The Face by Dean Koontz Page B

in this same hospital.
        Leaving the ruination of Sheryl Crow in the elevator, Ethan followed a wide and brightly lighted corridor with white painted-concrete walls. In place of ersatz music, the only sound was the faint but authentic buzz of the fluorescent tubes overhead.
        Double doors with square portholes opened onto the reception area of the garden room.
        At a battered desk sat a fortyish, acne-scarred man in hospital greens. A desk plaque identified him as VIN TOLEDANO. He looked up from a paperback novel that featured a grotesque corpse on the cover.
        Ethan asked how he was doing, and the attendant said he was alive so he must be doing all right, and Ethan said, “Little over an hour ago, you received a Duncan Whistler from the seventh floor.”
        “Got him on ice,” Toledano confirmed. “Can’t release him to a mortuary. Coroner gets him first ’cause it’s a homicide.”
        Only one chair was provided for visitors. Transactions involving perishable cadavers were generally conducted expeditiously, with no need of waiting-room comfort and dog-eared old magazines.
        “I’m not with a mortuary,” said Ethan. “I was a friend of the deceased. I wasn’t here when he died.”
        “Sorry, but I can’t let you see the body right now.”
        Sitting in the visitors’ chair, Ethan said, “Yeah, I know.”
        To prevent defense attorneys from challenging autopsy results in court, an official chain of custody for the cadaver had to be maintained, ensuring that no outsider could tamper with it.
        “There’s no family left to ID him, and I’m the executor of the estate,” Ethan explained. “So if they’re going to want me to confirm identity, I’d rather do it here than later at the city morgue.”
        Putting aside his paperback, Toledano said, “This guy I grew up with, last year he gets himself thrown out of a car at like ninety miles an hour. It’s hard losing a good friend young.”
        Ethan couldn’t pretend to grieve, but he was grateful for any [50] conversation that took his mind off Rolf Reynerd. “We hadn’t been close in a long time. Didn’t talk for twelve years, then only three times in the past five.”
        “But he made you executor?”
        “Go figure. I didn’t know about that till Dunny was here two days in the ICU. Got a call from his lawyer, tells me not only I’m the executor if Dunny dies, but meanwhile I have power of attorney to handle his affairs and make medical decisions on his behalf.”
        “Must’ve still been something special there between you.”
        Ethan shook his head. “Nothing.”
        “Must’ve been something,” Vin Toledano insisted. “Childhood friendships, they’re deeper than you know. You don’t see each other forever, then you meet, and it’s like no time passed.”
        “Wasn’t that way with us.” But Ethan knew that the something special between him and Dunny had been Hannah and their love for her. To change the subject, he said, “So how does your friend come to be pushed out of a car doing ninety?”
        “He was a great guy, but he always thought more with his little head than his big one.”
        “That’s not an exclusive club.”
        “He’s in a bar, sees three hotties, no guys with them, so he moves in. All three come on to him, say let’s go back to our place, and he figures he’s so Brad Pitt they want to three-on-one him.”
        “But it’s a robbery setup,” Ethan guessed.
        “Worse. He leaves his car, rides in theirs. Two girls get him hot in the backseat, half undress him-then push him out for fun.”
        “So the hotties were hopped on something.”
        “Maybe so, maybe not,” said Toledano. “Turns out they’d done it twice before. This time they got caught.”
        Ethan said, “I came across this old movie on TV the other night. Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello. One of those beach-party flicks. Women sure were different back