“Maybe you caught it from me.”
“Caught what?”
“Insanity.”
He smiled. “Insanity isn’t like the common cold. You can’t spread it with a cough–or a kiss.”
“Haven’t you heard of a ‘shared psychosis’?”
Braking for a traffic light, he said, “Shared psychosis? Isn’t that a social welfare program for underprivileged lunatics who can’t afford psychoses of their own?”
“Jokes at a time like this?”
“Especially at a time like this.”
“What about mass hysteria?”
“It’s not one of my favorite pastimes.”
“I mean, maybe that’s what’s happening here.”
“No. Impossible,” he said. “There’s only two of us. That’s not enough to make a mass.”
She smiled. “God, I’m glad you’re here. I’d hate to be fighting this thing alone.”
“You’ll never be alone again.”
She put one hand on his shoulder.
They reached the morgue at quarter past eleven.
***
At the coroner’s office, Hilary and Tony learned from the secretary that the chief medical examiner had not performed the autopsy on the body of Bruno Frye. Last Thursday and Friday, he had been in San Francisco on a speaking engagement. The autopsy had been left to an assistant, another doctor on the M.E.’s staff.
That bit of news gave Hilary hope that there would be a simple solution to the mystery of Frye’s return from the grave. Perhaps the assistant assigned to the job had been a slacker, a lazy man who, free of his boss’s constant supervision, had skipped the autopsy and filed a false report.
That hope was dashed when she met Ira Goldfield, the young doctor in question. He was in his early thirties, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and a lot of tight blond curls. He was friendly, energetic, bright, and obviously too interested in his work and too dedicated to it to do less than a perfect job.
Goldfield escorted them to a small conference room that smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and cigarette smoke. They sat at a rectangular table that was covered with half a dozen medical reference books, pages of lab reports, and computer print-outs.
“Sure.” Goldfield said. “I remember that one. Bruno Graham … no … Gunther. Bruno Gunther Frye. Two stab wounds, one of them just a little worse than superficial, the other very deep and fatal. Some of the best developed abdominal muscles I’ve ever seen.” He blinked at Hilary and said, “Oh yes…. You’re the woman who … stabbed him.”
“Self-defense,” Tony said.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Goldfield assured him. “In my professional opinion, it’s highly unlikely that Miss Thomas could have initiated a successful assault against that man. He was huge. He’d have brushed her away as easily as one of us might turn aside a small child.” Goldfield looked at Hilary again. “According to the crime report and the newspaper accounts that I read, Frye attacked you without realizing you were carrying a knife.”
“That’s right. He thought I was unarmed.”
Goldfield nodded. “It had to be that way. Considering the disparity in body sizes, that’s the only way you could have taken him without being seriously injured yourself. I mean, the biceps and triceps and forearms on that man were truly astounding. Ten or fifteen years ago, he could have entered body building competitions with considerable success. You were damned lucky, Miss Thomas. If you hadn’t surprised him, he could have broken you in half. Almost literally in half. And easily, too.” He shook his head, still impressed with Frye’s body. “What was it you wanted to ask me about him?”
Tony looked at her, and she shrugged. “It seems rather pointless now that we’re here.”
Goldfield looked from one of them to the other, a vague, encouraging smile of curiosity on his handsome face.
Tony cleared his throat. “I agree with Hilary. It seems pointless … now that we’ve met you.”
“You came in looking so somber and mysterious,” Goldfield said pleasantly. “You pricked my interest. You can’t keep me hanging like this.”
“Well,” Tony said, “we came here to find out if there actually had been an autopsy.”
Goldfield didn’t understand. “But you knew that before you asked to see me. Agnes, the M.E.’s secretary, must have told you….”