The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [31]
Not so Nancy. She drove on, obeying the speed limit, her hands tight on the wheel, all but convinced that blue lights would appear suddenly in the rearview mirror. She was as apprehensive now as she’d been adrenalized by similar events a careless year or two earlier.
She had no idea how much longer she could keep denying the change in herself.
Chapter 7
In isolation, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Burlington was a relative jewel—clean, modern, well laid out—especially considering that when Joe Gunther first visited it years ago, he’d used a dentist’s parking lot off Colchester Avenue and climbed an exterior staircase to what had once been an apartment. Needless to say, no autopsies were conducted on site in those days.
In fact, the only drawback for the denizens of these new digs was that they were no longer housed in isolation, but in the middle of the totally revamped Fletcher Allen Medical Center—just like Jonah’s erstwhile home inside the whale. This construction project was taking years to build, costing a bundle over original estimates, and had already resulted in the jailing of some of the honchos involved. An example of thrifty, practical, hard-bargaining Vermont this new hospital was not.
Every time Joe came to visit, he resigned himself to negotiating a whole new labyrinth of garages, hallways, and elevator banks that appeared to be in perpetual redesign, aided in his journey only by an ever-shifting Scotch-taped trail of paper signs discreetly labeled OCME. Stepping inside the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had become like surviving a miniature odyssey.
Suzanne Webb, the unit’s medical records specialist, rose from her desk as Joe closed the door behind him, and crossed over to give him a hug. She had been there for years and knew the workings of the office inside and out. She was always the first person Joe contacted when checking the psychological temperature of the waters.
He kissed her cheek as she said, “A miracle of timing. Five more minutes and the place would’ve been empty. To what do we owe the pleasure, Joe? Haven’t seen you in forever.”
“You probably know more than I do about why I’m here, Suzanne,” he said, stepping back. “I’m hoping to see the chief—I figured this would be saner than earlier in the day. My last phone conversation with her was downright weird.”
She looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone in what functioned as a catchall central office. When she turned back, her expression was glum. “It’s Freeman, our boss of bosses. It’s like he’s found religion or something. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, he’s been hassling us for every last thing, from procedures and tox panels to how many paper clips we order.”
Joe knew of Floyd Freeman, who oversaw Hillstrom in the arcane bureaucratic structure that supposedly sheltered her office. The man was a political appointee of the governor’s but, more tellingly, had been a candidate a few years back for that office himself. He and Hillstrom had never been friendly, but there seemed to have been at least some unwritten agreement between them to stay clear of each other. The OCME, after all, was the smallest of his responsibilities and by its nature not an entity that attracted much attention.
“Where is she?” Joe asked Suzanne.
She gestured with her thumb through the nearest wall. “In her home away from home.”
He knew what that meant, since it marked another trait he and Hillstrom both shared. When they were under the gun, they didn’t reach for the bottle or take vacation time. They went to work.
“It’s late for that, isn’t it? Don’t you guys usually do procedures in the morning?”
Suzanne merely smiled and rolled her eyes.
It was enough. He’d been right. He squeezed her hand. “Thanks. Wish me luck.”
He left the office, turned the corner, and walked down a short, wide hallway, skirting a large floor-embedded scale of the kind he’d seen in fancy veterinary clinics, used here to weigh bodies as they arrived