Ashley Shrove sat across a conference table from the chief medical examiner for University Hospital, the president of the hospital, the VP for nursing, and the director of media for the hospital. Detective Semmes of the Mobile Police Department sat to his right, and his quickly acquired lawyer, Scott Johnston, sat to his left. The room was stuffy. Ashe, as he liked to be called for obvious reasons, felt like all the hot air coming out of the hospital staff overpowered the ventilation system. They all sat looking at each other and not really saying anything.
“Please understand, nothing like this has ever happened at this hospital,” the PR guy said. His glossy tag called him Ben Martin. “We’ve never lost a body from our morgue.”
“On the phone, you didn’t say that you lost Marianne’s body. You said she got up and walked out with a doctor,” Ashe said. “That’s a whole different thing than losing a body, Mr. Martin.”
“It’s a matter of semantics,” Martin said.
“It’s a matter of a lawsuit,” Johnston said. “There are several issues at stake here. One is wrongfully declaring someone dead. I would call that malpractice.” He directed that to the medical examiner, whose tag named him Dr. Mott. “Then there’s possible kidnapping. That will be for you to decide, Detective Semmes.”
“I did not see Ms. Lenard when she was admitted to the morgue. I cannot be held responsible for the declaration of her death. Dr. Hemming did that workup,” Dr. Mott said.
“Since you’re the chief medical examiner, I assume that you are over every doctor that does postmortems. Am I right, Dr. Mott?” Johnston clicked his teeth together on the Ts as if biting the end of the word.
Dr. Mott looked down. “Technically, that’s correct.”
“The woman was dead,” Vera Wallace, VP for Nursing, said. “Dr. Hemming confirmed it. The EMTs on the scene confirmed it. Even Officer Semmes confirmed it.”
“Detective Semmes if you please,” Semmes said. “I did check Ms. Lenard’s pulse myself. She didn’t have one, and by the time I got to her, her skin had cooled.”
“So what we have is a missing body,” Martin said.
“If she was dead, and she walked out of the morgue, what we have is a zombie,” Ashe said.
The hospital president, Dean Dennison, snickered, but tried to cover it up with a fake cough.
“I wasn’t being funny, Mr. Dennison,” Ashe said. “Either she was not dead, or she came back to life. If I know my horror movies like I think I do, a living corpse is a zombie.”
“Or a vampire,” Semmes said under his breath.
Ashe nodded his agreement.
“I think we should see the tape,” Johnston said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I have it ready.” Martin lifted a remote control and pointed it toward a large screen hanging on the wall.
The screen flickered and then showed the autopsy room. A time stamp at the bottom showed the time. Two technicians rolled Marianne in. They monkeyed around with her body. Johnston cleared his throat when the tall technician pulled down the sheet to reveal her breasts.
“That tech no longer works for us,” Wallace said.
“Desecration of a corpse.” Johnston made a check mark in the air. “Harassment if she is alive.”
In the video, the technicians left the autopsy room. Martin fast-forwarded the video to save time. Blurry lines twisted across the screen, but nothing changed. No one came or went. Marianne lay on the table motionless and staring at the ceiling. Then a masked man entered. Ashe watched with a knot of anxiety in his stomach as Marianne stood, then wrapped her naked body in a sheet, and left with the stranger.
The mechanism used on Marianne looked familiar to Ashe. The colleague who introduced him to Johnston had a few of machines that looked like it. He should know because he’d built them.
“We’ve searched all the rest of our surveillance videos to see what happened to them, and have come up with nothing,” Wallace said.
“We also cannot identify who the masked man was. He doesn’t match any description of morgue personnel or any pathologist I know of in the hospital,” Dr. Mott said.
“So she just walked out and disappeared?” Ashe asked.
“Apparently,” Dennison said. “We’re baffled too.”
“And sued,” Johnston said.
Ashe wished he hadn’t involved a lawyer, but the news from Martin had been more than he could process. He’d met Johnston at a school party thrown for his friend, psychologist Erik Rogers. The lawyer seemed less sleazy in that situation, but Ashe thought perhaps he was being aggressive to make him feel better about the fact that his fiancée had either been stolen or resurrected. With Mardi Gras just around the corner and the focus on the most famous resurrection in history beginning, he didn’t know which option he liked better.
