Blindsight

“I didn’t know who they were,” Patrick said. “And I don’t think I’d ever seen them. One was tall, thin, and well dressed. The other was muscular and on the short side. No one said anything when they came in.”

“Did you see them when they went out?” Laurie asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Patrick said. “They must have left during my break.”

“What time did they come in?” Laurie asked.

“Early evening,” Patrick said. “Something like seven o’clock.”

Laurie thanked Patrick yet again and hailed a cab to return to her office. It was almost dusk. The skyscrapers were already lit and people were hurrying home from work. As the cab headed downtown in the heavy traffic, she thought about her conversations with the boyfriend and the doorman. She wondered about the two men Patrick had described. Although they were probably co-workers or friends of Julia’s, the fact that they had visited the same night that Julia overdosed made them important. Laurie wished there was some way she could find out their identities so she could talk with them. The thought even went through her mind that they could have been drug dealers. Could Julia Myerholtz have had a secret life her boyfriend wasn’t privy to?

Back at the medical examiner’s building, Laurie went first to George’s office to see if he’d returned from the dentist. Obviously he had come and gone; his office was dark.

Disappointed, Laurie tried the door, but it was locked. Not being able to talk with George, she’d had the sudden idea to get the address of the other overdose, Wendell Morrison.

Leaving her coat in her room and picking up some rubber gloves, Laurie went down to the morgue. She found the evening mortuary tech, Bruce Pomowski, in the mortuary office.

“Any idea of the dispensation of the Myerholtz remains?” Laurie asked. “Have they been picked up?”

“Was she one of today’s cases?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” Laurie said.

Bruce opened a thick ledger and ran a finger down the day’s entries. When he got to Myerholtz, his finger ran across the page. “Hasn’t been picked up yet,” he said. “We’re waiting on a call from an out-of-town funeral home.”

“Is she in the walk-in?” Laurie asked.

“Yup,” Bruce said. “Should be on a gurney near the front.”

Laurie thanked him and walked down the corridor toward the walk-in refrigerator. In the evenings the environment of the morgue changed considerably. During the day it was full of frantic activity. But now as Laurie walked she could hear the heels of her shoes echo through the deserted and mostly dark, blue-tiled corridors. All at once she remembered Lou’s response when they’d come down Tuesday morning. He’d called it a grisly scene.

Laurie stopped and looked down at the stained cement floor that Lou had pointed out. Then she raised her eyes to the stacks of pine coffins destined for Potter’s Field with unclaimed, unidentified remains. She started walking again. It was amazing how her normal mental state shielded the ghastly side of the morgue from her consciousness. It took a stranger like Lou and a time when the morgue was empty of the living for her to appreciate it.

Reaching the large, cumbersome stainless-steel door of the walk-in, Laurie put on her gloves and pressed the thick handle to release the latch. With a hefty yank she pulled the heavy door open. A cold, clammy mist swirled out around her feet. Reaching in, she turned on the light.

Reacting to her mind-set of only moments earlier, Laurie viewed the interior of the walk-in cooler from the perspective of a nonprofessional person, not the forensic pathologist she was. It was definitely horrifying. Bare wooden shelves lined the walls. On the shelves was a ghoulish collection of cold, dead bodies and body parts that having been autopsied and examined were waiting to be claimed. Most were nude, although a few were covered with sheets stained with blood and other body fluids. It was like an earthly view of hell.

The center of the room was crowded with old gurneys, each bearing a separate body. Again, some were covered, others naked and blankly staring up at the ceiling like some sort of macabre dormitory.

Feeling uncharacteristically squeamish, Laurie stepped over the threshold, her eyes nervously darting around the gurneys to locate Julia Myerholtz. Behind her the heavy door slammed shut with a loud click.

Irrationally, Laurie spun around and rushed back to the door, fearful that she’d been locked into the cooler. But the latch responded to her push and the door swung open on its bulky hinges.

Embarrassed at her own imagination, Laurie turned back into the refrigerator and began methodically going through the bodies on the gurneys. For identification purposes each body had a manila name tag tied around the right big toe. She found Julia not far from the doorway. Her body was one of those that had been covered.