Janet Evanovich - Notorious Nineteen

Lights went on all over the building and after a minute the alarm went silent. Ten minutes later the lights began blinking out and there was no sign of police or a fire truck.

“They must not be hooked into an alarm company,” Morelli said.

My cellphone rang. It was Briggs, whispering so low I could barely hear him.

“You gotta get me out of here,” he said. “I saw feet. Big naked feet. I think they might have been dead but I don’t know for sure.”

“Were they attached to something . . . like a body?”

“They were sticking out from under a sheet.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on the second floor, under a desk, and there’s a guy sitting in that little lobby area reading a paper. I can’t get past him.”

“Hang tight,” I said. “We’re on it.”

I disconnected and looked at Morelli. “He’s under a desk on the second floor and can’t get past some guy in the lobby.”

“Call him back and tell him to make more of an effort. I’m missing a really good ball game.”

“He said he saw naked feet sticking out from under a sheet. He sounded a little freaked.”

“Were they live naked feet or dead naked feet?”

“He said they might have been dead but he couldn’t be sure.”

“So much for the ball game,” Morelli said.

We went to the door beside the drop box and found it locked.

“They must have noticed the door was unlocked when they went around checking smoke detectors,” Morelli said. “This makes things more complicated.”

We were standing there hoping for a brilliant idea when the garage door rolled up. We flattened ourselves against the building, the door went totally open, and Kruger’s red Jaguar glided out of the garage and down the driveway.

“She’s going to work,” I said.

The door started to roll down, and Morelli and I slipped under it and into the garage before it closed completely. A moment later we saw the light go on over the elevator, indicating it was in motion.

“Someone else is coming down,” Morelli said.

We scrambled into a dark corner behind some packing crates and watched the elevator doors open and the Yeti come out carrying two insulated chests. He loaded the chests into the van, got behind the wheel, pressed the remote for the door, and drove out of the garage.

Morelli grabbed my hand, yanked me across the garage at a full run, and we slid under the door just as it closed. He was instantly on his feet and sprinting across the lot, through the small patch of woods. He had the Buick cranked over by the time my hand touched the door handle.

“Briggs can wait,” he said, peeling out of the lot. “I want to see where the van is going.”

We caught sight of the van just as it left the park and headed south on Route 1. It got off at Spruce and fifteen minutes later it turned in to a private fixed base operations facility at Mercer Airport. The van pulled up to the FBO gate, was admitted onto the tarmac, and drove up to a midsize business jet. The two insulated chests were handed over to the captain, and the Yeti drove the van off the field and back to the access road.

Morelli called the plane’s tail number in to one of his contacts and asked for owner information. He listened to the answer, thanked the person at the other end, and put the Buick in gear.

“The plane is owned by Franz Sunshine Enterprises,” Morelli said. “And it’s filed a flight plan for a Nevada destination.”

“I guess it’s not a big surprise that Sunshine owns the plane, since the chests came from his clinic.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing what was in those chests,” Morelli said.

“Drugs? Body parts? Lunch?”

Morelli made another phone call and suggested that the chests be checked out on arrival in Nevada.

“I suppose we should try to rescue Briggs,” I said when Morelli finished his call.

“He’s not my favorite person,” Morelli said.

“He’s not anyone’s favorite person.”

We turned onto Route 1 and my phone rang.

It was Briggs. “Where the hell are you? I finally was able to get out by the skin of my teeth and you’re not here!”

“We’re ten minutes away,” I said. “We followed the white van to the airport, but we’re on our way back.”

“This clinic is creep central. I don’t know what the heck they do here but it involves dead people, and it smells bad.”

“How many dead people did you see?”

“Just the one. Isn’t that enough?”

“Is that what smells bad?”

“If the stiff smelled bad I wouldn’t know over the stench coming from the lounge. There’s some guy cooking something in the microwave that’s stinking up the whole floor. I heard someone call him Abu.”

“Abu Darhmal,” I said.

Morelli looked over at me when I hung up. “He saw dead people?”

“One. And he managed to get out. He’s waiting for us in the lot.”

TWENTY-SIX

“I WAS GETTINGlonely here,” Briggs said when we parked and got out of the car.

“We followed the Yeti to the airport and watched him hand over two insulated chests and leave. I imagine he came back here.”

Briggs shook his head. “He didn’t come back here. Nobody’s here. The doctor and the Abu guy just left. The only one who didn’t leave is the dead guy. Except I guess he could be in someone’s trunk since he isn’t in the hall anymore.”

Morelli looked at The Clinic. “It’s empty?”

“Yeah,” Briggs said. “The party’s over.”

Morelli got a flashlight from the Buick. “Let’s take a tour.”

There were no cars in the garage, just as Briggs had said. We entered the stairwell and climbed to the first floor in darkness. Morelli opened the door and we moved into the first-floor hall. Also dark. We walked the length of it, returned to the stairwell, and went up another flight. The second-floor hall had path lighting. Not so much that you could read by it, but enough that Morelli didn’t need his flashlight.

We did a quick check of the empty offices, crossed the lobby past the elevator bank and reception desk, and aimed light into the first patient room. It was just as I remembered it. Bed made. No sign of occupancy. En suite bathroom unused.

Morelli flashed light into the second patient room, and I saw that the bed was stripped bare. Somebody had been in the bed and now they were gone, I thought. The guy with the feet.

“This is different from when I was here,” I said. “This bed was made up when I was here.”

We looked through the room and the bathroom, but found no left-behind personal effects. There was a lingering smell of antiseptic. The room had recently been cleaned.

“Where did you see the feet?” I asked Briggs.

“In the hall here, outside this room.”

Morelli looked over at me. Probably checking to make sure I wasn’t going to faint.

We left the room and went across the hall to the lab. A half-filled coffee cup had been left on a counter, so the lab was clearly being used, but there were no obvious science experiments going on. No slides under the microscope. No petri dishes growing the unthinkable. No beakers of urine.

Morelli went through drawers. He found nicotine gum, Rolaids, sticky pads, and pens, but no notes. No computer.

“It used to be you could always look for a phone book,” Morelli said. “Now they’re obsolete. Everyone carries their phone book in their phone. Same with computers. They’re portable and almost never left behind.”

We moved from the lab to the lounge. It was furnished in standard hospital lounge furniture. Inexpensive. Easy to clean. Beige and orange. Two round tables with four chairs each. Small kitchen area with a fridge, microwave, and sink. Large flat-screen television. Couch and two club chairs in front of the television. There were dishes in the sink. They’d been rinsed and left to dry.