Blood Walk Part 45

Fowler raised a brow at Garreth.Have you thought about our discussion? the expression said.

Harry came over to sit down at his desk. Garreth moved off it.

He had thought about the discussion, yes . . . all last night while he filled his thermos and wondered how to find Irina. As much as he appreciated the offer and the support it represented, the idea of a partnership did not appeal to him. How could he effectively hunt Irina when he had to appear to be hunting Lane? On the other hand, Fowler had a point about his fame opening doors, not to mention his presence providing an alibi. All things considered, then . . . Garreth dipped his chin.You're on .

Fowler smiled.

Occupied with unlocking his desk and taking out the address book, Harry missed the exchange.

Girimonte swept in from the corridor waving a sheaf of papers. "Got it." She dropped the autopsy report on Harry's desk and lighted a cigar. "I gave it a quick read on the way up in the elevator. No surprises."

"You mean he wasn't a Martian after all?" Fowler asked.

Did he have to bring that up? Garreth glanced sidelong at Girimonte, but if she connected the other dead men the a.s.sistant M.E.

mentioned with whatever she had decided about Garreth, she showed no sign of it.

She shrugged. "I don't know what anomalies Welton was so excited about. So Maruska was obviously healthy and athletic when the total lack of body fat and minimal intestinal contents should indicate severe starvation. There's something about the color of the liver indicating a high iron intake and tarry feces being present without a site for upper G.I. bleeding, but . . . all I see that's really different is his teeth."

Garreth's stomach lurched. He peered over Harry's shoulder at the report. ". . . unusually sharp upper canines, grooved on the posterior side." His tongue traced the grooves down his own fangs. At least the pathologist had missed the fact that the teeth extended and retracted.

"How disappointing," Fowler murmured. "I had hoped for green blood at the very least."

Girimonte blew cigar smoke at him. "Vulcans, not Martians, have green blood."

Garreth smoothed his mustache. Martians. Maybe there was another lead after all. If those bodieswere vampires, too, then someone they knew must be a link to others of the blood in the city, others who might point the way to Irina.

"This is very interesting, I'm sure, but,"-Harry pushed to his feet-"we have a p.a.w.nshop owner to talk to, and after we've followed that lead as far as it'll go, we need to look up Holle's friends to talk about possible enemies." He waved the address book.

"Shall we hit the bricks?"

Garreth debated hurriedly. Following one lead meant abandoning the other for a while. Which way to try first.No contest, man. The one without Girimonte. He smiled at Harry. "While you're working on the liquor store shooting, I think I'll go over the files on the Mossman and Adair murders with Mr. Fowler. We can catch up with you later."

Fowler blinked, then grinned. "Capital."

"Go over the old files." Girimonte's eyes narrowed. She tapped the ash off her cigar.

"Yes of course." Fowler's brows rose. "What do you think, that we'd go haring off on our own?"

"The thought crossed my mind."

"Well, you're wrong . . . again," Garreth snapped. "After going over the case files, at most we might visit the Barbary Now and the alley where Lane attacked me, to let Mr. Fowler soak up local color. Nothing more." He focused on her as he said it, though, not looking at Harry.

Harry eyed him and Fowler.

"Cross our hearts and hope to die," the writer said cheerfully. Harry shook his head and started for the door. "Come on, Van.

Contact Dispatch for our Twenty when you two want to catch up, Mik-san."

Fowler waited until the door had closed before turning to Garreth. "Right. Now, old son, suppose you tell me what you really have in mind."

4

"The morgue?" Fowler's brows rose as they walked into the reception area of the coroner's office. "Are we interrogating the dead men?"

Garreth gave him a thin smile. "Something like that. This won't take long. Wait for me here." He turned the smile on the receiving clerk. "Morning, Barbara. Where's Dr. Thurlow?"

The clerk stared. "Inspector Mikaelian? I heard you were back. Lord, I hardly recognize you. You got serious about dieting.

The old man's in the autopsy room."

The effort needed to walk down the corridor had nothing to do with the drag of daylight. Garreth hated coming here. He always had, even before having to identify Marti's body. Waking up in one of its drawers himself had not endeared it to him, either.

