It passed by degrees, and when it was over, he dried his eyes with a towel and blew his nose, keeping his face averted.
“You want to go have some coffee?”
He shook his head. “Just leave me alone, O.K.?” he said.
“I got time,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll call you later.”
“All right. I’ll go ahead and take care of some business and maybe we can connect up this afternoon. You need anything in the meantime?”
“No.” The tone was dull, his manner listless now.
“Bobby-”
“No! Just get the fuck away from me and leave me alone. I don’t need your help.”
I opened the car door. “I’ll check back with you,” I said. “Take care.”
He reached over and grabbed the door handle, slamming it shut. He started the engine with a roar, and I stepped aside, as he backed out of the slot with a squeal of tires and shot out of the parking lot without a backward glance.
That was the last I ever saw of him.
Chapter 9
The Pathology Department at St. Terry’s is located below ground in the heart of a maze of small offices. Miles of corridors branch out in all directions, connecting the non-medical departments charged with the actual running of the facility: maintenance, housekeeping, engineering, plant operations. Where the floors above are renovated and tastefully done, the decor down here runs to brown viny! tile and glossy paint the color of vanished bones. The air smells hot and dry and certain open doorways reveal glimpses of ominous machinery and electrical ducts as big as sewer pipes.
There was a steady flow of pedestrian traffic that day, people in hospital uniforms, as pale and expressionless as residents of an underground city, starved for sunlight. The Pathology Department itself was a pleasant contrast: spacious, well lighted, handsomely appointed in royal blue and gray, with fifty to sixty lab technicians working to accommodate the blood, bone, and tissue specimens that filtered down from above. The computerized equipment seemed to click, hum, and whir: efficiency augmented by an army of experts. Noise was muted, telephones pinging daintily against the artificial air. Even the typewriters seemed to be muffled, recording discreetly the secrets of the human condition. There was order, proficiency, and calm, the sense that here, at least, the pain and indignation of illness was under control. Death was being held at bay, measured, calibrated, and analyzed. Where it had claimed a victory, the same crew of specialists dissected the results and fed them into the machinery. Paper poured out in a long road, paved with hieroglyphics. I stood in the doorway for a moment, struck by the scene. These were microscope detectives, pursuing killers of another order than those I hunted down.
“May I help you?”
I glanced over at the receptionist, who was watching me.
“I’m looking for Dr. Fraker. Do you know if he’s here?”
“Should be. Down this aisle to the first left, then left again and you can ask somebody back there.”
I found him in a modular compartment lined with bookshelves, furnished with a desk, a swivel chair, plants, and graphic art. He was tipped back in his chair, his feet propped up on the edge of his deck, leafing through a medical book the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. He had a pair of rimless bifocals in one hand, chewing on one of the stems as he read. He was substantially built-wide shoulders, heavy thighs. His hair was a thick, silvery white, his skin the warm tone of a flesh-colored crayon. Age had given his face a softly crumpled look, like a freshly laundered cotton sheet that needs to be starched and ironed. He wore surgical greens with matching booties.
“Dr. Fraker?”
He glanced up at me and his gray eyes registered recognition. He pointed a finger. “Bobby Callahan’s friend.”
“That’s right. I wondered if I could talk to you.”
“Sure, absolutely. Come on in.”
He got to his feet and we shook hands. He indicated the chair near his desk and I sat down.
“We can make an appointment to talk later if I’ve caught you at a bad time,” I said.
“Not at all. What can I do for you? Glen told me Bobby hired someone to look into the accident.”
“He’s convinced it was a murder attempt. Hit and run. Has he talked to you about that?”
Dr. Fraker shook his head. “I haven’t seen him for months except for Monday night. Murder. Do the police agree?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve got a copy of the accident report and as nearly as I can tell, they don’t have much to go on. There weren’t any witnesses and I don’t think they found much evidence at the scene.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Well, there’s usually something to go on. Broken glass, skid marks, transfer traces on the victim’s vehicle. Maybe the guy jumped out of his car and swept up all the soil and paint flecks, I don’t know. I do trust Bobby’s intuition on this. He says he was in danger. He just can’t remember why.”
Dr. Fraker seemed to consider that briefly and then shifted in his seat. “I’d be inclined to believe him myself. He’s a bright boy. He was a gifted student, too. It’s a damn shame there’s so little left of that. What’s he think is going on?”
“He hasn’t any idea and, as he points out, the minute he remembers, he’s in more trouble than he is now. He suspects somebody’s still after him.”
He cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief, contemplating the matter. He was a man apparently accustomed to dealing with puzzles, but I imagined his solutions were derived from symptoms instead of circumstances. Diseases don’t require an underlying motivation in the same way homicide does.
He shook his head slightly, his eyes meeting mine. “Odd. The whole thing’s a little bit out of my range.” He put his glasses on, turning businesslike. “Well. We better figure out what’s going on, then. What do you need from me?”
I shrugged. “All I know to do is start back at square one and see if I can determine what kind of trouble he was in. He’d worked for you for what? Two months?”
“About that. He started in September, I believe. I can have Marcy look that up if you want exact dates.”
“I gather he was hired here because of your relationship with his mother.”
“Well, yes and no. We generally have a slot available for a premed student. It just happened that Bobby filled the bill in this case. Glen Callahan’s a very big cheese around here, but we wouldn’t have hired him if he’d been a dud. Can I get you some coffee? I’m about to have some.”
“All right, sure.”
He leaned sideways slightly, calling to the secretary, whose desk was in his line of sight. “Marcy? Can we get some coffee in here, please?”
To me, he said, “You take cream and sugar?”
“Black is fine.”
“Both black,” he called out.
There was no reply, but I assumed it was being taken care of He turned his attention back to me. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“That’s all right. Did he have desk space down here?”
“He had a desk up front, but that was cleared out, oh, I’d say within a day of the accident. Nobody thought he’d survive, you know, and we had to bring somebody else in pretty quickly. This place is a madhouse most of the time.”
“What happened to his things?”
“I dropped them by the house myself. There wasn’t much, but we put what we came across in a cardboard box and I passed it on to Derek, I don’t know what he did with it, if anything. Glen was at the hospital twenty-four hours a day at that point.”
“Do you remember what was in it?”
“His desk? Odds and ends. Office things.”
I made a note to myself to check for the box. I supposed there was a chance it was still at the house somewhere. “Can you walk me through Bobbys day and show me what sorts of things he did?”
“Sure. Actually, he divided his time between the lab and the morgue out in the old county medical facility on Frontage Road. I’ve got to make a run out there anyway and you can ride along if you like, or follow in your car if that’s easier.
“I thought the morgue was here.”
“We’ve got a small one here, just off the autopsy room. We’ve got another morgue out there.”
“I didn’t realize there was more than one.”
“We needed the added space for the contract work we do. St. Terry’s maintains a few offices out there, too.”
“Really. I didn’t think that old county building was still in use.
“Oh yes. There’s a private radiology group that works out there, and we’ve got storage rooms for medical records. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, but I don’t know what we’d do without it.”