“We’re trying to keep this out of the media,” Martin said. “For obvious reasons.”
“I agree,” Semmes said. “It’ll be a lot harder to catch this freak if it hits Channel 3 news.”
“I don’t know about that,” Johnston said.
“It’s fine,” Ashe said. “I don’t need the interviews and attention.” He looked at his lawyer. “Believe it or not, Marianne was a person before she died and came back or whatever. I loved her, and I’m hurting a lot.”
“It was insensitive of me. I apologize; of course, we’ll keep this under wraps,” Johnston said. “Until enough time has passed.”
“Do we have anything else to discuss?” Ashe asked.
All the hospital staff looked at each other. In succession, they shook their heads to the negative. Dennison stood followed by the rest of his staff.
“I suppose we’re finished, Professor Shrove,” he said. “If anything else comes up, we’ll let you know.”
Ashe, Johnston and Semmes stood as well. Johnston put his hand on Ashe’s shoulder and turned him to the door.
“I’ll be getting back with you,” Semmes said to Dennison. “I’ll probably want to see records and other things.”
“We’ll probably want to see a court order,” Wallace said in a clipped tone.
“Vera,” Dennison snapped back. “We will cooperate as far as the law allows.”
“I thought you would.” Semmes followed Ashe and Johnston to the door. “Don’t worry, Miss Wallace. I wouldn’t think of coming back without a court order for those records. I’ll probably even have a fresh new subpoena just for you.”
Ashe could tell by the tone of his voice that Semmes enjoyed saying that. The three men left the conference room and walked down the hall to the elevators. This part of the hospital smelled more like an office building than a house of medicine. There was no undertone of antiseptic cleaner. The sickly sweet medicinal smell most hospitals had was reserved for the floors that the high-ups didn’t have to be on much, Ashe thought to himself.
The elevator doors slid open. Semmes, Johnston and Ashe stepped into the empty car. For some reason, all three men stood shoulder to shoulder as if the elevator were full. Semmes and Johnston flanked Ashe. He didn’t mind. Strangely, he felt comforted.
“Could that video have been doctored?” Ashe asked.
“It might have been,” Johnston said. “The only reason I could think of why they would was if they lost the body and were trying to cover it up with an elaborate and bizarre plot.”
“Professor Shrove,” Semmes said.
“Call me Ashe.”
“Ashe, one of the first things I’m taking when I come back with that court order is the tape. I’m going to have our boys look for any anomalies in it. I’m thinking like your lawyer.”
“You can call me Mr. Johnston.”
Semmes cleared his throat. “Like Mr. Johnston said, they would only fake it if they lost the body or something like that, but you never can tell.”
The elevator doors opened, and the men stepped out into the lobby. Four people waited for the elevator and clambered on when Ashe and the others had barely stepped off. The men walked out of the lobby and into the foggy February morning without saying a word. Once they were out the door, Semmes dug into his pocket and brought out a pack of USA Gold cigarettes. Ashe thought that Mobile must not pay their cops very much for the detective to buy such cheap smokes. Semmes took one out and lit it. The smell of the cheap tobacco mingled with the briny smell of the sea fog. Ashe found the mixture less than pleasurable.
“Before I head over to Tech, am I still a suspect in a Marianne’s death?”
Semmes blew smoke out of his nostrils. “As of right now, we don’t know how she died. So, I’m putting the foul play investigation on hold.” He took another drag. “Technically, we don’t even know if she’s dead. I don’t mean any disrespect by that.”
“I understand,” Ashe said.
“But don’t leave the country or anything,” Semmes said.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got a job and haven’t earned tenure yet.”
“Also, Mr. Semmes,” Johnston said.
“You can call me Detective Semmes.”
“Make sure that any questions you ask Ashe are when I’m present.” Johnston gave the detective a Cheshire cat grin.
Semmes puffed on his cigarette and nodded his head. The winter fog started to chill Ashe. He’d been used to mild winters living in South Carolina, and expected the Gulf Coast to have no winter, but Mobile surprised him.
“I’ve got to get to work. One of my graduate classes is having a test, and I have to proctor it. If there is anything else, let me know.”
“Working so soon after your fiancée’s death?” Semmes asked. “Those Alabama Tech boys must be slave drivers.”
