Walkers. Part 7

Breedlove shrugged. "What you see is what you get. Female Caucasian, middle to late fifties. Old appendectomy, more recent gall bladder."

"Will you be doing an autopsy?"

"Got to," said Breedlove. "According to the sheet, there was no doctor in attendance at the time of death."

"I know. She died in a traffic accident."

"That so? Doesn't look very banged up."

"It was her heart or something."

"We'll find out for sure when we go into her," said Breedlove.

"Doesn't the coroner usually handle these?"

"Normally, yes, but they're crying short-handed downtown. Proposition 13, you know. As long as we've got the time and the facilities, I don't mind helping them out now and then."

Dr. Hovde remembered the manila folder under his arm. He took it out and pa.s.sed it to Breedlove. "Here's the police report."

"Thanks." The pathologist scanned the two typewritten pages and shook his head, making a disgusted sound.

"What's the matter?" Hovde asked.

"Just another L.A.P.D. f.u.c.k-up. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"What do you mean?"

"This here report doesn't go with this here cadaver, that's all."

Dr. Hovde felt a p.r.i.c.kling sensation at the back of his neck. "Why do you say that, Kermit?"

The pathologist gave the folder a contemptuous slap with the back of his hand. "According to this, the dead woman here was driving a car in Westwood"- he looked up at the electric wall clock-"just a little over an hour ago."

"So?"

"So, the woman here on the. table has been dead at least twelve and possibly twenty-four hours."

"Are you sure?"

"This is my specialty, Warren, remember? I'll be able to tell more when I cut her open, but just by looking at her I can a.s.sure you she wasn't up and around this afternoon. Feel the epidermis."

Dr. Hovde touched the woman's pale forearm. The flesh was rubbery-firm and cold.

"Under normal conditions," said Breedlove, "a body will retain some of its heat, especially when the weather is warm like today and the body is clothed like this one was, for six to twelve hours. This one is cold as a mackerel." He used his thumb to peel back an eyelid. "Take a look at that."

The woman's eye was dry and l.u.s.terless, with a cloudy film over the cornea.

"If it was only an hour after her death, the fluids would still cover the eyeball, making it glisten," Breedlove said.

"Aren't there other conditions that could account for these things?"

"Maybe. Like I said, I won't know everything until I go into her. I'll tell you another funny thing about this one. Look at her feet."

Dr. Hovde followed the pathologist's pointing finger and saw that Yvonne Carlson's feet and lower legs were discolored a dark purplish-red. Breedlove slipped both hands under the body and expertly flipped it over onto the stomach.

"Now look at her back."

The woman's flesh was unnaturally pale from the neck all the way down to the midpoint of the calves, where the discoloration began.

"She is supposed to have died in a supine position, according to the police report," said Breedlove.

"That's right. She got out of the car after it stalled, took a couple of steps, and fell. n.o.body moved her, and she lay there on her back until the ambulance came."

"And in the ambulance they'd have her strapped down, again on her back."

"That's the procedure."

"And when you saw her she was on her back, likewise when she came down here."

"What are you getting at?"

"If that was the way it really happened, the blood, when the heart stopped and circulation ceased, would have settled into the lowest part of the body. With the body in the supine position, that would be the subcutaneous vessels of the back of the neck first, then the shoulders and the rest of the back. The shoulder blades and b.u.t.tocks, where the skin was compressed by the supporting surface, would have remained free of blood and pale. The stagnant blood would congeal there, giving us the characteristic discoloration. As you can see, the woman's back has no sign of postmortem lividity, but there is advanced lividity in the feet and lower legs."

"Thanks for the lecture," Hovde said drily, "but what does it mean?"

The pathologist ticked off one finger. "It could mean she died by hanging, but as there are no abrasions or discolorations at the throat, and none of the usual signs of asphyxiation, we can eliminate that"

"We know she didn't die by hanging," Hovde said impatiently.

Breedlove ticked off the second finger. "Then we go to another possibility." His eyes twinkled mischievously.

"Get to it, Kermit."

"This woman was walking around for some hours after she was dead."

The pathologist's laughter rang in the tile-walled laboratory. Dr. Hovde stared at him.

"Just having my little joke," Breedlove said.

"Oh, that's funny. That's very funny."

