He needed no answer from Sam. Barry could see the tall, dark-eyed man’s face lose all life and color, his lips slightly agape in shock. Pursing his lips in conviction, Barry Hooper slapped Sam’s upper arm reassuringly and sympathized. “Come, son, let’s go see what happened so we can sort this out, hey?” He turned to the police officer and flashed his identification. “Dr. Barry Hooper,” he announced. Pointing at Sam, he said, “And this is my colleague, Mr. Cleave. Who is in charge here?”
With a look of warning, the policeman scowled at Sam while calling his superior.
“Sir, this is Dr. Hooper, head M.E., and his colleague, Mr. Cleave. They need to get inside if the preliminaries and sweeps are done, sir,” he reported to the gentle-faced captain.
The captain nodded and held out his arm to direct Sam and Barry into the smaller door of the administration archive building. As he entered the building, Sam glanced back to see Jan Harris staring at him, fuming. He had beaten her again. For fear of her releasing the footage she had on him, Sam motioned that she should wait for him before he disappeared through the door.
Inside, the place smelled of old papers and dust. Barry accompanied the captain to the morgue itself and the offices Nina had been taken from. After a day and night of continuous violence and pain, Sam was beginning to feel the fatigue grip his body. However, it was the surreal discovery of Nina’s abduction in a most coincidental chain of events that forced him ahead.
From previous close calls, he knew very well that time was a luxury when it concerned abductions, and there was no time for him to recuperate until he knew who had taken Nina. He had to know everything and he could only get it from this Barry character, he figured.
“She appears to have been discovered in here,” the captain said, “before they took her. The CCTV cameras were blacked out before the perpetrators entered the premises.”
They stepped up to the threshold of Dr. Glen Victor’s office, beholding the bedlam of the intrusion. Severed twine, used for toe tags, lay strewn over the chair. At the top of the chair, the headrest was stained dark with blood spatter, a sight that overwhelmed Sam to a point of sickness. Fighting the urge to vomit from the sheer pandemonium of his imagination at seeing his beloved Nina’s blood, Sam almost doubled over. Still, he forced himself to recover; he had no choice.
Barry could see the devastation in the young man, and he knew that he had to help him at all costs.
“Dr. Hooper, are there any security cameras for the front parking area?” Sam asked, swallowing hard.
“There is one,” he replied, but the captain interrupted. “They entered through the ceiling, coming from, we think, the railroad tracks.”
“So no footage of them,” Sam stated, ruling out identification by CCTV. “No prints?”
“We have collected prints, Mr. Cleave, but we doubt they were that reckless. I bet the prints we run will belong to staff… and Dr. Gould,” the captain told Sam. “We think Dr. Gould was tied to the chair,” he continued informing them, innocent of the knowledge that the victim was a close friend of the tall young man, “but the amount of blood and the fact that there is no body has me confident that she was not killed… at least not here.”
Barry could see Sam’s mind reeling at the insensitive commentary of the police investigator. He stepped in quickly and asked, “Could you please show me where the bodies were taken out through, captain?”
“Yes, certainly. Follow me through here,” the investigator agreed. As he took the lead, Dr. Barry Hooper glanced back at Sam as if to give him some time alone in the office to gather his own evidence, uninterrupted by lurid speculation about his friend. Sam gave the old Samaritan a nod of gratitude, and when they were out of sight, he sank down on the small bench by the coffee maker, trying not to weep.
“My God, Nina,” he murmured, “where did you go?”
He avoided looking at the blood on the medical examiner’s chair, yet it called him, subliminally beckoning him to suffer. The office was a mess of papers, spilled water, and coffee granules that made the dirty carpet sticky. Even the coffee pot was shattered in the corner and potted plants on top of the file cabinet were overturned on the floor below. Feeling hopeless and contrite for not running after her when she’d left his flat, Sam gasped for breath.
In the adjacent morgue, staff discussed the death of one of the assistants and the night security guard in hushed tones. They stood away from where the last forensic evidence had been collected by the local crime scene unit, who incidentally were based two laboratories down the corridor in the new lab wing of the Nirvana Morgue.
Their echoing voices in the hollow, tiled room almost drowned out the noise outside at the front door. Sam’s mind was racing with Nina’s words, those she’d spoken in concern; those he’d rebuked in intolerance. Inadvertently he succumbed to the urge and reached out to touch the remnants of her blood.
It was then that he saw the medical examiner’s PBX on the desk, undisturbed. A long shot, Sam thought to press redial from the extension. After all, he had to cover all the bases. His finger activated the melodic tone of the redial function and, with sweaty fingertips, he waited for it to ring.
“St. Columbanus Church,” a man answered.
Sam gulped as his body began to quiver under the yolk of tribulation. “Father Harper?”
“Aye?”
Sam fainted.
20
The Mephistopheles Phenomenon
Purdue woke up feeling well rested, although he did not remember coming to bed. His head felt heavy, but he blamed it on too much champagne consumed after the contract with Countess Baldwin had been concluded.
“Headache?” he heard the delectable woman say, and Purdue immediately remembered her skin and her scent. He opened his eyes. “You’re frowning and groaning,” she smiled. She was sitting at the window, sipping her tea. The morning brightness blurred the borders of her silhouette, illuminating her beauty with a halo and blinding him to the rest of her. “Hangover?”
“Actually,” he smiled back at her, “I have no headache. Just feels like I have a rock weighing on my head.”
Her husky chuckle was like opium to Purdue. When she looked out from the tenth story window, her flawless complexion glowed in the mild sun’s rays. Turning in her position, Purdue now noticed that she was naked, her ample breasts forcing the curtains of her white satin robe to fall from her shoulders, along her arms and draping to her ankles. All of her was in glorious view. It seemed that her robe was just an obligation.
Bits and pieces of the time with her briefly kissed his recollection before dwindling once more, and Purdue tried to relive what had to have been the best night of his life.
“Tea?” she asked.
“Thank you, yes. No sugar, please,” he requested.
“Honey, then?” she persisted.
Purdue never particularly liked honey. He had always had an aversion for its aftertaste and syrupy consistency, yet he nodded. “That would be great, thank you.”
He watched the Countess walk, so softly that she made no sound. Barefoot, with her dark hair coiling wildly, she appeared to momentarily resemble Nina. The vision of the historian was so vivid that Purdue had to shake his head to correct his perception.
“I know it is rude to discuss business so soon after morning reacquaintance, David, but I just want to make sure what is next,” she said, as she prepared his tea with her back to him. “How soon will we embark on the quest for my crown?”
Purdue remembered vaguely that she’d propositioned him at the party after the last meeting he’d attended, and that she wished for him to help her seek a lost crown in Jerusalem. Other than that, he only recalled signing a contract pertaining to the expedition, but not the details.