Either Sal had succeeded in getting the reservoir out or someone else had. Maybe that was the reason Clayton had been down in the morgue the day George had seen him? Or perhaps more likely, could it have been the reservoir that the suits had been searching for in Sal’s apartment the night before.
After putting Sal’s clothes back in a semblance to the way they had been, George was starting to close the coffin when there was a piercing scream. In a panic he dropped the lid and spun to the voice. The scream had come from one of the women he’d seen in the funeral director’s office. She was standing in the doorway with a hand clasped to her mouth in horror. The horror quickly turned to outrage.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing!” she demanded.
The other sister and the funeral director appeared right behind her.
“He opened the casket!” the first sister yelled, pointing a bony gloved finger in George’s direction.
“This is a closed-casket ceremony, sir!” the funeral director bellowed.
“I… I know,” George stammered. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see if—”
“Look at his gloves!”
A gasp escaped the second sister. “Pervert!”
“No! I’m sorry! It’s not…” It’s not what? He didn’t know where to begin. Then the hulking giant appeared behind the three.
In a panic, George scanned his options. The double doors through which he’d entered were blocked by the four outraged but stunned people, but there was a second door that thankfully wasn’t locked. George bolted for it and found himself in a second, empty viewing room. Through that room he returned to the main corridor, only deeper into the funeral home and farther from the front entrance.
Running the length of the hallway and passing the funeral director’s office, he burst through one of the doors labeled STAFF ONLY. He skidded to a stop. He was in a tiled embalming room, which contained several metal worktables, one of which was occupied by another marble-colored naked corpse being worked on by a startled man in a large apron. The man was holding an embalming trocar, and in the corner a suction machine was loudly chugging away. George looked about wildly for an exit. He spotted one and bolted for it.
Outside, George could hear yelling as he sprinted around the building toward his car.
A moment later George was in his car, getting the engine going as the elderly women and funeral director piled out the front door, yelling for him to stop. George eyed them in his rearview mirror as he quickly backed up. He was just about to pull away into traffic when a massive hand slapped the driver’s-side window. It was the hulk. Where the hell did he come from? The man leaned down and stuck his angry, red face up against the window, screaming at George to get out of the car.
George stepped on the gas, swerving his Jeep into an opening in the lane of traffic. In the rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of the hulk shaking his fist at him.
After a few blocks George slowed down, blending into the holiday traffic. That was close! As his breathing returned to normal, he started to think about the reservoir. He was more convinced than ever it was the key.
With sudden resolve, George pulled out his phone and located the nearest Los Angeles police station. It was the West L.A. Community Police Station on Butler Avenue. George turned at the next corner and headed in that direction.
As George wiped the sweat from his brow, a couple of police cruisers with their sirens blaring sped by him, luckily heading in the opposite direction. He wondered if they were on their way to Carter’s Funeral Home. What if surveillance cameras had caught his face or, worse, recorded George’s violation of the corpse. Was what he had done considered a crime? He didn’t know. What he did know was that regardless of whether it was a crime or not, if his actions became public knowledge, it wasn’t going to make him any friends at the medical center, especially with the conservative hierarchy of the radiology department.
35
Clayton pulled up to the gate blocking Thorn’s driveway. Envy crept over him every time he visited his sister and Thorn at their home. Clayton needed his own security gate to keep the likes of Debbie Waters from coming to his front door uninvited. Besides, he deserved to have a security gate. In L.A. it was a must-have status symbol.
The doctor pressed the intercom button and announced himself to a member of Thorn’s staff. The gate glided back, and Clayton drove up the tree-lined drive. Thorn had finally returned Clayton’s call, but when Clayton started to talk about George Wilson, Thorn had cut him off, telling him that he would prefer to speak in person rather than over Clayton’s cell phone. Clayton agreed to drive the short distance from Bel Air to Beverly Hills.
Thorn’s massive house was a Spanish Mediterranean revival, a style currently the vogue in Southern California.
Clayton was escorted to the pool, where Thorn was waiting with drinks. As soon as the staff withdrew, Clayton laid it on the line: “I’m afraid Dr. George Wilson is threatening to become a big problem.”
“That’s not good. Have you spoken with him directly?”
“No, but it came from a good source. She says he is convinced something serious is wrong with iDoc and supposedly is on a mission to prove it.”
“That’s worse than not good. That’s fucking terrible.” Thorn pulled himself out of his chair and began to pace.
Clayton watched him. He could tell Thorn was mulling over options. Clayton waited.
Suddenly Thorn sat back down. “Any idea what this resident plans to do?”
“He’s not letting sleeping dogs lie, that’s for sure. He is not buying the suicide story. Unfortunately he’s become fixated on the implanted drug reservoir, and if I had to guess, I think he either suspects now that Amalgamated Healthcare via iDoc is culpable in DeAngelis’s death, or he will shortly. My source said he was off to DeAngelis’s funeral service with a pair of surgical gloves.”
“But you are sure he is not going to find anything?”
“Positive. The reservoir was not in DeAngelis’s body. I checked myself, at Langley’s request.”
“At least we have that going for us,” Thorn said. He nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he added, obviously upset at Clayton’s news. “I was hoping that it wasn’t going to come to this, but it is time to hand the situation over to the professionals.”
“What do you mean by ‘professionals’?”
“In-house professionals. I’ll turn the situation over to Amalgamated’s security department. I’ve been paying Thorton Gauthier and his people a king’s ransom for their experience and expertise. Here’s the opportunity for them to earn it.”
Thorn had hired “Butch” Gauthier two years previously when he took over the company from his father. The nickname Butch came from Gauthier’s hairstyle, a buzzed flattop that was close-cropped along the sides. Thorn had heard about Gauthier through a golfing buddy who bragged about the ex — special ops, ex-mercenary turned corporate protector and how he got the job done no matter what. Thorn loved that Gauthier ran Amalgamated’s security like a paramilitary group. It was the kind of raw-power, show-of-force mentality that made Thorn sleep better, knowing that just about any eventuality could be handled.
“What do you think Butch might do?” Clayton was growing concerned. He knew Gauthier’s reputation. Clayton began to worry about what he had unleashed upon poor George Wilson. Then he remembered his stock options. Good radiology residents weren’t hard to find. It was all a matter of priorities.