Close to the Bone A Theresa Ma Lisa Black

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.Or if someone would reach in for her instead.But the opening did come into view, near as she could tell, as a shade of less than total dark against inky blackness.She thrust first her hand, then her body into the unknown, its deep hues pulsing around her like a living thing.But one advantage to the digital age is the ubiquitous ready light.No room is truly dark any more – each one has a few, or an array, of tiny red, blue or green lights indicating the presence of a monitor, a tower, a battery back-up, a cellphone dock, a charging station, until the area glows with a faint but usable ambience.Theresa used this to find a light switch.Once the overhead fluorescents came on – no worries of overexposing a photo, the room hadn’t seen a strip of film in seven years – the cavern appeared as simply the messy, cramped work space of some very busy technicians rather than the lair of a bloody murderer.Unless he had wedged himself into one of the overfull cabinets, and Theresa wasn’t about to embarrass herself by checking.She flicked out the light and subjected herself to the claustrophobic cylinder.Her bravado clicked off as soon as the overhead bulbs did, and she hoped no one would be waiting to greet her on the other side.No one did, and she moved on, making her way back up the rear hallway.Truthfully, she might not even be looking for Justin.She hadn’t seen a second person in the deskmen’s office when she’d left that night; in a normal rotation it should have been Justin paired with Darryl, but for all Theresa knew he could have called in sick and someone else had taken his shift, or Darryl had toughed it out solo.Unusual, but not unheard of.The ME’s office consisted of three floors built in the early fifties, and neither the ventilation nor the decor had been improved since that time.Plans had been finalized for a gleaming new center, but after the housing market imploded and the economy went to hell the project had become lost in budget limbo.Theresa complained along with everyone else but secretly expected to weep the day they had to leave this battered piece of history behind.She spent most of her waking hours here, now with Rachael off at college, and felt as comfortable on this worn linoleum as she did puttering around her own house – so stalking alone around an empty building possibly inhabited by a bloody killer did not strike her as insane.This was not a crime scene or an unsecured area.This was her home.She heard the EMTs working in the front, destroying the sanctity of her scene while trying to save an already lost life, but still Theresa did not return.The remainder of the first floor consisted of three spaces.The first – the viewing room, a tiled chamber just large enough for a single gurney and large windows, through which the family could identify a loved one – sat empty.The second – the separate autopsy suite for decomposed cases – also appeared undisturbed.Though rarely used, the air there had long since festered into that of a slaughterhouse with even more disgusting overtones; without thinking she held her breath, and not from apprehension.Theresa moved on to the third and final space, the decomp autopsy suite’s accompanying ‘deep freeze’ cooler, kept at minus seventy degrees Fahrenheit.She flicked on the light.Nothing.She checked in on Darryl and the EMTs on her way back through the front hallway.They were crouching on her bloodied floor – she would have to get exemplars of their shoe prints, though most of the blood had dried and would not stick – and while one had his fingers pressed to the deskman’s neck, the other had clearly given up and was gazing at the word scrawled on the cabinet door.He jumped when Theresa spoke.‘You’re not planning to transport, are you?’‘Nah.He’s gone.’‘Then please don’t move him any more than you can help until I can photograph.And don’t let the cops come in.’‘What? Hey—’ he began to protest, but she had already moved on.The Property Department could have housed half a dozen killers lying in wait, but there was nothing Theresa could do about it.She didn’t have keys to the door; no one did, save the Property officer and probably the Medical Examiner himself, in order to protect the personal items, money, jewelry and prescription meds of their temporary residents.She hit the light switch in the reception area: boring furniture that appeared to have been there since the mid-’70s, a Formica-clad countertop and sliding window to the secretary’s desk, a double set of glass doors leading to the visitor parking lot.She checked them.Still locked, deadbolts in place.Theresa ignored the elevator.It moved only slightly faster than molasses in Antarctica, and any woman over forty needed to work off every possible calorie, so instead she always took the stairs to the upper floors where she spent most of her working hours.Second landing, Records and Customer Services to the right, doctors’ offices and Histology to the left.No one lay bleeding in the hallway.Theresa even checked the two restrooms, in case Justin had escaped the attacker and run up here to hide – not as silly an idea as it sounded, she consoled herself as she peered through the glass windows of dark offices.If he couldn’t get past the killer to the back hallway and its loading dock door to the outside, and the front doors had been locked with their keyed deadbolt, he would have nowhere else to go but up.But then he would have nowhere to hide.Unless both Justin and the attacker had the advanced degrees in science necessary to work in one of the labs or were Janice, Queen of the Secretaries, they would not be able to open any of the doors.None were broken, and no drops or smears of blood dotted the carpet.Same for the third floor.Out of habit or some sort of homing instinct, Theresa pulled her keys from her back pocket and let herself in to the Trace Evidence Department.Once the lights flicked on she could see that nothing had been disturbed.The microscopes waited, shielded by soft plastic coverings; washed glassware dried in a dish rack that Theresa had bought at Walmart; a stack of Manila files needing additions or revisions had fallen over on her desk as if to express annoyance at her inattention; and the whole place smelled of disinfectant, dried blood and burnt coffee.Her home away from home, her corner of the world, her fortress and prison in one, but now she glanced around its cluttered space as if she’d never seen it before, its expanse turned alien and unfamiliar.More sirens outside the building now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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