The place served the living, but it was a world of death, of tile and stainless steel . . . shining, cold, hard.

Pushing through the door of the autopsy room, though, he realized that oddly enough, he disliked this room the least. Perhaps because here corpses ceased to be people. Lying with bellies and chests spread open, scalps pulled inside out down over their faces, they no longer looked quite human.

Down the long line of tables the light shone on a stylish mane of silver hair. Garreth made his way toward it through the flood of smells . . . disinfectants, dead blood, diseased blood, putrefying flesh, the acrid stench of intestinal contents, and in spa.r.s.e, tantalizing whiffs almost lost among the other odors, the warm saltiness of living blood.

The murmur of voices filled the room, pathologists talking to a.s.sistants and dictating into microphones dangling from overhead, sentences punctuated by occasional laughter and the sharp whine of a bone saw slicing through a skull. Light gleamed on instruments and clay-gray flesh. Water hissed, running down the tables to carry away the blood. More water swirled rosy in sinks at the end of the tables, where floating organs waited to be sliced open for further examination.

"Dr. Thurlow?"

The chief medical examiner looked up from studying lungs as red as the liver lying on the table beside them. He peered at Garreth over the top of half gla.s.ses. "Morning, Mikaelian."

Garreth blinked. "You recognize me?"

"I remember all my patients who recover and go home." Thurlow's knife sliced through the lung in quick, sure strokes, sectioning it like a loaf of bread, then sc.r.a.ped across several of the exposed internal surfaces. "What can I do for you, Mikaelian?"

"I'm interested in your Martians."

Gray eyes peered keenly at him over the half gla.s.ses. "You, too? This is the most attention the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have had in ten years. Mitch Welton has all the autopsy reports in his office."

Were going to ask for them would make the entire staff of the coroner's office aware that he had asked about the Martians?

No. "If you know the names offhand, that's all I need." Garreth kept his voice casual.

Thurlow snorted. "After the recent chance to refresh my memory, the facts are graven in my offhand, Inspector." He sliced off several pieces of lung and dropped them in a specimen jar an a.s.sistant held out, then picked up the liver. "December 15, 1975, Christopher Parke Stroda, suicide. A jumper. Number whatever from the bridge."

In the middle of grabbing for his notebook, Garreth caught his breath. Suicide! "The fall broke his neck?"

"It broke almost everything," Thurlow replied dryly. His knife sliced expertly through the liver. "Thomas Washington Bodenhausen. October 11, 1979, construction accident. Decapitation."

Garreth stared. "Construction? He had a day job?" The words were out before he thought.

He could only curse himself silently as Thurlow's brows went up. "What's so strange about that? But this happened at night, if I remember right. Last Martian: Corinne Lucasta Barlow, July 20, 1981. Traffic fatality. Another broken neck. Multiple fractured vertebrae, in fact. Also fractures of a.s.sorted long bones, plus ruptures of liver, spleen, and kidneys. Heart impaled by a broken rib."

He paused. "Corinne Lucasta. Unusual name. Old fashioned."

Maybe not when Corinne Lucasta had been born. "Thanks, doc." Garreth headed for the door.

Back in the reception area he found Fowler leaning on the receiving desk flirting with the clerk. The writer abandoned his conquest abruptly as Garreth appeared. "Have a nice chat?"

"We'll see. Come on.""Ta," Fowler called back to the clerk.

In the breezeway outside, Garreth sucked in a deep breath of relief, and laughed inwardly at himself. Even open daylight was preferable to the morgue? Hierarchies.

"Where now?" Fowler asked.

"Records."

He picked a clerk there he knew, but she just looked at him across the counter. "Do you have authorization to pull these files?"

Garreth frowned. She was not going to be as accommodating as Thurlow. "Authorization?"

"Of course. We can't hand records over to just anyone."

Cursing inwardly, he put on a mask of indignation. "What? Belflower, that's a crock. You know me."

"I know you don't work here anymore." Then she smiled. "I tell you what, though. You're riding along with Harry Takananda, right? I'll call him or Lieutenant Serruto for the authorization." She reached for the phone on the counter.

