C Is for Corpse

middle-aged black man of medium height, slim, with a face of stone. Why was this corpse significant? I was feeling anxious. I figured Alfie would be back shortly and I really didn't want to be caught nosing around in here. I went back to my chair.
    Coming out of the cold-storage room was like leaving an air-conditioned theater. It made the autopsy room feel balmy by comparison. I was getting itchy to explore. I couldn't help myself. I was irritated that no one was there to help me and feeling edgy from the quiet. This was not a fun place. Ordinarily, I don't hang out in morgues and it was making me tense.
    Just to soothe my nerves, I peered into a drawer, testing the contents against the grisly images I'd conjured up. This one contained scratch pads, order blanks, arid miscellaneous paper supplies. Reassured, I tried the next drawer: small vials of several drugs, the names of which I did not recognize. I was warming up here and I checked on down the line. Everything appeared to be related to the business of dissecting the dead; not surprising, given the locale, but not very enlightening.
    I straightened up and looked around the room. Where were the files? Didn't anybody keep records around this place? Somebody had mentioned that there were medical charts stored out here, but where? This floor? Somewhere on one of the floors above? I didn't relish the idea of creeping through the empty building by myself. I'd been picturing Alfie Leadbetter at my side, telling me what was accessible and where I might start. I'd even pictured slipping him a twenty-dollar bill if that's what it took to enlist his aid.
    I glanced at my watch. I'd now been here forty-five minutes and I wanted some results. I grabbed my handbag and went out in the hall, looking in both directions. It was getting darker down here, although I could see through a window at the end of the hall that it was still light outside. I found a wall switch and flipped on the lights and then I wandered along the corridor, reading the small white signs mounted above each office door. The radiology offices were right next to the morgue. Beyond that, Nuclear Medicine, and nursing offices. I wondered if Sufi Daniels had occasion to come out here.
    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