Shortest Day (21 page)

The magic failed. The receptionist was a severe young woman who at once detected the sexist nature of this ploy. “Get to the point,” she said sharply, with a look like a splinter from the glass mountain.

“Can you tell me how to find the pathologist's office?” said Homer humbly.

“Third floor,” barked the receptionist. Whirling around in her chair, she began rattling the keyboard of her computer at high speed.

“Thank you,” breathed Homer. Rambling down the hall, he found the elevator. The first obstacle had been overcome, if somewhat feebly. The second would be a seven-headed mastiff with a thousand bloodstained teeth.

The door labeled
PATHOLOGY
was wide open. Homer walked in and found a medical technician in a white coat riffling through a file drawer. She turned her head in Homer's direction and raised her eyebrows. With her long golden hair and pink cheeks she didn't look like a mastiff at all, but Homer was wary.

“I'd like to see the report of the toxicologist on the death of Thomas Cobb,” said Homer, trying to sound businesslike and bored, as though the matter were strictly ho-hum.

“Right you are,” said the technician. Briskly she yanked out another file drawer and extracted a folder. But instead of handing it over, she looked at Homer suspiciously. “May I ask your authority for requesting this information?”

Seven doggy heads had sprouted from her shoulders.
Oh Christ
, thought Homer. Whisking out his bag of amulets, he produced his old identity card. True, its magic had been discredited by the Cambridge Police Department, but since then he had encased it in plastic. It looked shiny and new.

Damn the woman, she was holding it under a lamp and examining it closely, while clutching the folder to her breast. When she looked up at him gravely, blood dripped from her seven cavernous jaws. “This card is fifteen years out of date. May I ask if you are still employed by the District Attorney of Middlesex County?”

Little white lies came easily to Homer's lips, but outright falsehoods did not, especially one that could be exposed by a simple phone call. “Well, no, but I've had considerable experience since then in investigative matters. You might have heard of the explosion in Memorial Hall, for example, or the ax attack in Amherst? No? What about the body in Gowing's Swamp? You mean to tell me you never heard of that?” Homer racked his brain for more of his blundering triumphs, while the medical technician looked at him with deep suspicion.

Then victory fell into his hands. It was one of those sudden miracles that are apt to happen in vision quests upon the arrival of angelic visitants.

In this case the angels were a couple of cadavers. One arrived from the east, the other from the west. Their gurneys nearly collided in the corridor. The medics accompanying them at once began arguing about which dead body was to be signed in first. In the confusion the golden-haired guardian of the Pathology office left her post and joined the fracas in the hall.

Left to himself, Homer reached for the autopsy report on the body of Thomas Cobb. Swiftly he leafed through it, and at once found what he was looking for.

The gums of the deceased, explained the toxicologist, showed a significant blue line. His stomach contained a gummy mixture of chocolate, corn syrup, sugar, soybean oil, milk, cocoa powder, malt, lactose, salt, egg white, peanut butter, and a substantial quantity of arsenate of lead.

Homer had found his Holy Grail.

S
arah Bailey was expecting half a dozen of her colleagues for a committee meeting. The costume designer, the music director, the stage manager, the lighting designer, and the sound engineer, they were all coming. They would need chairs to sit on. She raced around the apartment on Maple Avenue, rearranging furniture. She tidied up the sink, swabbed the counter, picked up the books and papers from the floor, swept up the dead leaves under a dying houseplant, and made the bed. Then she dumped the contents of the wastebasket into a plastic bag, and whirled the bag to twist and knot the top. At once she untwisted it again to take a look at the trash.

What were those little brown papers doing in there? They looked like candy wrappers. They
were
candy wrappers.
Tastychox
, the wrappers said. It was that rich, delicious kind of chocolate that Tom Cobb had liked so well.

That was odd. Sarah didn't buy candy and neither did Morgan. Candy, as far as they were concerned, was deadly poison.

