The tempting fingers of sleep tugged at Amelia even with the stitched leather of the steering wheel pressing into her cheek. Her body started to relax inch by inch, a nice change from her head spinning from lack of food and sleep. If only she felt calm and safe enough to walk into her house, up to her bed, and flop down under the covers. Soon she would. She’d find a way to hush the worries inside, to put away all of the disappointment, and just go back to normal. Okay, maybe no part of her life was normal right now, but at least she could return to the status quo.
Just as Amelia was about to drift off into a deep sleep, a loud pounding on her driver-side window sucked her back from the quiet comfort nearly encompassing her. She raised her head without opening her eyes, ready to grouse at Ellie for playing a totally immature joke on her, but as she peeked out from behind her heavy eyelids, she didn’t see Ellie laughing at her on the other side of the driver-side glass.
Instead, she saw an angry and agitated Randy.
CHAPTER 27
ELLIE
Wednesday, May 11
4:27 a.m.
What the hell is my problem? Ellie asked herself as she pushed the glowing B button and then stepped back against the scuffed stainless steel walls. She worked with injured, dying, and sometimes dead individuals, but there was still something inside her stomach that wouldn’t stop fluttering at the idea of sneaking into the morgue. It wasn’t just the challenge of getting past security and getting out before Travis showed up with the dead man’s sister. It was also the idea of a room full of people who were alive not too long ago and had families crying for them somewhere. It was a hard reminder that everyone ended up the same way—dead.
When the elevator hit the bottom floor, the butterflies in her stomach flew into her heart and throat. It would be her luck that a guard would be sitting on the other side of the doors and she’d have to use her hastily created excuse about getting lost or something like that. But as the doors opened, nothing was standing on the other side but a dim hallway filled with flickering fluorescent lights. It was like the design team had watched too many horror movies and modeled the morgue after the scene where the serial killer stalked his victim in an abandoned hospital basement.
This was crazy. She was sneaking into the morgue in the same hospital where her sister was on life support, bullet holes in her tender flesh, machines keeping her alive. She should be sitting by her side, holding her hand and watching the monitors for signs of life. But this made her feel like she was actually doing something rather than waiting for the worst. She knew that finding out who shot her sister wouldn’t make the wounds seal up or her eyelids flutter, but it would help the narrative of how, and more important, why, fall into place.
A pair of silver doors stood in front of her, two parallel rectangular windows lined up side by side. Her palms itched to shove them open in one broad, swift move, but, eyeing a well-hidden security camera covered by a glass dome, Ellie considered a more cautious approach. She forced her eyes down and watched her feet peek out from under the hem of her jeans with each step. With a gentle touch, she pushed open only one of the two doors, which opened silently. She’d expected some kind of creak or swoosh, but the silence was more unnerving.
The whole floor seemed abandoned. There was a second hallway with a windowed office on one side and a blank wall on the other. A part of Ellie that knew someone’s sister was going to be in that office in a few hours to identify the body of her brother. Even though she didn’t know this woman and even though her brother may have shot her sister, Ellie’s heart broke for her.
The door to the office butted up next to the giant picture window that revealed a computer with a repeating screensaver that scrolled the words Frampton Memorial Morgue over and over again as though it were a surprise.
The second set of double doors stood in front of Ellie to the left of the office. This was where she finally hesitated. Usually you’d have to check in with the morgue attendant, sign something, and then be escorted into the morgue itself, but today the office was thankfully empty and, honestly, she’d been banking on it. The hospital was notoriously understaffed, especially on the night shift. If they didn’t have enough employees to take care of the living, then there was no way they’d have a full staff taking care of the dead. But just in case, Ellie was prepared with a cockamamie excuse for needing to be in the morgue.
It was too late to turn back now. This time she inched up to the doors instead of stepping boldly. Heart pounding in her ears, Ellie tested the door by pushing with her fingertips. It gave, and she pushed a little harder, this time the door swinging open to a dark, cavernous room. Scales hung from the ceiling, and the ambient light from giant computer screens reflected off the highly polished metal surfaces, including four long silver autopsy tables. The floor was damp, and when she stepped inside, her feet echoed as they slapped against the tile that gently sloped to a drain in the middle of the room. She shivered in the dark and pulled her arms in closer, wiping away rows of goose bumps with her palms.
To her right was a large rectangular window that looked into the same office she’d spied from the hallway. On the left wall were six silver squares that filled the space. She already knew that each went six feet into the wall and they were refrigerated. One of them held a dead man. Well, maybe more than one held a dead man. Ellie hadn’t fully considered the idea of multiple dead people.
With a quick glance over her shoulder, Ellie crossed to the refrigerator doors. She decided to start in the middle and work her way out. Trying not to think too hard, she grabbed the long, narrow handle and pulled. There was a lot of weight behind the latch, and she had to pull harder than she’d expected. The door unsealed with a pop, and she leaned back to get the leverage to swing it open.
Unlike what you’d normally see on TV, the body wasn’t lying there naked, covered by nothing but a sheet. Instead, the deceased was zipped up in a body bag, an identifying tag by the feet. Though hard to decipher in the dim light of the sleeping morgue, it clearly said Female. Ellie slammed the door. These poor people didn’t ask to be in a box in a hospital waiting to be cut open and weighed and measured from the inside out. It seemed worse than those naked dreams where you show up at school feeling pretty sure that it is totally normal you’ve got no clothes on until everyone else points and laughs at your nakedness. What was more exposing and intimate than another human looking through your insides?
Ellie pushed the door closed until the seal swooshed and the latch clicked. Her hand remained on the latch for a moment longer as one tiny part of her brain wondered who this woman may have been and why she was here.
With a step to the right, Ellie put her hand on the next door. This one she opened with less ceremony and yanked hard. The door swung open and her stomach dropped. It was empty. She glanced at her watch; this was taking far too much time. She slammed the door closed, this time without any attempt at silence.