“No problem, Sergeant.” Loomis’s voice still held a youthful strain. “Tell you the truth, for me, it’s a break from the routine.”
“Pretty quiet around here?”
“Yeah, this is an industrial area. I catch a lot of misfired alarms. Occasionally, there’re legit four-fifteens. What we really get are lots of assaults from the late-night bars in the field. Assholes get tanked and we come in and mop up.” He shook his head. “Same old shit.”
Marge handed Decker a pair of gloves, then put on her own pair.
Decker said, “You joining us inside, Officer?”
“Sure thing.”
“Don’t touch and watch where you step.”
“You got it.”
Decker slipped on his gloves. “You wanna be point man, Detective Dunn?”
“Point person. No, I’ll be backup.”
Decker turned to Loomis. “You pass by here often?”
“Once, maybe twice a night.”
“Ever see this car out here at this time in the morning?”
The young patrolman stared at the Mercedes and shook his head.
“Ever see any car?” Marge asked.
Again a shake of the head. “I don’t think so. But definitely not a sleek mama like a four-fifty SL. That I’d remember.”
Decker nodded. They walked up to the front door. The flashlight’s beam fell on a small splotch of blood to the right of the threshold.
Everyone exchanged looks. Decker banged on the door, identified them as police officers, and waited for a response.
Nothing.
Decker stood to the side of the door frame, turned the knob, and pushed open the door with his foot. The hinges creaked and everyone laughed.
“Like a bad slasher flick.” Loomis giggled nervously. “Hey, we’re only blocks from the studios. Maybe someone was having fun.”
Decker shone his light on the brown inkblot. “Except this ain’t Karo syrup.”
Loomis was about to cross the threshold, but Decker held him back and waited.
Nothing.
Marge drew her .38 from her purse; Loomis freed his Beretta from his holster.
Decker said, “As the cops say … cover me.”
He stepped inside. Freon cold air. Then the smells. Hard to single out any one in specific—a mixture of formaldehyde, ammonia, the sweet metal of blood. He scanned the beam along the wall until he found the light switch, then flicked it on with latex-covered fingers.
A ten-by-twelve waiting room lighted by fluorescent panels strung across an acoustical-tile ceiling. High dormer windows, the tops latched shut. The air conditioning was going strong, emitting an electronic hum. A green floral sofa, the fabric unnaturally shiny—heavily Scotchgarded. Two mismatched side chairs in shades of orange. A glass coffee table cluttered with magazines—Newsweek, Time, Life, and People as well as Teen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Tiger Beat, and Rip. A linoleum floor in a burnt-orange brick pattern. Decker had to use the extra illumination from the flashlight to find the trail of blood on that.
Marge’s eyes fell on the magazines. “Catering to a young crowd.”
“Looks that way.”
“What’s Rip?” Marge asked.
“Heavy metal,” Loomis said. “That’s music.”
Decker said, “Something for the teenage daddies.”
He focused the beam onto the floor, on smears of blood that trailed up to a door punched into the back wall. Next to the door was a sliding pane of frosted glass and a ledge for writing out checks. Instructions printed on a sign resting above the frosted glass: PLEASE ANNOUNCE YOUR ARRIVAL TO THE RECEPTIONIST and PAYMENT DUE AT TIME SERVICES ARE RENDERED.
Decker tried to open the window but it was locked. Marge pushed the door with her foot and it yielded.
“Yo, police!” she shouted. “Police officers!”
Silence.
They went through the door into a hallway. Decker scanned the walls until he located the light switch.
To the right was the receptionist’s office. Small affair—one desk for the secretary, one desk for the computer, and a small filing cabinet. The odor of blood was stronger, but not as powerful as the smell of formaldehyde—so overwhelming it was making all of them dizzy. Loomis coughed. Out came the handkerchiefs for nose and mouth protection. They walked down the hallway, the path of blood thickening to blotches and dried puddles.
Doors off the hallway leading to examining rooms. Long paper-coated padded tables with stirrups at the ends. A doctor’s stool. Shelves of chemicals and supplies. Nothing ransacked, nothing out of place.
The formaldehyde permeated every cubic centimeter of air. Decker felt his eyes water, his nose and mouth burn. Marge let out a hacking cough.
More examining rooms. Then, three doors at the end—one in the middle, the other two on either side of the hallway. Side doors leading to the operating rooms, stapled with placards. ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING ALLOWED. Decker entered the surgery on the left and found the lights.
Pale-green walls, crater-shaped overhead spotlights focusing down on a center steel table fitted with stirrups. Next to the table, a four-foot stand clamped with steel tubes. Gas—blue label for nitrogen, green for oxygen. Another stand to the table’s right, this one bearing calibrated instruments for measuring gas levels in the blood. Strung across its top bar were a stethoscope and a blood-pressure cuff. Resting on the tile floor, at the foot of the operating table, was a tympani-sized vacuum attached to a clear five-foot hose, six inches in diameter. The plastic tubing had become discolored from repeated use.
The back wall held locked cabinets filled with bottles of IV medications and glucose. In the drawers were surgical instruments—elongated forceps, oversized scissors, hypodermics, foot-long needles, scalpels and spoon-sized curettes with sharpened edges.
Nothing appeared out of place.
The final door, blood seeping out from under the wood, the stench of formaldehyde damn near knocking Decker over. He turned the knob, then staggered backward, coughing and gagging.
Once a personal office, it was in complete disarray. Papers, notebooks, and thick medical tomes were tossed and strewn about. Drawers had been opened and dumped, shelves emptied of their contents. A large rosewood desktop was completely cleared. Walls and furniture were spattered with blood. An area rug was crumpled into a corner. Cushions from the couch were slashed open, bits of foam piling around a freestanding hat rack like snow sloughed from a Christmas tree.
Lots of broken glass, the shards intermingled with tiny doughy pale dolls. Wee, two-inch creatures with far-set eyes, extra-wide mouths, pudgy hands, and legs pushed up to the bellies.
Fetuses.
At least a dozen, maybe more, carelessly scattered through the room except for a few lucky ones who still swam unmolested in unbroken jars of formaldehyde.
In the center of the office was a contorted body resting in a pool of blood—as lifeless as the things floating in the jars.
Loomis gagged, then composed himself. “Want me to call it in, Sergeant?”
Eyes burning, Decker swallowed back the bitter taste of bile. “Yeah, do that. Use your car radio.”
“Sure thing.” Loomis ran out.
Decker placed his glove over his covered nose. “Shit, this is bad!”
Marge