Chapter 16

Inputting death records was turning out to be one of the absolute worst tasks Isobel had encountered since she started temping. She was no longer a stranger to the monotony of data entry, but the eye strain involved in deciphering the handwriting of the medical examiners made her head feel like it was going to explode. Only one, a Dr. DeAngelis, had neat, meticulous script. After two hours of straining, Isobel finally decided to make her life easier and pull all of Dr. DeAngelis's forms. Since she'd never get through all the boxes, or even part of one, she figured she might as well save her eyesight.

With half an hour left on her lunch break, Isobel made her way to the morgue. As she descended to the basement, it briefly occurred to her that wolfing down a turkey avocado wrap first might not have been the best plan, but it was too late now. The elevator doors opened into what seemed like a cross between an office and a hospital. The floors and walls were white, and the fluorescent lights burned brighter without benefit of natural light peeking in through windows. She followed a sign that pointed to the morgue office. As she walked down the hall, her shoes echoing on the polished linoleum, a door marked "Room 1" opened and two medical examiners emerged, pulling off their masks and gloves, deep in conversation. Isobel shot past, but like a road accident, it proved impossible not to look. An orderly was sliding a table with a cadaver into a vault in the wall. Even though the body was draped in opaque plastic, Isobel gulped back a wave of nausea and hurried down the hall.

She paused outside the morgue office and reviewed what she planned to say. It wasn't one of her better schemes, but it was the best she could come up with under the circumstances. She withdrew from her pocket the death report that she had filled in earlier, in her worst handwriting. She examined the slanting, barely legible loops and scrawls she had made on the page and briefly wondered if she could have been a doctor.

She pushed open the door and approached the receptionist's desk. A plump Hispanic woman welcomed her warmly.

"Hola, chica! We don't get many visitors down here. What can I do for you?"

Isobel felt bad about hoodwinking such a friendly face, but she forged ahead nonetheless. She glanced at the woman's nameplate. Wanda Bautista. "You're Wanda?"

Wanda nodded happily.

Isobel smiled. "Nice to meet you. Randy upstairs asked me to check something with you. See this guy who died last year, Jason Whiteley?" She held out her forged form for Wanda to see. "Randy knows someone who knows someone who knows a guy with the exact same name, Jason Whiteley, who died just the other day. Same thing, cardiac arrest, and the same date, only one year later. Freaky, huh?"

Wanda let out a long, slow breath and nodded solemnly. "My great-grandmother died when lightning struck a tree and it fell on top of her on the Fourth of July. Then my great-grandfather married her sister, and a year later to the day, the same thing happened to her!"

Isobel's eyes widened. "No kidding! That's even weirder!" This was going to be a piece of cake. "Anyway, Randy said I should come down here and double-check their socials. Just to make sure nobody's playing a prank and they're not really the same person."

"Who was the medical examiner, do you know?"

Isobel thought back to the other day when the man had poked his head into her interrogation. She didn't know his name, only what he looked like, but she couldn't very well describe him to Wanda without some explanation for having seen him.

She shook her head. "I don't. Can you look it up?"

Wanda nodded, and Isobel gave her the date and the address of Dove & Flight. Wanda consulted a complicated-looking calendar on the computer and pointed to the screen. "That'll be Dr. Daley. You can ask him for the form." She gestured behind her to an inner office, where Isobel caught a glimpse of the little bearded man she had seen at Dove & Flight bustling about the small, white space. What if he recognized her?

"Can you pull the form for me?"

Wanda shook her head. "He has it."

"He looks so busy," said Isobel. "I don't want to bother him."

"It's no bother." Before Isobel could stop her, Wanda called out, "Dr. Daley? I need a form from the other day."

"Just a second!"

Isobel glanced quickly around the room. No place to hide, no possible distraction she could provide. A moment later, Dr. Daley emerged from his office, pulling on an overcoat. Unable to think of anything better, Isobel bent down and pulled off her shoe.

She heard Wanda say, "She's working upstairs in records and needs to see a death report from last week. Jason Whiteley."

Isobel rubbed her foot and waved vaguely upwards with her other hand. "Sorry," she mumbled, "something sticking out on the side..."

She sensed Dr. Daley moving toward the door. "It'll have to wait until I get back. Dead drug dealer on Avenue B."

Isobel heard the outer door slam shut and she straightened up, pretending to test her shoe. "There, I think I fixed it. It was, like, a wire or something."

Wanda was looking at her curiously.

Isobel hurried on, "New shoes. I should probably just return them."

"You'll have to check later when Dr. Daley is back."

Damn, thought Isobel. So close.

"Do you know when that will be?"

Wanda shrugged. "Could be gone all day. You never know. You should just come back tomorrow morning."

Isobel bit her lip. "The thing is, I'm a temp and I'm only hired for today to clean up the files. Randy seemed particularly eager to get this wrapped up. Can you just pull the form for me?"

"I can't give you anything off his desk," Wanda said firmly.

"I only need to look at it. Just to check the socials."

Wanda hesitated. "Well, if that's all you need, I can check it quickly." She snatched the form from Isobel's hand and disappeared into Dr. Daley's office.

Great. Now what?

Isobel glanced into the office and saw Wanda rifling through papers on Dr. Daley's desk. After a moment, she seemed to find what she was looking for. She held an identical form side by side with Isobel's forgery and shook her head.

Without stopping to consider what she was doing, Isobel rushed into Dr. Daley's office, startling Wanda momentarily.

"I just remembered something else I'm supposed to check!" Isobel cried, her face flushed. "Right there!"

Isobel pointed to the bright red, preprinted record number on the top of her forgery, but her eyes darted to the autopsy results on Jason Whiteley's real death form. Dr. Daley's scrawl was among the least legible she had grappled with all morning, but she willed the letters to take sensible shape. It took all her acting training to conceal her reaction from Wanda as she deciphered the words and committed them to memory.

Stomach contents: coffee, eggs, toast.

Blood tested positive for meperidine, digoxin.

Cause of death: poisoning.