THREE TIMES A LADY (18 page)

And maybe that Publisher’s Clearinghouse letter stuck in her mailbox back home had a cashable check inside with her name on it.

Dana shook her head and tried to reason things through.  Wasn’t easy.  In all likelihood, she knew that somebody had probably just been playing a game with her by attaching the picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring, having a mean-spirited laugh at her expense.  Law-enforcement types were notorious for their macabre senses of humour, weren’t they?  Of course they were.  There was a time-honoured tradition in the field of hazing your fellow cops with all the subtlety of drunken frat boys at a keg party.  It was just part of the deal, the nature of the beast.  Always had been and always would be. 

Then again, maybe somebody had been deadly serious about the whole thing.  Only one way to find out. 

Pity it had to be through a man who detested Dana’s guts as much as Johnson did.

Johnson opened up the door to his office before Dana even had a chance to knock.  Somebody must have called the head coroner to alert him to the fact that a Cleveland cop and an FBI agent had just strolled through the front doors of his building. 

Johnson barely looked at Dana and shifted his gaze immediately to Templeton.  ‘Come with me,’ he said.  ‘I know what you’re here for.’

Brushing past them, Johnson led Dana and Templeton down the hall to the main autopsy room thirty feet away.  Ever the gentleman, he opened the door and went in first.  Dana entered next, with Templeton bringing up the rear. 

The sickly-sweet smell of formaldehyde filled Dana’s nostrils as she entered the room, tickling the tiny hairs lining the inside of her nose and making her want to sneeze.  From the corner of her left eye, she watched Templeton wrinkle up his own nose against the offending odour, and she didn’t blame him one little bit.  The entire space stank of
death
.

The autopsy room itself was a cold, sterile place, filled with refrigerated drawers were used for storing the dead bodies.  Dana had seen a lot of horrible things over the course of her fourteen-year career with the FBI, but for some reason or another the stark sight of Christian Manhoff’s naked and bloated body lying dead on a shiny metal slab twenty feet away suddenly made her want to cry.

Was this where life ended up?
she wondered. 
Whether you lived it the right way or the wrong way?  Whether you lived it with love in your heart or with your heart filled with hate?  Was this the end waiting for
all
of them?  Her?  Johnson?  Templeton?

Dana closed her eyes and tried not to think about the fact that Crawford Bell and Eric Carlton had laid on tables just like these recently, in this very same room.  Maybe even the
same
table.  Not to mention her poor mother and father.  Whatever most people’s faults might be – and Dana knew that everybody had their fair share – she also knew that the vast majority of human beings deserved a fate far better than this.  Deserved to be kept warm and safe and loved.  Deserved better than having someone like Dr Phillip Johnson clinically poking at them and prodding at them and slicing open their sternums to find out just how much their hearts and spleens and livers might weigh.

‘Could you bring us up to speed on what you found out with Christian Manhoff, Dr Johnson?’ Dana asked, wanting to break the heavy silence in the room.  She needed conversation in the air right now – even if that conversation was with a man who despised her as much as Johnson did.  Needed some sign of life amidst all this death.  Needed to escape the haunting thoughts still floating around inside her brain and threatening to suck her down into the black hole of a clinical depression.

Johnson bristled, obviously irritated at the prospect of having to explain his exact, complicated science to an ignorant layperson such as Dana.  ‘Not sure what exactly there is to bring you up to speed on, Agent Whitestone,’ he said gruffly.  He shook his head in thinly veiled annoyance.  ‘Someone shoved a large rawhide bone down Christian Manhoff’s throat and he choked to death on it.  There isn’t much more to it than that.’

Dana eyed Manhoff’s naked body.  ‘You didn’t cut him open,’ she observed, a sharp stab of irritation slicing hard through her chest at the nine-millionth example of Johnson’s incompetence.  ‘There could be some evidence
inside
him, you know.’

