“This kid here called 911 when he heard me talking to Vicki—get on the radio and find out who’s coming and cancel them, okay? And turn off the light. Guy needs his beauty sleep.”
Michael, at his most wooden, ignored me completely and headed back to the car. Vinnie tried asking for Bobby’s badge number so he could lodge a complaint with the watch commander—“your boss” as he put it—but Bobby put a heavy hand on his shoulder and assured him that everyone had better things to do with their time, and if Vinnie had to be at the office in the morning, maybe it was time he turned back in.
“Well, at least get this woman to stop conducting her business in the front hall in the middle of the night,” Vinnie demanded petulantly as he opened the front door.
“Is that what you do, Vicki?” Bobby asked. “Lose your lease downtown?”
I gritted my teeth but didn’t try to fight it as he took my arm and ushered me down the walk—Mr. Contreras would doubtless be out next with the dog if we stayed any longer.
“Elena,” I said shortly. “She’s come around a few times in the last week. Always after midnight, of course.”
“I haven’t seen her since Tony’s funeral. Didn’t even know whether she was still in town.”
“I wish I hadn’t seen her since then, either. She got burned out of her place last Wednesday—you know that SRO fire near McCormick Place?”
Bobby grunted. “So she came to you. Underneath it all you’re not that different from your folks, I guess.”
That left me speechless for the remainder of the short walk. Bobby opened the back door for me. I waved at Robin and climbed inside.
Michael was sitting in the front seat, John McGonnigal— the sergeant Bobby most preferred to work with—in the back. I said hello to both of them. They kept up an animated conversation about police business all the way to the morgue. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have joined in.
15
At the Rue Morgue
Some practical bureaucrat put the county morgue on the Near West Side, the area with Chicago’s highest murder rate—it saves wear and tear on the meatwagons having to cart corpses only a few short blocks. Even during the day the concrete cube looks like a bunker in the middle of a war zone; at midnight it’s the most depressing place in town.
As we walked up to the sliding metal doors marked “Deliveries,” Furey began a series of morbid one-liners, a kind of defense against his own mortality I suppose, but still unpleasant. At least McGonnigal didn’t join in. I moved out of earshot, into the entryway—a small box of reinforced glass whose inner door was locked. A knot of clerks at the reception counter inside looked me over and went back to an animated conversation. When Bobby materialized behind my left shoulder, the party broke up and someone unlocked the door.
I pushed it open when the buzzer sounded and held it for Bobby and the boys. Furey still wouldn’t look at me, not even when I went out of my way to be superpolite. Last time I’d go to a political fund-raiser with him, that’s for sure.
For the public brought in to identify their nearest and dearest, the county provides a small furnished waiting room—you can even look at a video screen instead of directly at the body. Bobby didn’t think I needed such amenities. He pushed open the double doors to the autopsy room. I followed, trying to walk nonchalantly.
It was a utilitarian room, with sinks and equipment for four pathologists to work at once. In the middle of the night the only person present was an attendant, a middle-aged man in jeans with a green surgical gown thrown loosely around his shoulders. He was hunched over a car-and-track magazine. The Sox were on a seven-inch screen on the chair in front of him. He looked at us indifferently, taking his time to get up when Bobby identified himself and told him what he wanted. He sauntered to the thick double doors leading to the cooler.
Inside were hundreds of bodies arranged in rows. Their torsos were partially draped in black plastic, but the heads were exposed, arcing back, the mouths open in surprise at death. I could feel the blood drain from my brain, I hoped I wasn’t turning green—it would put the cap to my night if I got sick in front of Furey and McGonnigal. At least Furey had shut up, that was one good thing.
The attendant consulted a list in his pocket and went over to one of the bodies. He checked a tag on the foot against his list and prepared to wheel the gurney into the autopsy room.
“That’s okay,” Bobby said easily. “We’ll look at her in here.”
Bobby took me to the gurney and pulled the plastic wrapping away so that the whole body was exposed. Cerise stared up at me. Stripped of clothes, she looked pathetically thin. Her ribs jutted ominously below her breasts; her pregnancy hadn’t yet given any roundness to her sunken stomach. Her carefully beaded braids lay tousled on the table—I stuck a hand out involuntarily to smooth them for her.
Bobby was watching me closely. “You know who she is, don’t you?”