"Look, Warren, if you're going to come down with a case of sensibilities, go on back upstairs and patch up your emergencies. Down here, without some kind of a sense of humor a man would go crazy in a hurry."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry. When are you doing the autopsy?"

"As soon as the husband comes in to I.D. her. Hey, this wasn't somebody you knew, was it?"

"No. I think it might involve somebody I know, though. I'd like to hear what results you get."

"Sure. Give me a call."

Dr. Hovde left the laboratory and walked back up the hall past the refrigerated drawers. They were all closed now. He rode back up in the elevator, and as the temperature warmed he felt as though he were returning to the land of the living.

Things were still quiet in the emergency ward. The young resident was removing a splinter from the foot of a little girl who stared at him with huge adoring eyes.

Dr. Hovde washed his hands and dropped a quarter into the machine for a cup of bitter coffee. He carried it back into the office cubicle and sat down at the desk to think about Mrs. Yvonne Carlson, lying dead on an autopsy table downstairs, and young Joana Raitt, nearly hit by a car seemingly driven by this woman many hours after she died.

Hovde lit a cigarette, holding it down below the window out of habit so no one could look in and see him smoking. He tried to relate the strange automobile accident to the story Joana had told him this morning about the hallucinations she experienced after her near-drowning. Hallucinations, or whatever the h.e.l.l they were. Was there a connection? He concentrated, trying to remember exactly what Joana had told him.

His thoughts were shattered by the ringing of the alarm bell. Two ambulances wailed up to the door with victims of a gasoline-tank-truck explosion on the San Diego Freeway. In the frenzied activity of the next several hours Dr. Hovde put out of his mind the puzzle of Joana Raitt and the dead woman downstairs.

Chapter 9.

Joana awoke on Friday with a vague feeling that ail was not well. Her brain felt sluggish with the residue of troubled dreams. The dreams slipped away as quickly as she tried to remember them. Then the cobwebs cleared and she remembered the unsettling experiences of the last two days. She pushed the images out of her mind and concentrated on immediate tasks.

Out of habit she rolled over to look at the clock. Seven-fifteen exactly. In another five minutes the alarm would beep if she allowed it to. She punched off the alarm b.u.t.ton and switched on the radio. A manic morning disc jockey yammered away nonstop while Joana collected her thoughts.

She reached up and drew back the curtains across the bedroom window. The morning was overcast. It was June, what could you expect? Joana allowed herself five more minutes curled up under the covers, then swung out of bed.

She pulled on a robe and went outside and down the path to where the morning Times lay, folded and tied with string. She carried the paper inside and scanned the headlines. There had been a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, a student riot in Mexico City, and a congressman censured in Was.h.i.+ngton. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Back inside, Joana walked through to the kitchen and plugged in the electric coffeepot. The water and coffee she had measured in the night before. Then she returned to the bedroom, peeled off her robe and pajamas, and got into the shower.

It felt good to get back to the schedule of little things she did every day. The familiar routine was welcome after the violent disruptions of her life in the past forty-eight hours. She looked forward with pleasure to returning to work this morning. The job was interesting and challenging, and Joana was good at it. When her boss moved up, which figured to be in two or three years, she would have a good shot at becoming advertising manager.

She turned off the shower and dried herself vigorously. From her closet she selected a plaid skirt-and-vest outfit and carried the newspaper with her into the kitchen, touching things as she walked past, enjoying the familiar look and feel.

The little house where Joana lived was on Beachwood Drive in a quiet neighborhood above Hollywood. Originally it had been a guest cottage on the grounds of a large estate. The main house had been torn down some years ago to make way for an apartment building, and the guest house was scheduled to follow soon. While she had it, Joana enjoyed the feeling of living in a house that was all her own in an age of apartments. The house was just one room deep, with the rooms set end to end like a train: living room, den, bedroom, kitchen. The place was hard to keep clean and expensive to heat, and the roof leaked in heavy rains, but there were no neighbors to contend with, living just a wall's width away from you. Also, there was a nice spread of lawn out in front with oleanders and palmettos and great jungly ferns that were cared for by the real-estate company that owned the property.

Joana made herself two slices of toast, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down with the Times. She skimmed over the bad news and discarded Section 1 for the sports page. Things were better there. The Dodgers had come up with two runs in the ninth last night to beat the hated Reds in Cincinnati. Way to go.