Dana pressed her lips together while she waited for the coroner’s reply.  The comment had been made to remind Johnson of the fact that he’d failed to fully autopsy the little girls in the Cleveland Slasher case the first time around – a mistake that had set back the investigation by at least three months by delaying the discovery of the plastic letters shoved inside the little girls’ uteruses.  To remind Johnson of the fact that his
carelessness
had cost innocent people their lives.  Had cost innocent
children
their lives.

‘I’m doing it tonight,’ Johnson said, clearly making up the lie right there on the spot.  If nothing else, thirty years on the job had obviously taught him very well how to deal with people like Dana – people who seemed to exist for no other reason than to make his life more complicated.  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning and let you know if I find anything interesting, but I highly doubt I will.  To me, this death looks like somebody was in a big hurry.  I wouldn’t count on finding any clever clues in this one.’

Dana nodded but also made a mental note to call the state medical board on Johnson.  Enough was enough with this asshole already.  There was no way in hell he should be allowed to continue operating in the slipshod manner he did.  It just wasn’t fair to the victims or their families.  ‘Great,’ Dana said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but not quite accomplishing the feat.  ‘I really hate to bother you any further, Dr Johnson, but is there be any way at all that I could also get a list of all the people who’ve worked here in the past three years?  Including cleaning staff and maintenance workers?  I’ll need their names, addresses and Social Security numbers.  Also, any background information you might have on file would be extremely helpful.  I want to find out if anyone who’s worked here – either now or in the past – might have had a reason to attach the photograph of my brother to Christian Manhoff’s body.’

Johnson waved a thin arm in the air, showcasing thick veins that pulsed like fat blue snakes in the back of his skeletal left hand.  ‘I’ll have Nancy Lawson in human resources compile a list for you,’ he said.  ‘You can pick it up from the receptionist at the front desk tomorrow morning.’ 

Johnson paused.  ‘Will there be anything else you require of me, Agent Whitestone?  As always, I’m at your complete and utter disposal.’

Dana shook her head, annoyed by Johnson’s flippant tone but knowing there wasn’t anything she could do about it right now.  ‘Nope,’ she said in a clipped tone that matched the coroner’s perfectly.  ‘That should just about cover it for the time being.  Thank you so much for your help, Doctor.  I really appreciate it.  And I’ll let you know if and when I need something else from you, so please keep that in mind.  Is your cellphone number still the same?’

Johnson worked his lips into a dull, gray smile, his worn-down teeth set into a crooked pink gum-line like concrete tombstones in an unkempt graveyard.  ‘Sure is, Agent Whitestone.  As a matter of fact, I even have you programmed into my contacts list.  How about that for a nice surprise?  Always happy to get a call from you.’

Just then, as if on cue, Gary Templeton’s
own
cellphone rang in his pocket.  The Cleveland cop dug it out and placed the receiver to his ear.  After a moment or two, he turned down the corners of his mouth.

Templeton flipped shut his cellphone and put it back into his pocket.  ‘I’ve got to run, Dana,’ he said, shaking his head and checking his watch.  ‘There’s been an armed robbery over at the Fifth Third Bank on Ontario Avenue.  A squad car is coming to pick me up now.  Chief says it’s an all-hands-on-deck type of thing.  Will you be OK getting on with this on your own?  I’ll call you tomorrow morning and touch base with you to see what you’ve found out.’

Dana smiled; enjoying the feeling of knowing someone was watching her back.  The same feeling she’d had while she’d been working with Jeremy Brown.  ‘Absolutely, Gary,’ she said, making yet another mental note, this time to call Bill Krugman down in Washington, DC, and check up on his wife’s medical condition just as soon as she got back to her car.  She needed to hear the Director’s voice right now, to know that he and Marie were OK.  Because along with Templeton, the Krugmans were just about the only people Dana had left in her life any more, and she needed to guard them with all the zeal of a mama bear protecting her cubs.  ‘I’ll talk with you tomorrow morning.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll be just fine.’

