Part 29 (1/2)

Caxton sat in the morgue next to Deanna's body on a gurney. Dr. Prabinder and Clara were nowhere to be seen. She was all alone in the semi-darkened room, surrounded on every side by rolling part.i.tions. How she'd gotten there she couldn't say. It was like she had blacked out, except she hadn't, at all. The trip from the fourth floor down to the bas.e.m.e.nt was all there in her memory. It was just so immaterial she hadn't bothered to review the information.

There had been a complication, she remembered. She got up and walked around the gurney. She touched Deanna here and there. Twitched back the sheet that covered her. Deanna's face was calm, at least. Her eyes closed, her red hair clean. Her lips were pale but otherwise she didn't look so bad. Caxton moved the sheet back a little more, though, and wished she hadn't. Deanna's b.r.e.a.s.t.s pointed in the wrong directions. Her chest was open like a ravenous mouth, her ribs like teeth reaching for a piece of meat. Her lungs and her heart lay collapsed at the bottom of that wound like a lolling tongue.

There had been a complication. Deanna had lost so much blood when she broke the kitchen window that she had required five new units of blood, most of it in the form of plasma. They had given her some whole blood because she had started to show the signs of acute anemia-coldness in the extremities even while her trunk was warm, a lasting and dangerous shortness of breath.

There had been a complication. A blood clot had formed, perhaps from one of her wounds, possibly from a bad reaction to the transfused blood. Dr. Prabinder had refused to speculate. The clot had entered Deanna's blood stream and probably roamed around her body several times before it reached her left lung.

There had been a complication. A pulmonary embolus, Dr. Prabinder had called it. When it was detected they had rushed her immediately into surgery, of course. They had tried to cut it out. And that was one complication too many.

”I really must insist, Ms. Caxton,” the doctor said, pulling one of the part.i.tions back. ”You're not supposed to be here at all, and truly, it's not appropriate for the morgue technicians to let you see her in this condition-”

”That's Trooper Caxton,” Clara announced. She held up her badge. ”Oh, I... I didn't know,” Doctor Prabinder said.

”This is a homicide investigation, Doctor.” Clara put her badge away. What

she was doing was highly illegal. She was well outside of her jurisdiction. So was Caxton. Lying about a criminal investigation could get them put away for years.

Caxton wouldn't tell, if Clara didn't. She pulled the sheet back up over Deanna's chest. Blood soaked through it almost instantly. ”When?” Caxton asked. She couldn't get any more of the sentence out. ”What was the official time of death?” Clara asked.

The doctor checked his PDA. ”Last night, about four fifteen.” ”Before dawn,” Caxton said. While she had been fighting vampires in

abandoned steel mills Deanna had been slowly dying and n.o.body had known. There would have been n.o.body with her. Perhaps if there had been it could have been avoided. Perhaps if Caxton had been there, listening to Deanna's ragged breathing, she might have noticed some change. She could have summoned the doctor. They could have gotten Deanna into surgery that much quicker.

At the very least she could have held her hand. ”I wasn't here,” she said. ”No, no, come on,” Clara said.

”Ah, ladies, I know it is not my place to ask, but is it acceptable for this

woman to investigate the death of someone so close? Is there not a conflict of interest?” ”She was alone,” Caxton said, ignoring him.

”Was there anyone in her room last night? Any visitors at all?”

The doctor shook his head in incomprehension. ”No, of course not. We don't let visitors in after seven and anyway she had posted a guard on the room.” He pointed at Caxton with his PDA. ”Did you not know about the guard?”

Clara glanced at her, then back at the doctor. ”I was just brought in on this case. I'm still catching up.” ”I... see.” Doctor Prabinder straightened up and squared his shoulders. ”Now let's get one thing clear. I wish to a.s.sist the police in any manner possible, of course. But this is my hospital, and-”

”Doctor,” Caxton said, turning to face him for the first time. She gave him her best fisheye look. Caxton wasn't wearing her uniform, she didn't have a badge, and her weapon was still in the trunk of Clara's Volkswagen. It didn't matter. The look was what made you a cop. That perfectly uncaring, potentially violent look that could freeze most people in their tracks. ”I need to know if anything unusual happened here last night. I need to know if anybody saw or heard anything weird or out of place. Anything at all.”

”Of course, of course,” he said. He looked down at his shoes. ”But this is a hospital with a trauma ward in a major urban center. You must clarify for me, I have seen so many weird things...” He just sort of trailed off.

”I'm not talking about freak accidents. I'm talking about people with no faces being seen in the hallways. I'm talking about vampire activity.” ”Vampires, here?” He muttered something in Hindi that sounded like a brief prayer. ”I saw on the news that-I hear some things, yes, and the bodies that came in-but oh, my, no, nothing like that last night! I swear it.”

”Good.” Caxton reached down and took Deanna's hand. It was freezing cold but then so was hers. ”Now I need someone to sew this woman up so I can bury her. Can you arrange that?”

Dr. Prabinder nodded and took out his cell phone. ”There will be papers to sign, of course, if that is not too much.”

”Of course,” Caxton said. She took out her own phone. Deanna's brother Elvin was in her stored phonebook. Hopefully he would know his-and Dee's-mother's number. There were suddenly a lot of things she needed to do.

”I'm so, so sorry,” Clara said, and reached for her, but Caxton shrugged her away.