A Cast of Killers (10 page)

They'd found Emily all right. She was lying
naked on a smooth steel table that included slanted gutters on all
four sides. A thin stream of water trickled through the gutters and
ran into a narrow sink that hugged one wall of the room. A tiny
man, nearly as gnarled and short as a gnome, was peering intently
into Emily's eyes with the aid of a highly focused penlight. His
thick eyeglasses shone eerily with reflected glare and he was
issuing a constant patter of noise that sounded—at least from where
T.S. and Auntie Lil stood— like indignant mice arguing among
themselves. A slim Asian woman stared over his shoulder and was
listening raptly to his lecture.

The little man's squeaky voice rose in volume
as he reached his conclusion. "Look again," he commanded. "Notice
the breakage around the cornea. Curiously enough, this is
symptomatic of either…" Rodriquez coughed loudly and the little man
abruptly stopped his speech, having finally noticed the company. He
was quite unperturbed.

"Hello, what's this?" he asked cheerfully,
eyeing Auntie Lil up and down with professional detachment. Auntie
Lil responded by straightening her back and opening her eyes wide,
as if to prove that she, thank you, was quite alive.

"These people are here to take a photo of
this dead lady," Rodriquez explained, cocking his thumb toward the
corpse. "I wouldn't have burst in on you like that, but this old
one here, she pushed me from behind like some kind of maniac." He
glared at Auntie Lil, but she was far too busy staring at Emily to
notice his resentment.

A jagged V-shaped scar tapered down from the
dead woman's shoulders across her breasts, coming together several
inches above the navel before snaking angrily down over the
shrunken tissues and protruding bones of her pelvis. Her skin was
puckered and hairless, the body impossibly small. T.S. stared down
at his shoes. It looked like the freeze-dried body of an
eleven-year-old girl.

The tiny doctor scurried to Emily's feet and
pulled a white plastic sheet over her form. "Please excuse the
informality. If I'd known she was having company, I'd have dressed
her for the occasion." He cackled at his own joke and T.S.
suppressed a groan. The old man was just the kind of weirdo Auntie
Lil loved to collect. No doubt they'd be dining across the table
from one another soon.

"Don't mind my macabre humor," the little man
protested, stopping any potential giggles with an upraised palm,
although no one had either laughed or had the slightest inclination
to do so. "I was simply showing Cheryl here the ins and outs of
being a pathologist," he giggled. "Giving her the inside scoop, you
might say." He laughed again with a wheezy kind of snuffling sound
and gestured toward a neat row of glass jars on a nearby shelf.

The jars held floating masses of tissue
suspended in clear solution, some pinkish lumps and others grayish
slabs. Yellow and white dangly ropes circled some of the organs,
stretching out like tentacles from a body. It was impossible not to
stare and still more impossible not to shift that stare to the long
scar on the dead woman's torso. The doctor, noting their stunned
dismay, rearranged his smile into a more sober expression.

"So sorry. So sorry. I forget that my humor
may be a bit much for the layman. You're not relatives, are you?"
He gazed anxiously at Auntie Lil. "I thought she was a Jane Doe. I
mean, they told me they had no family or name. I was just seizing
the rare chance for hands-on education for my new assistant. Not
that Cheryl isn't fully qualified, but I have certain procedures
that I like followed and…"

"Not at all. Not at all," Auntie Lil
interrupted. "We're not relatives." She gave a dainty gulp and
regained her composure. "My fault entirely for bursting in on you
like this. Please carry on as if we weren't even here. We simply
want to snap a few photographs to take back to her neighborhood to
see if we could find out her true identity."

"How kind of you." His voice sounded as if he
meant it, but his look was a bit skeptical.

"Please don't let us intrude," Auntie Lil
repeated. "Do carry on with your… cutting or whatever." Her
curiosity was starting to gain ground. She inched toward the
body.

"You don't mean it?" The little doctor was
delighted and looked at his assistant euphorically, as if not quite
believing his luck. "Don't tell me you're one of the rare human
beings who's not been conditioned to blanch at the sight of a
little flesh and blood." He rubbed his hands together with
anticipatory glee and stared at Emily's body. He looked, T.S. felt
strongly, like a rabid raccoon eyeing a disabled fish.