Templeton nodded and said his goodbyes to Johnson.  Dana smiled again as she watched him walked away.  Still, had she’d known then just how far off the mark she’d been with her statement about being just fine, she never would’ve left the coroner’s office alone in the first place.

Then again, if hopes and wishes were loaves and fishes, she’d never go hungry again.

Out in the lobby of the coroner’s office, Dana asked the woman seated behind the front desk where she might find Nancy Lawson, the human-resources person Johnson had said could compile a list of employees for her. 

It was a long shot and it would take a ton of time and energy to run through background checks on all the workers at the coroner’s office – both past and present – but Dana hoped she could talk Templeton into getting some of his underlings at the Cleveland PD to do most of the legwork.  And
fast
.  Every last second counted here, and Dana was already hopelessly behind schedule as it was.  Most investigative leads that didn’t turn into cold-case files were usually developed within forty-eight hours after a crime had been committed – something known to even the most casual of television viewers.  And the stopwatch on
that
magic number had already expired two days ago.  So, once again, just as had been the case during so many other investigations during her career, Dana found herself playing catch-up with her quarry.  And the kicker about the whole thing was that she still didn’t have the foggiest clue in the world of who her quarry even
was
at this point.

‘You found her,’ the woman behind the desk said in response to Dana’s inquiry.  Delicately pretty and somewhere in her mid-fifties, she wore small gold hoop earrings and a smart-looking blue blazer that matched perfectly with the soft colour of her eyes.  ‘I’m Nancy Lawson.  How may I help you?’

Dana flipped open her badge; feeling tragically underdressed in her leather bomber jacket.  ‘I’m Dana Whitestone,’ she said.  ‘I’m with the FBI.  Dr Johnson said he’s going to ask you to put together a list of past and present employees for me, but I wanted to ask you about something else.’

Dana jerked her head up at a small camera mounted in a corner near the ceiling where two walls met.  The camera had been trained on the front doors to capture on videotape everyone who entered and exited the building.  A silent watcher completely incapable of lying.  ‘How many of those things do you have around here?’ Dana asked.

Lawson turned and looked up at the camera.  ‘Well, they’re all over the place,’ she said, turning back in her seat again to face Dana.  ‘To tell you the truth, they sort of creep me out.  I can’t help but feeling like Big Brother is watching me all the time.  George Orwell was right when he wrote that crazy book of his, wasn’t he?  Uncle Sam, Big Brother – what’s the difference?’

‘Is there a camera in the autopsy room?’ Dana asked, wanting to speed along the conversation and avoid any unnecessary small talk.  She didn’t want to seem rude, but neither did she want to waste any more time here.  She was in a race against the clock and the clock was already kicking her ass in a big way.  As she’d noted earlier, every last second counted in this case, so she couldn’t afford to waste even a single one of them.  It might very well turn out to be the difference between someone’s continued life and their horribly painful death.  ‘I didn’t notice a camera when I was in there,’ Dana went on.

Lawson nodded.  ‘Yep.  Actually, they just put a new camera in the autopsy room not too long ago, if memory serves.  Some sort of improved version, I guess.’ 

Dana lifted her eyebrows. 
Bingo.
  Things were looking up for her already. 

‘They did it over the Thanksgiving holiday,’ Lawson went on.  ‘They’ve got the new camera hidden pretty well in there, though.  I suppose they didn’t want the families to notice it when they come in to identify the bodies of their deceased relatives.’

Dana nodded.  Made sense.  God knew
she
wouldn’t have wanted to know her loved ones had been taped after death, either.  Not to mention how
much
tape they must have used in her case, considering all the many loved ones she’d lost in her life.  How many loved ones she’d lost
recently
. 

‘So are
all
the autopsy procedures videotaped?’ Dana asked.

Lawson moved a pile of papers on her desk to one side and nodded.  ‘Yep.  Sure are.  There was a big lawsuit brought a couple of years ago by a family that contended their grandfather’s body had been mistreated.  Cost the city four million bucks by the time everything was said and done, so I guess the big-wigs downtown finally got the message and wanted to cover their asses.’