Linda Farstein AC 02 Likely to Die (v1.5)

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Gemma s bedside table. The bed was neatly made up and the spread was pulled
tight without a crease. Either she had arisen at her usual time and
straightened up after her jog or she had never gotten home during the night to
go to sleep.
I picked up the book from the bedside table a slim volume on spinal cord
injuries, just published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which seemed as
depressing as the task ahead of us. I looked at the pages that Gemma had
dog-eared and underlined but they meant nothing to me and I replaced it under
the lamp.
Closet doors were on runners, which I slid back to look at the way she
presented herself to her world. On one side were dark suits with no trim or
detail, utilitarian but not of any style. The other end was mostly casual
gear an assortment of khaki slacks, simple cotton shirts, and jackets. Running
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shoes and sneakers of every variety and condition covered the closet floor.
Several pairs of solid English walking pumps must have carried her through her
professional appointments. Sensible, my mother called them, but unexciting. A
few white lab coats, cleaned and starched, hung between the business and the
play clothes. My hand reached for the sleeve of a navy wool suit. I wondered
if anyone had claimed Gemma s body from the morgue and thought of taking an
outfit for her burial.
I went back into the living room. Mercer stood up from the chair at Dogen s
desk, where he had been looking through some of the manila files that lay on
top, and offered the seat to me.
Here s the mail that was left for her today. Doorman gave it to me on my way
back up. Bills for Con Ed and cable TV, statement from Chase Bank, and a
postcard from her ex on his trip to the Himalayas. Read it looks like he
expected to see her in England in a couple of weeks. Medical symposium at the
University of London. Take that with us to give to Peterson, okay?
Fine. I looked it over, pleased that she had such a civilized relationship
with Geoffrey that he actually expressed pleasure at the idea of seeing her
soon. Most of my friends didn t enjoy that status with their exes, a thought
that had me smiling until I caught myself with the sad realization that
Geoffrey might not yet even know Gemma s monstrous fate.
Mercer moved over to study the bookshelf wall. With his usual eye for detail,
he started listing titles and descriptions as I opened desk drawers to flip
through agendas and calendars.
This lady was serious, Cooper. Very little here that isn t medical or
strictly business. Small collection of classics, kind of stuff you like.
George Eliot, Thomas Hardy. Then you move to the CDs. Lots of German opera,
plenty of Bach. Can you imagine a music collection without a single piece of
jazz or even one Motown disc? Too whitebread for me, girl.
I don t think I noticed, Mercer. Is there a computer in her office? I was
surprised not to find one in the apartment.
Yeah, they re working on downloading that, too. She didn t keep one here,
which is why it wouldn t have been unusual to see her in the med school office
so late. When we were there yesterday morning, practically everyone we spoke
to said Dogen liked to do her writing late at night, when it was really quiet
over there. Unfortunately, anyone who knew her knew that.
I slid the chair over to the wall opposite the one Mercer was facing. The
lower half of the cabinets were file drawers, each hung with legal-size
Pendaflex folders. Some were divided by color and all were split up by year.
Beyond that, I could make no particular sense of the order or subject matter.
Like Mercer, I held onto my legal pad and tried to make notes about what
categories the documents covered.
For such a logical lady, some of this makes no sense. I can t imagine her
system for finding stuff. She s got scores of folders on Professional
Ethics
Yeah, that was one of her areas of expertise, Coop. She gave a lot of
lectures about it.
Well, wedged in between that and a couple of folders on Regenerative
Tissue is her file on Met Games.
She was quite a jock, apparently.
Yeah, but Laura Wilkie could have straightened out her life a bit. Organized
everything. You go in looking to renew your baseball season tickets and it s
somewhere in the middle of brain tissue. Two file drawers later you get to all
the stuff about running equipment. Uh, uh Laura wouldn t stand for it. She d
have all the brain material in one place and the sports files in another.
I was getting bleary-eyed from looking through file labels and listings. I
had wanted to get a sense of Gemma Dogen and, beyond that, none of these
documents would have any meaning unless they surfaced later as a piece of the
investigation.
Mercer was photographing the items on the desktop as I stood up and stretched [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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