"Well, that depends." Auntie Lil hastened to
explain. "To a point, certainly, it can be… quite fascinating."
T.S., meanwhile, was inching backwards toward the door. He had no
desire to do anything but return to the limousine and look at
Lilah.

The doctor froze suddenly and stared at them
intently. "Say, wait a minute. You're the two people that Lilah
Cheswick called me about." He thumped his bald pate in
exasperation. "Of course. Now I remember."

T.S. halted his escape and stared back at the
doctor. This was who Lilah knew at the medical examiner's office?
No wonder she'd waited in the car.

"And how is Lilah?" the little doctor asked
anxiously. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and peered at
Auntie Lil. "I've been meaning to call her ever since my dear wife
died. We'd be a perfect pair, what with us both being left so
tragically alone. But I've been so wrapped up in my work, I haven't
seen her at all. Her phone call was a total surprise. But a welcome
one, of course."

"She's fine," Auntie Lil answered carefully.
"As lovely and gracious as ever."

The little doctor's face brightened as if
he'd forgotten Lilah's beauty. "But, of course. She is such a
lovely woman." He put a hand on his chin and thought carefully.
"Say, would you give her my regards when you see her? Perhaps she
could give me a call again? Socially. I'm Dr. Millerton, by the
way. Milton Millerton."

"We'd be glad to," Auntie Lil murmured
sweetly.

T.S. would be damned if he'd let the little
worm at Lilah for one second. In fact, he'd not even mention his
silly name and would forbid Auntie Lil to do the same. So the good
doctor's wife had died, had she? And just who had done the autopsy
on her?

"Well, enough of the living," the little
doctor decided, rubbing his tiny hands together with great relish.
"Let's get back to the dead." He turned to his silent pupil, who
was quite nonplussed at her boss's behavior. "You're just in time
for the cranial exploration," he called over his shoulder
cheerfully. "It's Cheryl's favorite part."

"You mean the skull?" Auntie Lil looked back
at T.S. in alarm. "Perhaps we'd better take our photos first."

"Good idea," T.S. said. "Then we can leave."
Without waiting for permission, he gingerly took one corner of the
plastic sheet and peeled it down to Emily's shoulders. Poor woman.
Her already frail body had caved in upon death and the skin lay
over her facial bones like useless, dried out parchment.

"I've found that 400 film on 60 speed is
quite sufficient in this bright light," Dr. Millerton told T.S.
helpfully.

T.S. ignored him, but surreptitiously
adjusted the speed setting. Old bugger. How would he know? What
kind of pictures was he snapping around here, anyway?

The next few minutes were for T.S. perhaps
the most annoying of his life. Dr. Millerton issued instructions
from his left side while Auntie Lil hovered on the right, ordering
him to take a shot of this part of Emily's face, and then the
other. Rodriquez and the assistant pathologist retreated to one
corner, far from the fray, when Auntie Lil began demanding
close-ups of the dead woman's teeth.

"What on earth for?" T.S. asked in
irritation, but got no reply. Auntie Lil was too busy peeking under
the plastic sheet that now covered Emily's body.

"What are you doing?" T.S. lowered his camera
and stared at his aunt.

"Looking for distinguishing marks," she
explained primly. "Haven't you any imagination?"

"Yes. Far too much to be poking around in
here much longer."

"No distinguishing marks," the doctor assured
her. "The only distinguishing thing Cheryl says she found was a
small amount of a brown, muddy substance in her stomach that gave
off a very sharp odor. Possibly toxic. It had a caustic effect on
the stomach lining. I've recommended she have it analyzed in the
lab."

"No need," T.S. said with great satisfaction.
"That was Auntie Lil's chili."

"That's nothing to joke about, Theodore," she
complained hotly. "My chili was perfectly good and it did not give
off a sharp odor. It's probably not even chili."

"One way to find out," the doctor said,
holding up a hand as if to ward off an argument between them. There
was a distinctly ghoulish twinkle in his myopic eyes. "Cheryl—the
specimen jar please." He bowed and held out a hand grandly as if he
had just demanded the envelope furnishing the winner's name of a
particularly coveted Academy Award.

Cheryl obediently fetched
the jar from a small table against the wall and handed it to Dr.
Millerton. "Approximately one-third of a cup was present in the
stomach proper," she explained in a Yonkers accent that clashed
severely with her
Flower Drum Song
exterior. "I removed one-third of that amount for
analysis."

