Page 58 of Identity Unknown
“There’s paperwork I need to fill out and sign.” I won’t give in.
“It can wait until later.”
Don’t tell me what to do about him!
“That’s for me to decide.” My heated emotions roll into a slow boil. “We’ll get our stuff, and see you in a few minutes.” I hang up the landline.
Marino and I return to the locker room, and I wash my face. I can’t wait to get out of these clothes and take a shower. Soon, I promise myself.
“I’ve got just what the doctor ordered after a shit day like this.” Marino is cleaning up in the sink next to mine, scrubbing his forearms and hands.
“What might that be?” I grab towels for each of us.
“How about we blow this joint like the old days and go have a drink?” he says.
“The hotel bar won’t be open at this hour.” That’s not the only reason I can’t.
“I keep a stash of Maker’s Mark for emergencies. You know me, Doc. Always prepared.”
“As much as I’d like to, I can’t. I need to be here right now,” I reply as we tuck our rain jackets into our jump-out bags.
“No you don’t. You don’t need to do this at all.” Marino doesn’t hide how stung he feels. “Why the hell do you want to witness something like that? You don’t trust what they’re going to do with his body?”
“I trust them fine. But I’m staying. After that, Benton’s waiting…”
“Have it your way. As for me?” Marino shrugs, his tone resentful on the way to cold. “I’m blowing this damn place, grabbing something to eat, throwing back a few bourbons.”
“You’ve earned it,” I reply, and no matter what I say it doesn’t help.
Leaving the locker room, we find Lucy inside the receiving area waiting by a stairway door that has a biometric lock.
“I’m staying, but no need for Marino,” I tell her.
“Yeah, no need.” He stalks off, his bad mood closing in like overcast.
“I meant that I’ll take care of it.” My voice follows him as he opens the door leading outside.
“What’s eating him?” Lucy watches him leave, the lenses ofher glasses almost clear. “Never mind. Why am I asking after everything he just heard about your relationship with Sal?”
“Nothing about today has been easy for any of us,” I answer diplomatically.
“I know.” Her eyes linger on mine as if she’s about to say something else.
But she doesn’t, and I’m reminded we’re on camera. She scans open the lock of the heavy metal door, and we descend four flights of steep metal-edged steps, our boots loud and echoing in the uneven light. On the lowest level, she opens another steel door. We enter a concrete space no bigger than a single-bay garage, the dank air stale and tasting of dust.
Neon lights flicker overhead, one of the tubular bulbs burned out, a lot of gauzy cobwebs everywhere. I look around at a sink, a freestanding double-glass-doored cabinet filled with old bottles of embalming fluid and other chemicals. A large rusting drain is in the middle of the brick floor, an old black rubber hose sloppily coiled next to a fifty-five-gallon metal drum of formaldehyde.
I associate the small dissection table with veterinary necropsies. The zinc top can be tilted on the wooden base, the gears rusty.
“What exactly went on down here?” I ask.
“It’s where the pathologists and others conducted certain examinations,” Lucy says.
“That much I can deduce.”
“For the most part, we’re talking about long before my time.”
“I can deduce that, too,” I reply as she artfully dodges the question.