blue one.’
‘There’s no van in the bay,’ Marino said.
Evans’s face went slack. ‘There sure was at three this morning. I saw it sitting right in there when I held open the door so he could roll the body in.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘What was the man with white hair driving?’
‘A hearse.’
I could tell he did not know that for a fact. ‘You saw it,’ I said.
He exhaled in frustration. ‘No, I didn’t. He said he had one, and I just assumed it was parked in the back lot near the bay door.’
‘So when you pushed the button to open the bay door, you didn’t actually wait and watch what drove in.’
He looked down at the tabletop.
‘Was there a van parked in the bay when you originally went out to push the button on the wall? Before the body was wheeled in?’ I asked.
Evans thought for a minute, the expression on his face getting more miserable. ‘Damn,’ he said, eyes cast down. ‘I don’t remember. I didn’t look. I just opened the door in the hallway, hit the button on the wall and went back inside. I didn’t look.’ He paused. ‘It may be that nothing was in there then.’
‘So the bay could have been empty at that time.’
‘Yes, ma’am. I guess it could have been.’
‘And when you held the door open a few minutes later so the body could be rolled in, you didn’t notice a van in the bay?’
‘That’s when I did notice it,’ he said. ‘I just thought it belonged to your office. It looked like one of your vans. You know, dark blue with no windows except in front.’
‘Let’s get back to the man rolling the body inside the refrigerator and your locking up,’ Marino said. ‘Then what?’
‘I figured he’d leave after he finished his paperwork,’ Evans said. ‘I went back to the other side of the building.’
‘Before he’d left the morgue.’
Evans hung his head again.
‘Do you have any idea at all when he finally left?’ Marino then asked.
‘No, sir,’ the security guard quietly said. ‘I guess I can’t swear he ever did.’
Everyone was silent, as if Gault might this minute walk in. Marino pushed his chair back and looked at the empty doorway.
It was Evans who next spoke. ‘If that was his van, I guess he shut the bay door himself. I know it was shut at five because I walked around the building.’
‘Well, it don’t exactly require a rocket scientist to do that,’ Marino said unkindly. ‘You just drive out, go back inside and hit the damn button. Then you walk out through the side door.’
‘The van certainly isn’t in there now,’ I said. ‘Someone drove it out.’
‘Are both vans outside?’ Marino asked.