She poured another cup of coffee and lit her first cigarette of the day. By the end of the day she would have smoked no more than half a pack. Were it not for the self-righteous militancy of the antismoking people, Joana would have given them up completely. She kept to her ten Salems a day as a token rebellion.

Behind her the screen outside the kitchen door rattled. Joana got up and opened the door. Standing outside was a burly black cat with a torn ear. He had been abandoned as a kitten and now lived very well by his wits, mooching food and shelter from the soft-hearted residents of the neighborhood.

"I'm sorry, Bandido, I don't have anything for you this morning."

The cat looked up at her with disbelief in his luminous green eyes.

"Well, let me look, maybe there's a sc.r.a.p of something." She pushed open the screen and the black cat sauntered in. In the refrigerator she found the end piece of a block of cheese, chopped it into bite-size morsels, and put them in a saucer. The cat sniffed at the cheese, poked at it with a paw, and finally ate.

"I'm so glad you approve," Joana said.

She went into the bathroom to put on her makeup, came out and removed the cat from her bed where he was feigning sleep, and left for work.

Another thing Joana liked about her location was * that she had a direct route to the office that involved no freeway driving. She dropped down Vine Street to Santa Monica, then headed west through the tacky part of Beverly Hills to Century City, the island of gleaming high-rise office buildings across from 20th Century-Fox studios. Traffic slowed as she approached her building and the cars funneled into the subterranean parking area. While Joana was stopped for a moment a boy on a skateboard rolled up beside her on the street side. He carried an armload of flowers-red roses and pink carnations-divided into bouquets of twelve and wrapped in tissue, paper.

"Hi, Joana," said the boy. "I didn't see you yesterday. Were you sick?"

"h.e.l.lo, Davy. No, I wasn't sick, I just took the day off."

"That's good." The boy smiled at her, a sweet, childlike smile. He had the body of a rangy fourteen-year-old, but his mind would be forever seven.

"I'm glad you're back," he said. He took a rose from one of the bouquets and handed it to her. "This is for you."

Joana fumbled in her purse while watching for the car ahead of her to start moving.

"You don't have to pay for it," Davy said. "That's just from me."

"Well, thank you very much, Davy. That's awfully nice."

"Ah, that's all right."

A panel truck sped past in the traffic lane just beyond where the boy was standing balanced on his board. Joana winced.

"You worry me, Davy, rolling around on that thing in all this traffic."

"Ah, I'm okay. I can always get out of the way if somebody's coming too close."

"Be careful, anyway."

"I will."

The line of cars began to move and Joana drove on through the cavelike entrance to the underground parking. She inserted her coded parking pa.s.s into a slot and the cross-arm barrier rose to let her car through. She drove down the curving inclines to the second sublevel, where her company kept an area reserved for employees. She got out of the car and sniffed at the rose Davy had given her. Smiling, she promised herself she would buy a bouquet tonight on her way home.

She rode the elevator up to her floor and was welcomed back enthusiastically, although she had been off only one day. The advertising manager had a stack of back-to-school layouts for her to approve, and Joana plunged into the job eagerly.

The hours pa.s.sed quickly and pleasantly enough, yet Joana sensed a growing anxiety. It took a while before she recognized the cause. It was Glen. She had not spoken to him since leaving his apartment yesterday morning, and that exchange had been none too warm. Why, she wondered, hadn't he called?

Yesterday, of course, had been hectic, and even if Glen had called, she was probably not at home. She might have called him last night, but by the time she had gone through her examination with Dr. Hovde, the business with the wild woman driver, and Peter Landau with his Tarot cards, she was exhausted. When she finally got home she had not felt like talking to anybody.

At three o'clock she stopped waiting for a call from Glen and picked up her own phone. She punched the b.u.t.ton for an outside line and dialed his number at Datatron, his company in Torrance. Usually she did not like to call him at work, but it was silly to sit here wanting to hear from him and not doing anything about it.

She reached Glen's secretary, an attractive but noncompet.i.tive redhead she had met a couple of times.

"Hi, Vicki, this is Joana Raitt. Is Glen busy?"

"He hasn't been in the office at all today. He's out calling on subcontractors."

"Oh. Will you give him a message to call me?"

"I'll do it, but he may not come back here."