Edward Lee - Ghouls

Kurt winced.

“So who was the chick on the phone?” Bard asked.

“Beats me.”

“How about the skinny dude who left the body bag on the bed?”

Kurt’s throat tightened. “Swaggert, I think.”

That brought silence. Bard rolled down the window and spat, perhaps not wanting to reveal that the topic of Doug Swaggert inspired unease. Down the road, he said, “It’s fear.”

“What is?”

“The dream you had. The nightmare. It’s job-related fear, fear of violent death, fear of the unknown. That’s what a head doctor would tell you.”

Kurt smiled. “Since when are you a head doctor?”

“Hey, I took a psychology class in high school once. I know about these things. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s normal for those in our line. These days, a cop’d be crazy not to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of death,” Kurt said. “Simply because I’ve got no intention of dying anytime soon.”

“Consciously, you’re not. But dreams are un conscious. It’s clear as day, I’m not blaming you. You’re afraid that you’re going to find out what happened to Swaggert, and you’re afraid that when you do, it’ll be too late.”

“You’re right, I am afraid,” Kurt said. It was a sudden, otherworldly response. “I’m scared shitless.”

“You and me both.”

Kurt lit a cigarette. Smoke gushed out of his mouth like an escaping spirit. “So level with me, then. Are you convinced that Doug’s dead?”

“Dead and buried. Murdered by stoners for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And ten to one his body’ll never be found, so we’ll never know exactly what went down. That’s the worst part, if you ask me. Never knowing.”

Kurt pictured Swaggert being buried in the woods by faceless men. He could hear the bite of the shovel.

“But what can you expect in this world?” Bard blabbed on. “The shit we see is nothing, it’s like a lunger in the ocean. We’ve got heroin rings in elementary schools now, child-pornography clubs, cyanide in your Halloween candy, and snuff films in New York for a hundred bucks a show. We’ve got day care centers in California where they sodomize four-year-olds, and we’ve got people in Texas digging up corpses for death orgies. So you tell me, what can you expect?”

“You should write inspirational books, Chief.”

“It’s a freak show.” Bard chuckled abruptly. “The whole fucking world is a fucking freak show.”

««—»»

They parked on the emergency-room side of the hospital. The front lot was scant with police cruisers and EMT trucks. The atmosphere here induced slow steps; they approached the high, lit building as though it were a slaughterhouse. Rain dotted their shoulders and heads. Out front, a county cop was arguing with a younger municipal officer. “It’s your 81, punk,” county said. “The potato chip factory is your jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, but you hogged the call,” the young cop accused. “You county crotch-heads are all the same. Always punting the work to someone else.”

“Town clown.”

“Fish sticks for brains.”

“Get fucked, punk.”

“I get fucked every night. Don’t believe me? Ask your mother.”

Kurt and Bard laughed. They’d heard it all before.

Double doors opened at the touch of their feet. A track line of exploded drops of blood veered right, toward the ER. The light in a candy machine flickered irregularly on and off, on and off. Glen Rodz rose from his seat in a small lobby on the left. He looked shell-shocked.

“Thought you’d never get here,” he said. “The M.E.’s waiting for us. County’s already been called.”

“Fuck the county,” Bard said. “Explain.”

Glen began to mouth a response, but words never materialized. He led them down a shiny, vacant hall to a black door with a chicken-wire window. Hovering on the glass were the words, OFFICE OF THE PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER. Glen entered without knocking.

In the anteroom, they found themselves hemmed in by dented file cabinets, bookshelves, and data processing equipment. Kurt stood unnaturally stiff, pinned to the wall by shadows. On a cork bulletin board ragged with crinkled notes and memos he noticed several misaligned bumper stickers. YES NUKES. GET IN THE SWIM. WARNING: I DON’T BRAKE FOR ANIMALS. Above the desk hung a framed eight-by-ten glossy of Moe, Larry, and Shemp.

“This place looks like a pawn shop,” Bard said. “Where’s the fucking M.E.?”

“Assistant M.E.,” a stocky shadow across the room corrected. “Only assistants get stuck with night duty.”

Glen introduced the shadow to Kurt and Bard as Dr. Greene.

At last moving into the light, Greene more resembled a college student torn between academics and barbells. Very short blond hair and thick glasses created in him a serious if not unfeeling outer cast, yet he dressed shoddily in jeans and desert boots, the kind with the seam down the middle. Beneath his open lab coat he wore an old gray T-shirt centered with the face of Eddie Haskell. Kurt detected an awkward prominence about him—Greene was shorter than average but stood firm as a fire hydrant, with a physique that could’ve been sculpted out of rock, massive shoulders and back tapering to a trim waist. Kurt could easily see this man bending tire irons during periods of extended boredom.

“You guys are cops,” Greene said. “So I assume you’ve been to morgues.”

Kurt and Bard nodded, neither admitting that it had been years.

“The only reason I ask is because I’ve seen it happen too many times.” Greene opened a pint carton of chocolate milk and sipped. “The county morgue isn’t exactly fun for the whole family, I realize that. But I’m always getting these county hot dogs coming in here thinking it’s going to be a lot of laughs. Next thing I know, they’re throwing up like gushers. One time I had a state sergeant come in. Big guy, macho, ‘Death Before Dishonor’ tattoo on his arm. He took one look around and just let ’er rip, running circles around the room with his hand over his mouth, vomit shooting out between his fingers, a regular volcano. He threw up on my lunch, my instruments, and a cadaver’s face.” Quickly, Greene doled to each of them a plastic-lined paper bag. “So that’s the rule of the house—nobody throws up in my morgue. I don’t throw up in your police station, so don’t throw up in my morgue.”

Greene walked to the other side of the room and opened a large gray metal door which no one had noticed in the anteroom’s slabs of shadows. Its doorknob was in the middle, and it bore a sign that read, KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Greene disappeared into a slant of white blaze. “The doorman to hell,” Bard whispered. “Get a load of this guy.” They followed reluctantly, single file.

A high fluorescent fixture veiled them all in flat light. Fumes in the air chafed Kurt’s eyes and reamed his sinuses; he thought of the hot sausages they sold in jars at the Jiffy. “Sorry about the horrible smell,” Greene apologized. “It’s fixation fluid. Trade hazard.”

Kurt felt the blood empty out of his face. The slightly cooler air made his skin tighten. There were no metal drawers here as he’d seen on TV. The room had a bare cement floor potted with crusty drains, and was walled all around by slate-gray tile. Metal shelves occupied one entire wall; they seemed bowed under the weight of countless white five-gallon buckets each taped with various labels as JORES’, ZENKER’S SOLUTION, PHENOL, FORMALIN 20%. A tin tray marked AMYLOID/FAT NECROSIS PREP held several bottles of iodine and copper sulfate. A large sink and heat-sealing iron hung on one wall, and at the opposite wall was another door. Kurt didn’t care to see what was behind it.