Dead Ringer: Chapter Eighteen

Link to Chapter Seventeen.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I called Mark’s office and cell on the way over but still got his answering machine and voicemail. So it was not a surprise when I got to the bungalow and banged on his front door with no response, and after all, it was mid-afternoon. He could be having a late lunch somewhere. I couldn’t help feeling he was avoiding me, though.

I peeked in through the windows because of course I did. All dark inside. I peered up and down the street and walked around the side of the house. His Saab was nowhere in sight.

No matter. I’d track down Weston myself. The months of training, if you could call it that, had at least taught me one thing — don’t give up. There’s always a way to figure things out. As Mark had instructed, “Just be the stubborn little cuss you are. That ought to do it.”

At home, I made a cup of chamomile tea and sat myself down over an air conditioning vent while I drew up a short list of who could help me track down Weston Roper before he zipped out of town. Not one bone in my body accepted Rachel’s death as due to natural causes.

First I called Chad Miller.

“Hey, Chad, this is Blainey Blair. Do you by any chance have a number for Weston Roper, or know how I can get in touch with him?”

“You’re kidding, right?” The vitriol in his voice stunned me for a moment.

“I’m not kidding. I’d hoped to speak with him before he left town.”

“Go to hell,” he said, and the slam of the receiver rattled into my eardrum.

“Ouch,” I said to the empty room, and “Jesus, what was that about?” I mean, we weren’t BFFs or anything, but he’d always been at least professionally cordial. Something had apparently shifted. But what?

I steeled myself for the next call, to Lamar Gustafson, because why not get hung up on twice? The receptionist on duty at WindDancer clearly was not aware that he wouldn’t want to speak with me, so she put me right through.

“You’ve got one hell of a nerve,” he hissed into the phone. “Rachel Roper is most likely deceased because of you. Mr. Roper is utterly heartsick at the loss of his dear sister. Under no circumstances will I ever provide you with any means of contact for him, nor will I provide any details as to his whereabouts. Shame on you.”

“A simple no would have sufficed, Lamar,” but I hung up before he laid any more guilt on me.

Now what? I sat and thought a minute, then Evil Blainey had an idea.

I picked up the phone and dialed again. The same receptionist answered. “WindDancer. How may I direct your call?”

Putting on my heaviest North Carolina accent, I honeyed, “Hey, there, this is Lucille Davis, secretary over at Living Waters Church? And I’m callin’ on behalf of our pastor? He’s wonderin’ if y’all can share the name of the funeral home y’all use? Last funeral he did, there was some mix-up with the bodies and Pastor says now he wouldn’t trust those people with his cat. He asked if I could check with y’all.” I lowered my voice to a high whisper. “He told me one of his friend’s boys stayed there for his, you know, problem, and said it was real nice, said y’all were real good people.”

“Of course,” she said after a pause. “Let me get that information for you.” She put me on hold leaving me to grind my teeth to “The Wind Beneath My Wings” in my ears. It seemed like she’d been gone a long time, and I started to worry that I’d laid it on too thick, but then her voice came back on the line.

“Sorry for the wait,” she said. “Here it is. It’s Eden’s Grove, over off 64.” She read the address, followed by the phone number and the name of the funeral director and owner, Sam Eden.

“That’s perfect!” I said. “I thank you! Pastor thanks you!”

“You’re more than welcome,” she said.

There are times when I scare myself a little.

I called Eden’s Grove to see if there was any information about the arrangements for a Rachel Roper. I said I was Mr. Roper’s secretary, following up for him. The receptionist told me she had no record of a Rachel Roper. I asked to speak with Mr. Eden. She said he was unavailable. I asked to speak to another one of the directors, and she put me through to him. He’d never heard of Rachel, either.

Shit, shit, shit.

I got out the Yellow Pages and started rifling through, looking for the funeral homes I knew were the most expensive, the ones peddling the mahogany and copper and gold-plated coffins, and called every one of them. There were six in all. Not one of them seemed to have heard of Rachel Roper.

None of it made any sense. Whether the body would be cremated or prepared for burial, it had to be somewhere.

Unless.

My mind whirled. What if there was going to be an autopsy after all?

I called the Chief Medical Examiner’s office and got a frosty reception from a woman who clearly hated her job. Even though her voice said, “I don’t have time for this crap,” when I asked her where the M.E. would do an autopsy, she answered, “It’s a system, not just one person. This isn’t TV.”

“Ah, okay,” I said. “I obviously don’t know how this works.”

She sighed. “Each county has their own appointed medical examiner. Then the Chief M.E. can also appoint qualified pathologists as assistant M.E.s.” It sounded like she was reading off a card. I briefly felt sorry for her.

“And are the autopsies done there?” I imagined her in a long, echoing hallway that smelled faintly of formaldehyde and flickered with dying fluorescent lights.

“Not right now. We’re undergoing a major renovation. The Chief has designated some Regional Autopsy Centers at area hospitals.”

“I don’t suppose there are any designated centers in Brady,” I said, laughing.

“Sure,” she said.

“Really? Where?”

“St. Regis is our newest one.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. “Thanks!” I very nearly shouted as I hung up. Mysterious ways, and all that. I grabbed my keys and tote bag and headed back to the the hospital.

