“Yes.”
“You know the desk where you buy tickets and go through the stiles?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“Third drawer down, under guidebooks with old prices. You’ll find house keys there. I’m really sorry, Katie. And don’t go anywhere alone.”
“It’s all right. Sean is with me,” she said.
“Sure. Sean loves walking around town when the sun is beating down like a mother!” Sean said.
She nudged him with an elbow. “Stop!”
“All right,” Sean told her. “Let’s go get the keys. And walk around some more.”
“We could have taken the car,” Katie said.
“Wonderful. Take the car to drive three blocks here and there-and spend an hour looking for parking.”
Katie laughed. “Bitch, bitch, bitch! David’s house has a driveway. We wouldn’t have had any trouble parking, but we’re not going far! Anyway, walking is good. Let’s go get the keys.”
“Katie? Katie?” David’s voice called to her from the other end of the line.
“I’m here, and as I said, I’m with Sean, and we’re going to go and get the keys to your house. What are you doing-exactly?” she asked.
There was silence for a minute.
Katie waited, but then she thought that she had lost him.
Then he answered.
“Autopsy,” he said briefly. “Be careful, Katie.”
“I’m with my brother. Everything will be fine,” she assured him.
David knew that sometimes people thought of the Keys as being backwoods. Laid-back meant slow.
But the facilities in the Keys were state-of-the-art. The department was small, and like most other agencies in the world, when faced with an anthropological question, human remains might be sent out across the country. But the autopsy facilities were sterling.
David was offered a mask by an assistant.
“Take it,” Liam advised him.
He wasn’t a cop, and so David kept his place in the background and remained silent.
The mask didn’t help much.
Danny’s body had been washed and cooled, but he still barely resembled a human. Gases had exploded through bloated skin and crevices, and his flesh was horribly mottled and discolored.
The medical examiner had a good, clear voice, and he offered facts and figures of the body’s appearance to Liam and two other officers who attended, and to the microphone above his head. He stated that due to lividity, the body was certainly left at an unknown location for some time; blood had pooled to the buttocks, shoulders, back, thighs and calves.
The room was cold, sterile. He could remember similar occasions, but in far less pristine conditions, when he had served in the military.
Land mine, a man’s body all but blown to bits, picking up the pieces.
Unchecked syphilis.
Gunfire straight in the face.
Danny Zigler, more bloated, distorted and discolored than any horror he had seen before.
It wasn’t right.
No, it wasn’t right. And why Danny? He had been a suspect himself, a perfect patsy, just about.
“All right, he died somewhere else,” Liam said, suddenly impatient. “How did he die?”
There was silence. The medical examiner looked at him. “Liam, that’s what I’m trying to determine.”
Still, something about Liam’s words made him change his intended direction. He turned to one of his assistants. “Let’s slide him into X-ray.”
Rearrangements were made. They stared at a computer screen.
“X-ray of the body shows a broken cervix. The neck was broken when he was strangled.”
Sean stared up at the Beckett museum.
Katie looked at her brother, and then the old Victorian mansion.
There was something forlorn about it today. Craig had loved the place. He had believed that he had found a way to preserve a history he loved. He’d been such a good and decent man, and she had really loved him. What was the future for the museum? The oddities museum down the street was already back up and running.
“Hate the place. Hate it,” Sean said, looking at her.
“It’s a beautiful old house,” Katie said.
“You don’t remember everything that happened as clearly as I do,” Sean said. “David had been my friend. Tanya and Sam…they’d been friends. Everything fell apart. Craig Beckett was never the same. David left, the Barnards left.”
“People move on, no matter what,” Katie said.
“Maybe I hate it most because David had been my friend. Did I back away from him?” Sean said.
“We were kids,” she reminded him. She smiled, touching her brother’s shoulder. “Maybe you actually learned from it, and became a stronger person?”
He laughed. “All righty, Katie-oke. Let’s do this thing.”