Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [135]
Dave followed the body. The highway carnage grew transparent and was replaced by the washroom in Dr. Hightower’s office. The corpse was slumped on the floor. He detached the converter from it and took it back to Helen. Moments later, they returned. Helen had a laptop.
HIS name was Victor Randall. They found pictures of an attractive woman with cropped brown hair seated with him in a porch swing. And two kids. The kids were smiling at the camera, one boy, one girl, both around seven or eight. “Maybe,” Helen said, “when this is over, we can send them a note to explain things.”
“We can’t do that,” Dave said.
“They’ll never know what happened to him.”
“That’s right. And I don’t think there’s any way around it.”
There was also about two hundred cash. Later, he would mail that back to the family. He dragged the body out of the washroom and laid it in the corridor. “Okay, Helen,” he said, “your ball.”
Using penlights, they began an inspection. A half dozen rooms were designated for patients. Dave followed her from offic e to offic e, not really knowing what they were looking for. But Helen did one quick turn down the passageway, stopped in a room at the far end, and pointed at a machine tucked away in a corner. “This is it,” she said. The manufacturer’s label said it was an orthopantomograph. “It’s designed to provide a panoramic X-ray.”
“Panoramic? What’s that?”
“Full mouth. It should be all we’ll need.” The records were maintained in manila folders in an interior office. Helen found Shel’s, thumbed through it, and took out a disk. “Okay,” she said, “we caught a break.”
“What’s that?”
“The results are on individual disks.”
She explained how it worked: The person being X-rayed placed his forehead against this plastic rest and his chin in the cup-shaped support. The camera was located inside the cone over here, which was mounted on a rotating arm. The arm and cone traversed the head, like this, and produced a panoramic image of the teeth. The only problem was that the patient normally stood during the procedure.
“We’ll need six to eight minutes to do it,” said Helen. “During that time we have to keep him absolutely still. Think you can manage it?”
Dave nodded. “I can do it.”
“Okay.” She checked to make sure there was a disk in the machine. “Let’s get him.”
They carried Victor to the X-ray machine. At Helen’s suggestion, they’d brought along some cloth strips, which they now used to secure the body to the device. It was a clumsy business, and the corpse kept sliding away from them. Working in the dark complicated things, but after about ten minutes, they had him in place.
“Something just occurred to me,” Dave said. “Victor Randall already has the head wound.”
Her eyes closed momentarily. “You’re suggesting the arsonist didn’t hit Shel in the head after all. You know, I’m beginning to think it’s going to turn out to be the lightning strike at that.”
A mirror was mounted on the machine directly in front of where the patient’s face would be. Helen pressed a button, and a light went on in the center of the mirror. “They would tell the patient to watch the light,” she said. “That’s how they’re sure they’ve got it lined up.”
“How are we sure?”
“What’s the term? ‘Dead reckoning’?” She punched another button. A motor started, and the cone began to move.
Ten minutes later, they took the disk out, leaving Victor in place until Helen could be sure they had good pictures. She inserted the disk into the laptop, brought up the picture, and handed it to Dave without looking at it. “What do you think?”
The entire mouth, uppers and lowers, was clear. “Looks good to me.”
She took a deep breath. “Plenty of fillings on both sides. Let’s see how it compares.”
They went back to Shel’s folder. “He goes to the dentist every three months,” she said. (Dave couldn’t help noticing she still talked about him in the present tense.) She checked the dates on the disks and removed one. “These are the results of his most recent checkup.” She put it in the computer and brought up a panoramic picture,