At St. Regis, I rode alone down to the basement, to pathology and the morgue. I’d been down here before, once as part of staff orientation after I’d been hired as a chaplain and again with a grieving wife who’d insisted on seeing where her husband’s body had been brought after his sudden death in the Cardiac Care Unit.

It was quiet down here, and cold. The stark white walls repeated my footsteps back to me. No one was in the front office. On the secretary’s desk was a small vase holding a few plastic daffodils badly in need of dusting, a telephone that may or may not have been plugged into a jack, and a small notepad with the complicated name of some drug printed in blue lettering at the top.

The door was open to the long hallway I knew led to the morgue. I called out, “Hello?” and took a few steps forward. Maybe no one was here. But what was my plan anyway? To saunter into the morgue and check all the bodies? I shook my head to rid myself of the image.

“Hello?” I called out again.

From somewhere down the hall I heard movement, and in the next moments I could make out the form of a slight man walking toward me, slowed by his obvious need for the cane in his right hand. The smell of cigarette smoke hit well before he arrived to stand in front of me. I guessed him to be early fifties, with curly salt and pepper hair, patchy three-day stubble, and sharp, gray-green eyes. A black skull cap sat on his head, with “Question Authority” stitched in bright yellow letters on the front. In his pierced left ear lobe was a silver ankh stud earring. He wore green scrubs, so he looked like a doctor, but on his feet were faded huarache sandals. Definitely not protocol.

He looked me up and down and squinted at my ID badge. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, with a mean little smirk that was tempered by the twinkle in his eye, “and what the hell do you want?” God help me. I liked him right away.

“Who the hell are you?” I said, laughing, and I sort of wished I could give him a little shove, but we weren’t on those terms yet.

“Will Keating,” he said. “Pathologist. Your turn.”

“Blainey Blair. Chaplain.”

He bobbed his head up and down. “Sure, sure. Chaplain,” he said, emphasizing the word.

“Yup. That’s me.”

“Listen, don’t come down here peddling any of that religious bullshit to me.”

“Not my intent.”

“Ah,” he said. “So what is your intent? What brings you to our lovely office here in the catacombs?” He gestured around him with an open hand as if we were in a showroom with gleaming new cars.

I forgot to play it cool and craned my neck to look past him down the hallway.

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

“Actually, I am.”

He leaned forward and frowned. “And now I am interested.” His lips twitched ever so slightly.

With little hope of actually getting any information out of him, I gave a brief non-specific explanation of my connection to a deceased woman, her mention of a missing relative, and my concerns for her well-being, leaving me to wonder about the manner of her death.

“Oh, you mean Rachel Roper,” he said.

I stood with my mouth hanging so far open that Will reached out and chucked my chin to shut it for me. “Yeah, I’m getting ready to do the autopsy right now.”

“How…” I started but couldn’t find any more words.

“Those smarmy quacks at WindDancer couldn’t get the death certificate printed fast enough. Somebody fucked up there bad, pardon my French, and they damn well knew it.”

“But how…” I tried again.

“Her brother,” he said. “He was convinced there was more to the story. He called the M.E.’s office and they called me.”

“So, he’s still in town?”

“Of course,” he said. “Are you an idiot? He believes someone killed his sister. He’s not going anywhere.”

“And what do you think?”

“Ma’am, I just got here. Do you mind if I have a cigarette first?”

“Uh, you’re not really supposed to do that…” but without taking his eyes from me, he pulled a silver lighter out of one pocket and a pack of Kools out of the other and lit up as I was speaking, then took a long drag and blew the smoke in my face. Goddammit, but I liked him a lot.

“Okay, smartass, how can I get in touch with Weston?”

“You definitely should go talk to him. He’s in Room 518 at the Marriott out near Research Triangle Park,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”

Apparently, I was destined to spend my day going up and down in elevators. I rode to the Marriott’s fifth floor next to a young woman with a tear-streaked face. She wore a tan jacket and skirt and carried a brown leather briefcase, and every so often she gave a wet sniff. I fished in my tote and handed her a tissue.

“Thanks,” she said without looking at me. She got off on the third floor, and as the doors slid shut, I heard her muttering, “Those jerks. Those goddamn jerks.”

Arriving at the fifth floor, I stepped out still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing — that according to Will Keating, Weston had insisted on the autopsy, that the world’s most peculiar pathologist was performing it, that said pathologist had breezily committed about a dozen HIPAA violations and then handed over Weston’s whereabouts without any questions whatsoever. Everything felt too weird, too easy, like I was feeling my way along blindfolded while a room full of people watched from the other side of a large window.

Walking down the long, carpeted hotel hallway, I passed a teenaged boy in swim trunks with a towel slung over one shoulder who stared at the floor as he walked by. Room 518 was second from the end on the left. I stopped in front of the door to gather myself. I had no idea what I was going to say.

From inside the room I heard voices, what sounded like two men talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Taking a deep breath, I muttered, “Here goes,” and knocked three times. There was silence for a moment, and then a rustling as someone moved toward the heavy door, then it swung open, and there stood Weston Roper.

Behind him in the middle of the room gaping back at me was Mark.

Chapter Nineteen.