Sue Grafton - C is for Corpse

Something was beginning to stir at the back of my brain. I was thinking about the cardboard box full of Bobby s belongings. What was in it? Medical texts and office supplies and two radiology manuals. What was he actually doing with those? He hadn't even been a medical student and I couldn't think why he'd need the manuals for equipment he might not be using for years, if ever. He'd indicated no particular interest in radiology.

I went upstairs. It wouldn't hurt to look at that stuff again. When I reached the front entrance, I slipped off my sweatshirt and wedged it in the opening. I could push the door open with no problem, but I didn't want the lock snapping shut behind me as I went out. I crossed to my car and unlocked it, wrestling the carton out the backseat. I removed the two radiology books and leafed through them quickly. These were technical manuals for specific equipment, information about the various gauges and dials and switches, with a lot of esoteric talk about exposures, rads, and roentgens. At the top of one page was a penciled number, like a doodle, surrounded by curlicues. Franklins again. The sight of the now familiar seven-digit code seemed eerie, like the sound of Bobby's voice on my answering machine five days after he died.

I tucked the two manuals under my arm and locked my car again, leaving the box on the front seat. Slowly, I returned to the building. I let myself in, pausing to pull on my sweatshirt. As long as I was on the first floor, I did a superficial survey. I kept thinking it was medical records I was looking for, the handgun tucked down in a bankers box packed with old charts. This had been a working hospital at one time and there had to be a records department somewhere. Where else would old charts be kept? If my memory of St. Terry's served me, the Medical Records Department was fairly centrally located so that doctors and other authorized personnel would have easy access.

Not many offices on this floor appeared to be occupied. I tried door handles randomly. Most were locked. I rounded the corner at the end of the hall and there it was, "Medical Records" painted above a set of double doors in a faded scrawl. I could see now that many of the old departments were similarly marked: florid lettering on a painted scroll, as though by declaration of the conquistadors.

I tried the knob, expecting to have to experiment with my key picks. Instead, the door swung open with a low-pitched creak that might have been contrived by a special-effects man. Waning daylight filtered in. The room yawned before me, barren, stripped of everything. No file cabinets, no furniture, no fixtures. A crumpled cigarette pack, some loose boards, and a couple of bent nails were scattered across the floor. This department had literally been dismantled at some point and God only knew where the old records were now. It was possible they were somewhere in one of the abandoned hospital rooms above, but I really didn't want to go up there by myself. I'd promised Jonah I wouldn't be stupid and I was trying to be a good scout on that score. Besides, something else was nagging at me.

I returned to the stairs, descending. What was that little voice in the back of my head murmuring? It was like a radio playing in the next room. I could pick up only a faint phrase now and then.

When I reached the basement, I crossed to the radiology office and tried the knob. Locked. I got out my key picks and played around for a while. This was one of those "burglar-proof locks that can be picked, but it really is a pain in the ass. Still, I wanted to see what was in there and I worked patiently. I was using a set of rocker picks, with random depth cuts spaced along the top, the back side of each pick ground to an oval. The whole idea is that with enough different cut combinations, together with an applied rocking motion, somewhere along the way all the pins will, by chance, be raised to the shear line at the same time, popping the lock.

Like hiding, the only way to approach the whole process is to give oneself up to it. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes, easing the pick forward, rocking it, applying slight pressure when I felt movement of any sort. Lo and behold, the sucker gave way and I let out a little exclamation of delight. "Oh, wow. Hey, that's great." It's this sort of shit that makes my job fun. Also illegal, but who was going to tell?

I eased into the office. I flipped the overhead light on. It looked like ordinary office space. Typewriters and telephones and file cabinets, plants on the desks, pictures on the walls. There was a small reception area where I imagined patients seated, waiting to be called for their X rays. I wandered through some of the rooms in the rear, picturing the procedures for chest X rays and mammograms, upper G.I. series. I stood in front of the machines and opened one of the manuals I'd brought in from the car.

I checked the diagrams against the various dials and gauges on the X-ray equipment itself. It was a match, more or less. Maybe some variation according to year, make, or model of the actual machinery installed. Some of it looked like the stuff of science fiction. Massive nose cone on a swinging arm. I stood there, manual open in my arms, pages pressed to my chest while I stared at the table and the lead apron that looked like a baby bib for a giant. I thought about the X rays I'd had taken of my left arm two months ago, just after I'd been shot.

It wasn't as if the idea came to me all at once. It formed around me, like fairy dust, gradually taking shape. Bobby had been out here all by himself, just like this. Night after night, searching for the handgun that had Nola's fingerprints on it. He knew who had hidden it, so he must have formed some kind of theory about the hiding place. I had to guess that he'd found the gun and that's why he was killed. Maybe he'd actually retrieved it, but I didn't think so. I'd been operating on the assumption that it was still hidden out here and that still seemed like a good bet. He'd made some little notes to himself, doodling the I.D. number of a corpse in his little red book and again in the pages of a radiology manual he'd acquired.

The phrases running through my head began to connect. Maybe you should X-ray the corpse, said I to myself Maybe that's what Bobby did and maybe that's why he made the penciled notation in the radiology book. Maybe the gun is inside the corpse. I thought about it briefly, but I couldn't see why I shouldn't give it a try. The worst that could happen (aside from my getting caught) was that I'd be wasting time and making a colossal fool of myself This would not be a first.

I left my handbag and the manuals on one of the X-ray tables and went next door to the morgue. In the refrigerated storage room, I spotted a gurney against the right wall. I was on automatic pilot by now, simply doing what I knew had to be done. There was still no sign of Alfie Leadbetter and no one was going to help me. I might be wrong, so maybe it was just as well that no one knew what I was up to. The building was deserted. It was early yet. Even if I fumbled the X-ray procedure, it couldn't hurt the dead man.

I rolled the gurney over to the fiberglass bunk where the body lay. I pretended I was a morgue attendant. I pretended I was an X-ray technician or a nurse, some thoroughly professional person with a job to do.

"Sorry to disturb you, Frank," I said, "but you have to go next door for some tests. You're not looking so good."

Tentatively, I reached out and eased a hand under Franklin's neck and knees and pulled, slipping him from his resting place onto the gurney. He was surprisingly light, and cold to the touch, about the consistency of a package of raw chicken breasts just out of the fridge. God, I thought, why do I plague myself with these domestic images? I'd never be motivated to learn to cook at this rate.