CHAPTER 27

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning!

Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid …

Appalachian folk hymn

T
he sun hung sluggishly at the bottom of the analemma. It seemed stuck, as though it would never climb to the pinnacle of June.

On the eighth floor of the Science Center, Arlo checked on his camera, which was still firmly anchored to the floor with duct tape.

He looked at his watch. Did he have time to look for a Christmas present for his mother? She had called yesterday and made it plain that he was not to forget.
Now, dear, don't spend too much money on my present. Oh, I've bought you such a lovely gift!

The trouble was, he didn't have the faintest idea where to start. His mother was a loving and sentimental widow, and Arlo, she said, was her only chick and child. So far, his close acquaintance with the opposite sex had been only with his mother, Cindy the hockey player, and Totty the believer in astral energy. It didn't give him much faith in women. He looked at the pretty girls in his classes, he enjoyed his friendship with Chickie Pickett, and he felt a hunger for sexual intimacy with some woman or other, some time, somehow. He imagined getting married and having children, but—God!—was there a sensible person out there anywhere, somebody to love and admire at the same time?

Now, dear, don't spend too much money on my present!

One of the mirrors that bounced the sun's image onto the observation table flickered, and Arlo glanced up. A face looked back at him for an instant. Oh, well, hell, it was Sarah Bailey. His psyche or aura or innermost spiritual being was judging him, telling him he was falling in love again. What a dumb idea.

Then Arlo forgot his lugubrious analysis of the women in his life as Harley Finch came in and began barging around the room, looking for a book. “Where the hell did I put it?”

“Hey, watch it, Harley, you almost bumped into my camera.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Harley was a big round-shouldered guy with thinning light hair and pop eyes. There were a number of large pale moles on his fat arms. Arlo often thought of him as an emission spectrum with a single bright line, his gift for abstract mathematics. Harley was a theoretician. He had no skill with mechanical things, he knew nothing about art or literature or music or history or the state of world affairs, and yet, oddly enough, he had a firm grasp on departmental politics.

It occurred to Arlo to ask him about the rumor that somebody was about to be fired. “Any more news about shrinkage in the department?”

Harley found his book and headed for the door. He looked embarrassed. “I don't know. They say there'll be an announcement soon.”

He did know, but he wasn't telling
. Arlo guessed the worst.

Oh, God, never mind. He had a class to prepare for, a whole lecture hall full of kids taking Astronomy 1. It was a course for non-science majors, some of whom were so ignorant they didn't know which was farther away, the sun or the moon. Arlo spent much of his time explaining the basic principles of physics.

Today it was Newton's third law,
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
. Arlo snatched up his lecture notes and ran down seven flights to consult with the clever engineers in the Prep Room, who spent their time constructing gadgets for the teaching of any kind of scientific principle. They built contraptions to demonstrate simple things like inclined planes, or complex things like the systems of mirrors and lenses in a telescope.

Today they were providing him with a really funny demonstration, a full-size vehicle that would whiz across the lecture hall, propelled by CO
₂
cartridges.

“Is it ready?” said Arlo.

“You bet.” The mechanical engineer wheeled it forward, grinning with pride. “Here she is, the Isaac Newton Whizbang.”

“That's great,” said Arlo. “Oh, say, that reminds me.” He looked around the Prep Room at the rows of shelves. “Have you guys got any wheels?”

CHAPTER 28

… And a box of my pills, take one tonight and two

in the morning, and swallow the box at dinner time
.

If the box don't cure you, the lid will
.

Traditional British Mummers' Play

“H
omer? This is Sarah. Now, listen, Homer, dear.”

Homer was on his way out the door with a battery charger. His car was dead, and his poor wife was trying to get her own car up the steep icy driveway. Through the window he could see her attack the hill again. No, goddamnit, she was running out of steam halfway up and backing down again. He snarled into the phone, “Well, go ahead, I'm listening.”