“My personal choice,” Ashe said. “Working keeps my mind off of things. If I stayed at home, I’m pretty sure I’d start drinking or crying into one of Marianne’s blouses.”
“I understand. I’ll keep in touch,” Semmes said.
Ashe walked across the circular drive. He stopped and turned back to Semmes.
“Detective?”
“Yes?”
“I recognized that device the man used on Marianne, or at least I think I do,” Ashe said.
“Okay, how?”
“If it’s what I think it is, I made it for Erik Rogers, who figured out how to record emotions. It looks like the recorder, but it shouldn’t be able to raise the dead.”
“Are you sure it’s that device?” Semmes asked.
“Not completely, but I plan to ask Erik about it as soon as I get back to campus.”
“I’ll being following up on it myself, but let me know what he says.”
“Be sure to let me know as well,” Johnston said. “Remember, Detective, this is not incriminating evidence.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Semmes said.
Ashe heard the dislike in the detective’s voice. He felt it in his own stomach. Now, he wished he’d never bothered with the attorney.
Ashe opened his eyes when the light from the hallway spilled into his office. He’d lain down on the small couch he’d inherited from the office’s previous owner. As his sleep-heavy eyes adjusted to the new light, he made out the outline of Cybil’s head and shoulders jutting into the room.
“Did I wake you up?” she asked in her small girlish voice.
“Yeah, but I suppose I need to be getting up anyway.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to give a test in twenty minutes.”
Cybil pushed the door open and came completely into the room. She flipped the light switch on with her elbow. Ashe squinted as the lights came on. He saw that Cybil carried a bundle of papers under her arm.
“That’s why I stopped by. I got the copies done. I was going to leave them with your assistant, but.”
Ashe nodded. “I haven’t not got one.”
“Well, yeah. I could be your assistant.”
He smiled and rubbed his chin. Sharp beard stubble scraped his palms. He hadn’t shaved since his last shower which was some time before he’d been told by the Mobile police that Marianne had been found slumped over her computer in the stacks at the library.
“I don’t think the department chair would like me making our work-study my personal secretary.”
“I don’t think he’d notice,” Cybil said.
She walked to his desk and put the papers down. For some reason, Ashe noticed more about her than he ever had before. She wore her dark brown hair short in what he thought was called a pixie cut. Today, Cybil wore a strange kind of peasant blouse with a huge neck. It hung almost straight off her shoulder due to the lack of any breasts.
He’d noticed that before. Even in his best relationship, he would notice women’s breasts. This work-study had boobs, but it was easy for her to hide them, even without trying.
“You look pretty rough.” She put her hand on her hip. Her bright red fingernail polish stood out starkly against the deep black of her flowing skirt.
“I haven’t had much sleep, or food, or a bath for that matter.” He sniffed his armpit, not even trying to be polite in mixed company. “At least I don’t smell.”
Cybil sat beside him on the couch. She put her hand on his knee. “I heard about your fiancée. I’m so sorry. Do they know what killed her yet?”
Ashe shook his head. “No, and they won’t.”
“Oh, did she not believe in having autopsies?”
“No, someone stole her body from the morgue.”
Cybil snorted but slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh, but that’s crazy.”
“I know. It gets worse.” Ashe caught himself. Why was he telling his work-study this? “But I’ve got to get to my class and give this test.”
He stood, and Cybil’s hand finally fell off of his knee. She stood up too.
“I could give it for you.”
“You haven’t even graduated with a BS yet. I’m sure that my PhD students would not like an undergrad giving them their test.” He noticed she looked a little offended. “Plus, this is advanced material. I know you’re a good student, but there are things on this test they don’t cover in undergrad classes. If one of my students had a question, I don’t think you could answer it.”
“I was just trying to help you out during this tough time,” Cybil said. Some of the perkiness was gone from her voice.
“Thank you for that. Maybe you could help me get them graded and recorded. That’s the hardest part anyway, especially running on as little sleep as I’ve had.”
“When and where?”
“Here around 5 p.m. I’ve got to meet with Dr. Rogers after my test ends. It will probably take that long to get away from him.”
Cybil rubbed her hands together. “All right, I’ll see you then.”
The work-study left. Ashe took his tests and headed to his class.