swept by a wave of dizziness. She swayed.
Benny took her arm, steadied her. “This tour isn’t necessary.
“Yes,” she said grimly. “Yes, it is. I’ve got to see.
I’ve got to know.”
Benny looked at her strangely, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. He knew
something was wrong, something more than Eric’s death and disappearance,
but he didn’t know what. He was unabashedly curious.
Rachael had intended to conceal her anxiety and keep him out of this
hideous affair. But deceit was not one of her talents, and she knew he
had been aware of her fear from the moment he’d stepped into her house.
The dear man was both intrigued and concerned, staunchly determined to
stay by her side, which was exactly what she didn’t want, but she
couldn’t help that now. Later, she would have to find a way to get rid
of Benny because, much as she needed him, it was not fair to drag him
into this mess, not fair to put his life in jeopardy the way hers was.
Right now, however, she had to see where Eric’s battered corpse had
lain, for she hoped a better understanding of the circumstances
surrounding the body’s disappearance would allay her worst fears. She
needed all her strength for the tour of the morgue.
They left the office and went down where the dead waited.
The broad, tile-floored, pale gray corridor ended at a heavy metal door.
A white-uniformed attendant sat at a desk in an alcove to the right,
this side of the door. When he saw Kordell approaching with Rachael and
Benny, he got up and fished a set of bright jangling keys from the
pocket of his uniform jacket.
“This is the only interior entrance to the morgue,” Kordell said. “The
door is always locked. Isn’t that right, Walt?”
“Absolutely,” the attendant said. “You did want to go in, Dr. Kordell?”
“Yes.”
When Walt slid the key into the lock, Rachael saw a tiny spark of static
electricity.
Kordell said, “There’s an attendant-Walt or someone elsen duty at this
desk twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one can get in
without his assistance.
And he keeps a registry of all visitors.”
The wide door was unlocked, and Walt was holding it open for them.
They went inside, where the cool air smelled of antiseptics and of
something unidentifiable that was less pungent and less clean. The door
closed behind them with a faint creak of hinges that seemed to echo
through Rachael’s bones. The lock engaged automatically with a hollow
thunk.
Two sets of double doors, both open, led to big rooms on both sides of
the morgue corridor. A fourth windowless metal portal, like that
through which they had just entered, lay at the far end of the chilly
hallway.
“Now please let me show you the only exterior entrance, where the morgue
wagons and the morticians’ vehicles pull up,” Kordell said, leading the
way toward the distant barrier.
Rachael followed him, though just being in this repository of the dead,
where Eric had so r’recently lain, made her knees weak and broke her out
in a sweat along the back of her neck and all over her scalp.
“Wait a second,” Benny said. He turned to the door through which they
had come, pushed down on the bar handle, and opened it, startling Walt,
who was just returning to his desk on the other side. Letting the heavy
door fall shut again, Benny looked at Kordell and said, “Although it’s
always locked from the outside, it’s always open from the inside?”
“That’s right, of course,” Kordell said. “It’d be too much trouble to
have to summon the attendant to be let out as well as in. Besides, we
can’t risk having someone accidentally locked in here during an
emergency. Fire or earthquake, for example.”
Their footsteps echoed eerily off the highly polished tile floor as they
continued along the corridor toward the exterior service door at the far
end. When they passed the two large rooms, Rachael saw several people
in the chamber on the left, standing and moving and talking softly in a
glare of crisp, cold fluorescent light. Morgue workers wearing hospital