Shadowfires

gurney that was bedecked with rumpled
shrouds. On it lay a thick paper tag trailing two strands of plastic-
coated wire. The tag was crumpled.
    “That's all we've got to go on,
I'm afraid. The cart that the corpse once occupied and the ID tag that was once tied to its foot.” Only inches from Rachael, the detective looked hard at her, his intense dark eyes as flat and unreadable as his face. “Now, why do you suppose a body snatcher, whatever his motivation, would take the time to untie the tag from the dead man's
toe?”
    “I don't have the slightest idea,” she said.
    “The thief would be worried about getting caught. He'd be in a hurry. Untying the tag would take precious seconds.”
    “It's crazy,” she said shakily.
    “Yes, crazy,” Verdad said.
    “But then the whole thing's crazy.”
    “Yes.”
    She stared down at the wrinkled and vaguely stained shroud,
thinking of how it had wrapped her husband's cold and naked cadaver, and she shuddered uncontrollably.
    “Enough of this,” Benny said, putting his arm around her for
warmth and support. “I'm getting you the hell out of this place.”
Everett Kordell and Ronald Tescanet
accompanied Rachael and Benny to the elevator in the parking garage,
continuing to make a case for the morgue's and the city's complete
lack of culpability in the body's disappearance. They were not convinced by her repeated assurances that she did not intend to sue anyone. There were so many things for her to think and worry about that she had neither the energy nor the inclination to persuade them that her intentions were benign. She just wanted to be rid of them so she could get on with the urgent tasks that awaited her.
    When the elevator doors closed, finally separating her and Benny
from the lean pathologist and the corpulent attorney, Benny said, “If
it was me, I think I would sue them.”
    “Lawsuits, countersuits, depositions, legal strategy meetings,
courtrooms-boring, boring, boring,” Rachael said. She opened her
purse as the elevator rose.
    “Verdad is a cool son of a bitch, isn't he?” Benny said.
    “Just doing his job, I guess.” Rachael took the thirty-two pistol
out of her purse.
    Benny, watching the light move on the board of numbers above the
lift's doors, did not immediately see the gun. “Yeah, well, he could do his job with a little more compassion and a little less machinelike efficiency.”
    They had risen one and a half floors from the basement. On the
indicator panel, the 2 was about to light. Her Mercedes was one level
farther up.
    Benny had wanted to bring his car, but Rachael had insisted on
driving her own. As long as she was behind the wheel, her hands were
occupied and her attention was partly on the road, so she
couldn't become morbidly preoccupied with the frightening situation in which she found herself. If she had nothing to do but brood about recent developments, she would very likely lose the tenuous self-control she now possessed. She had to remain busy in order to hold terror at arm's
length and stave off panic.
    They reached the second floor and kept going up.
    She said, “Benny, step away from the door.”
    “Huh?” He looked down from the lightboard, blinked in surprise
when he saw the pistol. “Hey, where the hell did you get that?”
    “Brought it from home.”
    “Why?”
    “Please step back. Quickly now, Benny,” she said shakily, aiming
at the doors.
    Still blinking, confused, he got out of the way.
“What's going on? You're not going to shoot anybody.”
    Her thunderous heartbeat was so loud that it muffled his voice and
made it sound as if he were speaking to her from a distance.
    They arrived at the third floor.
    The indicator board went ping! The 3 lighted. The
elevator stopped with a slight bounce.
    “Rachael, answer me. What is this?”
    She did not respond. She had gotten the gun after leaving Eric. A
woman alone ought to have a gun… especially after walking out on a
man like him. As the doors rolled open, she tried to remember what
her pistol instructor had said:
Don't jerk the trigger; squeeze it slowly, or you'll pull the muzzle
off target and miss.
    But no one was waiting for them, at least not in front of the
elevator. The gray concrete floor, walls, pillars, and ceiling looked
like those in the basement from which they'd begun their ascent. The silence was the same, too: sepulchral and somehow threatening. The air was less dank and far warmer than it had been three levels below, though it was every bit as still. A