glanced down at his wrist. It was twelve, no, thirteen minutes past ten. He looked up, ready to share this information.
But Willows was gone.
Chapter 5
Christy Kirkpatrick had enjoyed a long and varied professional life, and believed that during his career as a forensic pathologist he had been privileged to see and do things that other men rarely even dreamed of.
But this was weird. This was, in fact, weirdness beyond weird.
The city morgue is situated in an old orange brick and mullioned-window building located on Cordova Street, just around the corner from 312 Main. The operating theatre is located on the top floor of the building, in a large, square, brightly-lit room. The floor and two of the four walls are covered with small, glossy blue tiles. The remaining walls are lined with lockable refrigerated stainless-steel drawers that are just the right size for storing a body. There is a massive cast-iron and frosted glass skylight in the ceiling. If you look closely, you can see where repairs were made to the skylight in the spring of 1947, when a cop named Wilbur Cartwright fell through the glass while moonlighting for a sleazy tabloid that wanted candid shots of the autopsy of a notoriously fickle B-movie star who’d asphyxiated in the arms of her blind lover.
Directly beneath the skylight stood two zinc tables. Each table is seven feet long and three feet wide, and stands exactly forty-two inches above the tile floor. A constant stream of cold water flows along a shallow groove that runs down the middle of each table, from the slightly elevated top end all the way down to the bottom, where a chrome drainage pipe vanishes into a hole in the tiles.
Kenny Lee’s corpse, still in a classic full-lotus position, sat proudly erect in the middle of the table closest to the door.
Kirkpatrick was trying to melt him down with a 1000-watt Philips Vanite blow dryer. He’d been wielding the blow dryer for the better part of two hours. His wrist ached, and the whine of the machine’s tiny electric motor was driving him crazy.
As he’d plugged the Philips into the extension cord, he’d worked out a simple strategy. He’d start at Lee’s head and work his way to his feet. His theory was that the warm, melted water that dripped down the body would help speed the thawing process.
It had started well enough. The ice that covered Lee’s face was less than an inch thick. Kirkpatrick found that he could hold the nozzle of the hair dryer as close as two inches away from the surface of the ice, but no closer, because the melt had a tendency to spray back at him, and he didn’t care to risk electrocution.
After almost two hours, he was just clearing the last traces of ice from Lee’s face, directing the flow of hot air upwards at Lee’s snub nose to loosen the two plugs of ice that filled his nostrils.
He switched the hair dryer to his left hand, flexed his aching wrist and aimed the dryer so the blast of hot air was directed at the bridge of Lee’s nose. He had a small bet going with himself — which nostril the ice plug would fall out of first.
He’d also given some thought to working out how long it was going to take to thaw out the whole body, from head to foot. What he had failed to consider when he’d started was the fact that Lee wasn’t simply sheathed in ice, his entire body — even the marrow in his bones — was frozen through and through.
Kirkpatrick wondered if there was a mathematical formula for calculating the time required to thaw a given number of cubic feet of frozen human flesh. He couldn’t recall studying such a formula at med school, but then, there was an awful lot about med school that he couldn’t remember.
Thank God.
The telephone rang. Kirkpatrick switched off the dryer. He could hear fat drops of melted water hitting the puddle that had collected on the tile floor. It was slippery down there. He’d have to watch his step. He went over to the telephone and picked up.
Willows
But Willows was gone.
Chapter 5
Christy Kirkpatrick had enjoyed a long and varied professional life, and believed that during his career as a forensic pathologist he had been privileged to see and do things that other men rarely even dreamed of.
But this was weird. This was, in fact, weirdness beyond weird.
The city morgue is situated in an old orange brick and mullioned-window building located on Cordova Street, just around the corner from 312 Main. The operating theatre is located on the top floor of the building, in a large, square, brightly-lit room. The floor and two of the four walls are covered with small, glossy blue tiles. The remaining walls are lined with lockable refrigerated stainless-steel drawers that are just the right size for storing a body. There is a massive cast-iron and frosted glass skylight in the ceiling. If you look closely, you can see where repairs were made to the skylight in the spring of 1947, when a cop named Wilbur Cartwright fell through the glass while moonlighting for a sleazy tabloid that wanted candid shots of the autopsy of a notoriously fickle B-movie star who’d asphyxiated in the arms of her blind lover.
Directly beneath the skylight stood two zinc tables. Each table is seven feet long and three feet wide, and stands exactly forty-two inches above the tile floor. A constant stream of cold water flows along a shallow groove that runs down the middle of each table, from the slightly elevated top end all the way down to the bottom, where a chrome drainage pipe vanishes into a hole in the tiles.
Kenny Lee’s corpse, still in a classic full-lotus position, sat proudly erect in the middle of the table closest to the door.
Kirkpatrick was trying to melt him down with a 1000-watt Philips Vanite blow dryer. He’d been wielding the blow dryer for the better part of two hours. His wrist ached, and the whine of the machine’s tiny electric motor was driving him crazy.
As he’d plugged the Philips into the extension cord, he’d worked out a simple strategy. He’d start at Lee’s head and work his way to his feet. His theory was that the warm, melted water that dripped down the body would help speed the thawing process.
It had started well enough. The ice that covered Lee’s face was less than an inch thick. Kirkpatrick found that he could hold the nozzle of the hair dryer as close as two inches away from the surface of the ice, but no closer, because the melt had a tendency to spray back at him, and he didn’t care to risk electrocution.
After almost two hours, he was just clearing the last traces of ice from Lee’s face, directing the flow of hot air upwards at Lee’s snub nose to loosen the two plugs of ice that filled his nostrils.
He switched the hair dryer to his left hand, flexed his aching wrist and aimed the dryer so the blast of hot air was directed at the bridge of Lee’s nose. He had a small bet going with himself — which nostril the ice plug would fall out of first.
He’d also given some thought to working out how long it was going to take to thaw out the whole body, from head to foot. What he had failed to consider when he’d started was the fact that Lee wasn’t simply sheathed in ice, his entire body — even the marrow in his bones — was frozen through and through.
Kirkpatrick wondered if there was a mathematical formula for calculating the time required to thaw a given number of cubic feet of frozen human flesh. He couldn’t recall studying such a formula at med school, but then, there was an awful lot about med school that he couldn’t remember.
Thank God.
The telephone rang. Kirkpatrick switched off the dryer. He could hear fat drops of melted water hitting the puddle that had collected on the tile floor. It was slippery down there. He’d have to watch his step. He went over to the telephone and picked up.
Willows
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