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"You don't have to do this."
Kara stared at Rob. He had changed considerably since she'd last seen him a decade ago. His mustache was gone, but that was minor. He was slightly heavier, and he looked older, but his face wasn't aged so much as lined. He looked worn. Like someone steering along the edge of burn-out. Maybe that was what a dozen years as a New York City cop did to you. At least that was what it seemed to have done to Rob.
But his brown eyes were still bright and clear, and even here in the City Morgue he still exuded the same physical presence that had attracted her way back when.
At first she'd been hesitant about his coming here, feeling it was an intrusion on her grief. But when he'd opened the lobby door for her, some of the old feelings had rushed back. It was good to see him. And it was a comfort to find a familiar face in these indifferent surroundings, especially when it belonged to someone who knew his way around and could cut through much of the red tape.
"Don't you usually have to have someone identify the body?" Kara said.
"Kelly's supervisor from St. Vincent's did that yesterday. Plus we've got a perfect print match." He glanced away. "Besides… it's not pretty."
A burst of resentment shot through her.
"I didn't expect it to be pretty," she said coldly.
Rob didn't back down.
"She's a mess, Kara. And she's been posted."
"Posted?"
"Autopsied."
I know! I know! Stop reminding me!
"I. Want. To. See. Her." Kara said slowly. She was not going to back down either. "She's my sister."
She realized she'd used the present tense. She'd probably continue doing that until she'd actually seen Kelly's dead face. She didn't want to see a dead Kelly. Oh, God, she'd give anything not to have to do this. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed just to come here. Part of her wanted to run screaming from the building, from this awful city, and take the next train back to Pennsylvania. But she knew that another larger part of her would never accept her sister's death without actually seeing her lifeless body.
Rob's mouth settled into a tight thin line.
"Okay. But I warned you."
Kara held her breath as she followed him down the fluorescent-lit hall, lined with gurneys, some empty, some not. White sheets covered the latter. She kept her eyes down and counted the drains evenly placed in the concrete floor. He led her through a set of steel double doors into a room where a gaunt young black man who couldn't have been much older than twenty sat at a small desk with a styrofoam cup full of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The sports section of the Post was open on the desk in front of him. Rob handed him a yellow slip of paper.
"Already been identified," the young man said after looking at the slip. "She's waiting for pick-up."
Rob's voice was flat. "She's going to be identified again."
The attendant shrugged and ran his finger down a list. He stopped near the bottom.
"Seventeen-B," he said as he rose from his chair.
He led them through another set of double doors, heavier than the first, into a larger room where the temperature was a good twenty degrees cooler. She saw a coarse concrete floor, white tiled walls, and latched drawers. The far wall was a giant mosaic of latched drawers, three high and too many in width to count. Big drawers. People-sized drawers.
Kara hung back as the attendant headed for row seventeen. He reached for the handle on the second drawer down, and pulled.
A seismic shudder ran through her.
I can't do this!
As the drawer slid out with a harsh grating noise that echoed off the bare floor and tiled walls, she forced herself forward. She had to do this. There was no one else.
A body bag lay on the tray within the drawer. Kara looked past it as stomach acid began to well up into her throat.
This can't be real. This isn't really happening.
She willed herself not to feel anything. She would feel later. Now she would only look.
She stared at the attendant as he pulled down the zipper and pushed back the plastic. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rob turn away. Fists clenched, jaw tight, she forced herself to look down.
It wasn't Kelly. The caved-in cheek, the skewed nose, the swollen forehead, the misshapen skull, the bulging eye, the matted blond hair, the glass-slashed skin on her face and shoulders, the huge, crudely sutured incision running from the base of her throat down between her breasts and on downward, no, that couldn't be Kelly, it couldn't be Kelly, but it was, oh dear God it was!
Kara turned away, reeling as the floor began to tilt beneath her feet.
"You gonna be sick, lady?" the attendant said.
Kara waved her hand back at him. Shut up! Just shut up!
" 'Cause if you are," he continued, "there's a bathroom right over there."
She couldn't focus her eyes so she didn't know where "over there" was. The icy room had somehow become very hot and her skin was drenched with perspiration. She felt her knees turning to liquid, sagging.
Suddenly an arm was around her waist, lifting her.
"I've got you," Rob's voice said at her side.
He guided her through a door into a smelly little room lit by a naked 60-watt bulb and outfitted with a dirty sink, a dirtier toilet, and a mop in a bucket. He steadied her as she leaned over the bowl and lost the weak Penn Station coffee she'd had for breakfast. When the retching finally stopped, he handed her a paper towel. She wiped her face and mouth and then sagged against the wall.
Kelly is dead. My dear, dear Kelly is dead!
She felt Rob's arm go around her shoulders but she shrugged him off. She could handle this. She could have used someone to hold on to now, just for a moment, but she had to be strong, had to stand on her own. She searched for her voice and finally found it.
"Could you give me a couple of minutes, Rob?"
"Sure. I'll be right outside."
Once she was alone, the sobs began, echoing up from an empty pit that had opened inside her, quaking through her chest, making her whole body heave.
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11:22 A.M.
"Want another coffee?" Rob said. "No thanks."
"Corn muffin? They're really good here."
They were seated by the front window of a tiny luncheonette on East Thirty-third. The noontime rush was still half an hour away so they had the place almost to themselves. The rich, heavy aroma of chicken soup filled the air; the peppery tang of hot pastrami wafted across their table.
"No. Thank you." A sudden thought broke through the haze that enveloped her. "They're 'good here'? You recommend them?"
"Yeah. Could use a touch more sugar, but they're almost as good as mine."
A fond memory forced its way through the gloom— Friday nights in Rob's apartment as he buzzed around the kitchen, heedless of how his amateur chef act clashed with his tough cop image, watching him follow a recipe just so far and then deciding he could improve on it, usually with disastrous results.
"You really ought to have something to eat."
"You sound like my mother."
"Fine. Listen to your mother: Eat something."
Kara allowed herself to smile. "Buzz off, Mom."
"Okay. You still smoke?"
"No. I quit years ago."
"Mind if I do?"
"Yes. I'm surprised you're still puffing those things. They're poison."
"Buzz off, Mom," he said.
Kara smiled and surrendered to the memory of how she had fallen for Rob soon after she'd arrived in the city. They met in a room full of men, in McSorley's Old Ale House, a formerly men-only tavern that had recently been forced by the courts to serve both sexes. Kara had been braver and less wise then—the Central park incident was a long way off. She'd led Kelly down to one of the toughest parts of the Bowery just so she could have a beer in that old bastion of male exclusivity. After a long wait they each were served two mugs of porter—McSorley's sold them only in pairs. Some of the men present made some rude comments, but most just stared, as if she and her sister had crawled out from under a rock. One of the starers was Rob.