"Very good," he assured his pupil. "Now let's
see what we have here." He held the jar up to the light and twisted
it slowly until he'd examined each angle. He was drawing out the
process and clearly enjoying this teasing of Auntie Lil and T.S..
"It does look like chili to me," he finally announced, winking at
T.S. "Although it seems a particularly virulent color." He hee-heed
loudly and unscrewed the top. "Let's see if it smells like
chili."

He made an elaborate show of bending over the
jar, still chuckling. Suddenly, he froze. His laughter stopped and
he whipped his gnomelike head upright, locking eyes with his
assistant.

"What is it, Dr. Millerton?" Cheryl asked
anxiously. "Have I erred?" She reached for the jar but the doctor
motioned her back, then sniffed deeply in the sudden silence.

"Is there some mistake?" Cheryl asked again,
more timidly.

Before the doctor could answer, Auntie Lil's
mouth opened in a gasp.

Rodriquez and T.S. turned to her, baffled,
while Cheryl stared at Dr. Millerton with a puzzled expression.

When he saw that the others did not
understand, the doctor turned to Auntie Lil for confirmation. They
stared at one another in astonished enlightenment. Dr. Millerton
held out a hand to her, as if asking her to dance, and drew her
closer to the jar. Auntie Lil bent over and breathed deeply, then
nodded her head. Her action was matched by the satisfied-looking
doctor.

T.S. could stand it no longer. "What is it?"
he demanded. "What's everyone nodding about?"

Auntie Lil stared at him in uncontained
excitement. "Don't you smell that?" she said. "Bitter almonds. Just
like I've read." She looked down at the jar, marveling.

"I don't smell anything," T.S. declared. He
took a deep breath. Just the same acrid odors as before.

"Not everyone can smell it," Dr. Millerton
explained. "Just us lucky ones." He beamed at Auntie Lil
fondly.

"But that means…" the assistant said
hesitantly, then stopped and looked down at the doctor.

"Yes," the tiny doctor agreed, nodding his
head sagely and gesturing at Emily with a broad sweep of an arm.
"This woman was poisoned by some form of cyanide. I'm absolutely
certain of it."

Auntie Lil did not wait to hear the details,
which was just as well since Dr. Millerton immediately became lost
in a closer scrutiny of the body. His assistant peered over his
shoulder and they conferred together in low tones, not even looking
up when Auntie Lil dragged T.S. from the room and hustled him down
the corridors toward the exit. Rodriquez pursued them, exclaiming
that it was his job to show them out. But Auntie Lil, who
remembered each turn with uncanny accuracy, was through with the
morgue and its insignificant employees. Greater things lay
ahead.

"She was poisoned!" Auntie Lil hollered
across the sidewalk in the direction of Lilah's waiting limousine.
T.S. scurried after her, smiling thinly at a couple passing by, who
stopped and looked at one another, then examined the plaque on the
building's door with interest. Mystified, they continued their
stroll, dodging Auntie Lil as she darted across the pavement and
began to pound on the limo windows. This breach of etiquette did
not faze the occupant in the least. The window rolled down slowly,
revealing Lilah's expectant face. She held a nearly empty drink in
her hand.

"I beg your pardon?" Lilah asked politely.
"Did you say what I thought you said?"

"Indeed I did." This time, Auntie Lil did not
wait for the chauffeur's help and simply climbed unceremoniously
over Lilah to claim her spot in the back seat. She gave a
triumphant gasp, produced a white handkerchief from the depths of
her cavernous pocketbook and began to fan herself in great
excitement.

"This is it," she told Lilah and a blatantly
nosy Grady. "I can feel it. Fate has steered us to this puzzle,
handed us this predicament. We have been charged with the egregious
task of uncovering justice in her name." She pointed a finger
straight at the roof of the car and smiled mirthlessly. "I'll find
them. Just you wait and see."

T.S. was not sure he had ever seen that
particular smile cross her face—but he was glad Auntie Lil was not
his enemy. The smile glittered with a calm rage cooled to concrete
by her absolute conviction that justice would be done. He pitied
the poor murderer so foolish as to have poisoned an old lady in
front of this old lady. In fact, he felt compelled to keep a
careful eye on her as he snagged the seat next to Lilah.