Do No Harm

A man David recognized as the lab tech he'd pulled in to help irrigate Clyde answered. "The property lockers are all empty. We didn't take anything off him, remember? And the cops confiscated everything that was left in the room."

"Why are you worrying about this at two in the morning?" Don asked.

David placed a hand on the counter, feeling the weight of the stares aimed in his direction. Meeting the fixed looks with resolve, he thought about how Clyde shied away from eye contact, how he found it threatening. What had Clyde said? I don't stay around people anymore. Not people that can look at me back.

The realization hit David with such force that he drew back his head. Where would Clyde have gone to hide out after his escape from the ER? Somewhere that people couldn't look back at him. Somewhere suited to a person simultaneously afraid and desirous of being alone. A place where he'd be among dead people. Dalton had mentioned that they'd found traces of blood in the Three Corridor-back by the freight elevators. The freight elevators were used to cart bodies up to the anatomy crypt on the seventh floor.

David took a step back, knocking over a tray of charts, and left the room at a brisk walk, leaving the others to exchange puzzled glances behind his back.

Chapter 37

DAVID entered through the anatomy lab, the wide rectangle of a room dotted with cadavers lying on elevated metal tables. The hatchlike doors of the dissecting tables had been left open. The bodies were exposed, their chests cracked, faces peeled, limbs sinewy and yellow. The stench of formalin hung in the air, a smell that reminded him of his own med school cadaver that he and his anatomy partner had jokingly named Hercules because of its scrawny musculature.

He paused above a body and peeled back the thin layer of bleached cheesecloth. The student had done a poor job on the cheek, making a mess of the masseteric fascia. The yellowed flesh of the jaw hung down like shredded chicken. David covered the face again and proceeded through the lab into the prep room.

The light switch clicked up loudly. Stainless steel counters and cabinets compounded the clinical light of the room. David reached for the large door to the crypt, and it pulled open with a soft sucking noise.

The formalin made his eyes water. The rows of bodies, dangling from hooks like sides of beef, the crossed scissor clamps pinching the ears-how could he have forgotten?

Holding his breath, he walked into the immense refrigerated room, unsure what he was looking for. His foot struck a bucket, and he looked down to see a detached brain swaying in the cloudy water, hanging from a taped string. He walked forward, his eyes picking through the bodies. His shoulder struck a corpse and set it pivoting slowly until it looked down at him, blue-faced and undignified.

He took his time, walking slowly up and down the rows, searching the floor between the red and blue plastic drainage tubs for any sign that Clyde had been there. In the back, a chunky cadaver was suspended from her oversized head. She'd retained fluids in her belly and extremities before dying. David stepped closer, examining the mid-sternal incision on her chest. A recent cardiac surgery. Probably died of heart failure. He glanced down, looking for the telltale linear incision along her inner leg from which they would have harvested her saphenous vein for the bypass.

Four emergency room restraints floated in the liquid that had pooled inside the tub beneath her. Hard restraints. David felt his heart quicken.

He crouched down and studied them.

He'd learned enough from old Columbo episodes to know not to handle anything and compromise evidence. He removed a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his white coat and pulled them on.

Stainless steel abounded inside the crypt and the prep room. Many good surfaces, David imagined, off which to lift fingerprints. But it would be difficult; Clyde's escape was nearly twenty-four hours ago, and a decent amount of traffic moved through the area each day. Further disappointment set in when David remembered that Clyde had escaped still wearing his surgical gloves.

David finished perusing the crypt, found nothing else of note, and went out and sat at the small wooden desk in the corner of the prep room. He had little more to go on himself, so it didn't make sense to contact Ed. He'd just have to inform Yale and take the resultant reprimand for involving himself in the case further.

Reaching for the phone, he scooted forward in the chair, one of the legs knocking over a small metal waste bin. He leaned over and righted the bin, then retrieved a few pieces of crumpled paper and a banana peel from the floor. A small foil square had slid a short distance under the desk, and David bent down farther and reached for it, unsuccessfully.

It appeared to be the casing for a pill-Imodium, perhaps-torn from a larger sheet. The lettering caught his eye just before he touched it: Noblemen's Zinc Lozenges-orange.