Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 44

• Предыдущая
• 44/73
• Следующая

As I unlocked the door, I did not know what I expected to find, but I was drawn to her filing cabinet and desk drawers, to every book and old telephone message Everything looked the same as it had before she died. Marino was quite skilled at going through someone's private space without disturbing the natural disorder of things. The telephone was still askew on the right corner of the desk, the cord twisted like a corkscrew. Scissors and two pencils with broken points were on the green paper blotter, her lab coat draped over the back of her chair.

A reminder of a doctor's appointment was still taped to her computer monitor, and as I stared at the shy curves and gentle slant of her neat script, I trembled inside. Where had she gone adrift? Was it when she married Jason Story? Or was her destruction setup much earlier than that, when she was the young daughter of a scrupulous minister, the twin left behind when her sister was killed? Sitting in her chair, I rolled it closet to the filing cabinet and began slipping out one file after another and glancing through the contents. Most of what I perused was brochures and other printed information pertaining to surgical supplies and miscellaneous items used in the morgue. Nothing struck me as curious until I discovered that she had saved virtually every memo she had ever gotten from Fielding, but not one from Ben Stevens or me, when I knew that both of us had sent her plenty. Further searching through drawers and bookshelves produced no files for Stevens or me, and that's when I concluded that someone had taken them.

My first thought was that Marino might have carried them off. Then something else occurred to me with a jolt, and I hurried upstairs. Unlocking the door to my office, I went straight to the file drawer where I kept mundane administrative paperwork such as telephone call sheets, memos, printouts of electronic mail communications I had received, and drafts of budget proposals and long-term plans. Frantically, I rifled through folders 'drawers. The thick file I was looking for was simply labeled “Memos,” and in it were copies of every memo I'd sent to my staff and various other agency personnel over the past several years. I searched Rose's office and carefully checked my office again. The file was gone.

“You son of a bitch,” I said under my breath as I headed furiously down the hall. “You goddam son of a bitch.”

Ben Stevens's office was impeccably neat and so carefully appointed that it looked like a display in a discount furniture store. His desk was a Williamsburg reproduction with bright brass pulls and a mahogany veneer, and he had brass floor lamps with dark green shades. The door was covered with a machine-made Persian rug, the walls arranged with large prints of alpine skiers and men on thundering horses swinging polo sticks and sailors racing through snarling seas. I began by pulling Susan's personnel file. The expected job description, resume, and other documents were inside. Absent were several memos of commendation I had written since hiring her and had added to her file myself. I began opening desk drawers, and discovered in one of them a brown vinyl kit containing toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, and a small bottle of cologne.

Perhaps it was the barely perceptible shift of air when the door was silently pulled open wider, or perhaps I simply sensed a presence the way an animal would. I happened to look up to find Ben Stevens standing in the doorway as I sat at his desk screwing the cap back on a bottle of Red cologne. For a long, icy moment, our eyes held and neither of us spoke. I did not feel fear. I did not feel the least bit concerned by what he had caught me doing I felt rage “You're keeping unusually late hours, Ben.”

Zipping up his toilet kit, I returned it to its drawer. I laced my fingers on top of the blotter, my movements, my speech, deliberate and slow.

“The thing I've always liked about working after hours is there is no one else around,” I said. “No distractions. No risk of someone walking in and interrupting whatever it is you are doing. No eyes or ears. Not a sound, except on rare occasion when the security guard happens to wander through. And we all know that doesn't happen often unless his attention is solicited, because he hates coming into the morgue at any time. I've never known a security guard who didn't hate that. Same goes for the cleaning crew. They won't even go downstairs, and they do as little up here as they can get away with. But that point is moot, isn't it? It's close to nine o'clock. The cleaning crew is always gone by seven-thirty.

“What intrigues me is that I did not guess before now. It never crossed my mind. Maybe that is a sad comment about how preoccupied I've been. You told the police you did not know Susan personally, yet you frequently gave her rides to and from work, such as on the snowy morning I autopsied Jennifer Deighton. I remember that man was very distracted on that occasion. She left the body in the middle of the corridor, and she was dialing a number on the phone and quickly hung up when I walked into the autopsy suite. I doubt she was placing a business call at seven-thirty in the morning on a day when most people weren't going to venture out of their homes because of the weather. And there was no one in the office to call - no one had gotten in yet, except you. If she were dialing your number, why would her impulse be to hide that from me? Unless you were more than her direct supervisor.

“Of course, your relationship with me is equally intriguing. We seem to get along fine, then suddenly you claim that I am the worst boss in Christendom. It makes me wonder if Jason Story is the only person talking to reporters. It's amazing, this persona I suddenly have. This image. The tyrant. The neurotic. The person who is somehow responsible for the violent death of my morgue supervision. Susan and I had a very cordial working relationship, and until recently, Ben, so did we. But it's my word against yours, especially now, since any scrap of paper that might document what I'm saying has conveniently disappeared. And my prediction is that you have already leaked to someone that important personnel files and memoranda have vanished from the office, thus implying that I'm the one who took them.

When files and memos disappear, you can say anything you want about the contents of them, can't you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Ben Stevens said. He moved away from the doorway but did not come close to the desk or take a chair. His face was flushed, his eyes hard with hate. “I don't know anything about any missing files or memos, but if it's true, then I can't hide that fact from the authorities, just as I can't hide the fact that I happened to stop by the office tonight to get something I'd left and discovered you rummaging through my desk.”

“What did you leave, Ben?”

“I don't have to answer your questions.”

“Actually, you do. You work for me, and if you come into the building late at night and I happen to know about it, I have the right to question you.”

“Go ahead and put me on leave. Try to fire me. That will certainly look good for you right now.”

“You are a squid, Ben.”

His eyes widened and he wet his lips.

“Your efforts to sabotage me are just a lot of ink you're squirting into the water because you're panicking and want to divert attention from yourself. Did you kill Susan?”

“You're losing your goddam mind.” His voice shook.

“She left her house early afternoon on Christmas Day, allegedly to meet a girlfriend. In truth, the person she was meeting was you, wasn't it? Did you know that when she was dead in her car, her coat collar and scarf smelled like men's cologne, like the Red cologne you keep in your desk so you can freshen up before you hit the bars in the Slip after work?”

“I don't know what you're talking about”

• Предыдущая
• 44/73
• Следующая