Self-control kept him from grabbing her wrist. That would only attract attention. "Belflower." Garreth pushed his gla.s.ses up on his head and caught her gaze. "That isn't-" He broke off. Was this a stupid thing to do with Fowler watching?

In the moment of inattention, she broke away from him, but before her hand touched the phone, Fowler finished, ". . . going to help. The lieutenant doesn't know anything about the lead and Sergeant Takananda is out of the building. I'm sure he would have given us a note or something, but he didn't think there would be this flap." He leaned on the counter and smiled at the clerk. "Look, love, we're just helping out the sergeant, Mikaelian as a favor to an ex-partner, and me tagging along gathering material for my book."

Her eyes widened. "You're Graham Fowler!"

He grinned. "Guilty, I'm afraid. Now . . . what do you say?"

She frowned. "Well . . ."

"I don't need to take the files out," Garreth said hastily. "A quick look here will give me everything necessary."

"I'd be most grateful," Fowler said.

Belflower smiled at him. "All right."

She hurried off.

Pulling his gla.s.ses back in place, Garreth breathed in relief. "Good show."

Fowler smiled dryly. "Well, we can't have the investigation bogging down in red tape, can we."

Belflower reappeared shortly with three folders. Garreth scanned the reports in each, looking for names, addresses, and telephone numbers of people connected to the victims. It did not surprise him to find very few.

Discovering Bodenhausen was black raised his brows, though on consideration he wondered why it should, any more than finding the names of parents and siblings for Christopher Stroda. The Stroda file also included a transcript of a tape recording left on the Golden Gate bridge with his coat, shoes, and sungla.s.ses. The text whispered its despair in Garreth's head long after he went on to the next file.

"Anything I can do to help?" Fowler asked.

"Thanks, no."

"Do you mind if I have a look anyway?"

Was there more harm in letting him, or in piquing the writer's curiosity by refusing? "Go ahead."

Fowler paged through the folders. "I wonder if I might ask who these people are? They're all old cases, none of them murders.

What's their relevance to our murderous Miss Barber?"

The inevitable question. Could he bluff his way out of answering? "Maybe none. It's just a hunch. Don't ask me to explain right now."

Fowler's brows skipped but he did not press the subject.

Garreth grinned inwardly in satisfaction. Moments later, though, satisfaction exploded into a shriek of alarm. The report on Corinne Barlow's accident gave the Philos Foundation as her employer.

Holle drove a car with personalized plates: PHILOS.

The Philos Foundation! The name reverberated in Garreth's head. He could kick himself for not thinking of it when he first saw Holle's tags. The non-profit organization kept a low profile but its storefront blood collection centers dotted the city, and every hospital in the city kept its two numbers handy, 555-LIFE for the bloodbank and 1-800-555-STAT to reach the organ transplant hotline at the central offices in Chicago. He had seen the card numerous times at the receiving desk in San Francisco General's trauma center when he dropped by to visit Marti at work. And 555-LIFE, he confirmed by taking a peek at the telephone on the counter, translated into 555-5433, the same pattern of numbers Holle's housekeeper had called.

"Find something interesting?" Fowler asked.

Garreth thought fast. "I was thinking about transportation. My car's in Harry's driveway. Do you have one?"

Fowler arched a brow. "Yes, of course. One is crippled in America without one. I take it you intend visiting the people on your list there?"

"Give the man a cookie." Garreth shoved the files back across the counter. "Thanks, Belflower. I'm through. I owe you one."

5

Stroda's parents still lived in Marin County. Garreth almost wished they did not, that he had been unable to find them.

The mention of her son brought raw pain to Sarah Stroda's face. "You want to talk about Christopher?"

Only moments before Garreth had been admiring her youthfulness and the humor glinting in her eyes as she handed back Garreth's identification, accepting his story of being temporarily attached to the San Francisco Police through a continuing education program for small town officers. Now the humor had gone, while years etched themselves into her face.

"No." She shook her head. "Let's not talk about him. I've read your books, Mr. Fowler, and except for the way your protagonists treat people as disposable tools, enjoyed them, but I don't want my son in one of your books."

"He won't be," Garreth said. "This doesn't have anything to do with your son himself, just people he might have known."