facing toward the glass doors, she picked up his distinctive Southern drawl in the muffled drone coming from behind her. She turned back around.
Bohannon and a tall woman in blue scrubs cleared the wall and came into view on the left side of the reception desk. The detective nodded at Mara and guided the woman toward her. They didn’t stop talking for introductions immediately.
“Once they brought him, or it, in, we didn’t know what to do. I mean, we’re not a bunch of engineers. I’m surprised the EMTs even loaded him up and brought him here. Then once they unloaded the body, if that’s what you want to call it, I couldn’t get anyone to take it. The EMTs wouldn’t even take it back. My own morgue here in the hospital refused to store it, until we figured out what to do,” the woman said.
“I thought you said the ambulance crew reported that they were bringing you an accident victim, a pedestrian who had been struck by a taxi.”
“That’s what they said, but obviously we assumed it would be a human pedestrian.”
Bohannon nodded at Mara, acknowledging her, but still talking to the woman. “What do you mean, he wasn’t human? What was he?”
“Didn’t the administrator tell you guys what was going on when he reported it?” she asked.
Bohannon shook his head. “My lieutenant got the impression that your administrator wasn’t comfortable talking about it for some reason. He was vague, evasive and didn’t want to file an official police report.”
“Sounds like the weasels in the front office,” she said. She turned to Mara and extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Jazz. I’m the head nurse in the emergency room. You look a little young to be a cop.”
Mara took the proffered hand and shook it. “Just an intern helping out with the cases no one else wants to work on,” she said.
“You got that right. This one is not something that’s going to fit in any bureaucrat’s cubbyhole, that’s for sure,” Jazz said.
Bohannon interjected, “What did you mean, not human?”
“Come on. It’s probably better if I show you.” She pointed them back the way they came.
Mara caught Bohannon’s eye. “Maybe I should wait here.”
Jazz read her hesitance. “Don’t worry. There’s no blood or guts. Nothing to lose your lunch over.”
Bohannon waved for Mara to follow, and the nurse led them from the lobby into an alcove containing three sets of beige elevator doors. She pushed the Down button next to the middle doors. They all took on that strange silence that people do as they stepped into the empty elevator cab. Jazz pressed the P2 button. After the doors closed, Mara absently watched the lights above the door move from L to P1 and then to P2. In her not-too-distant past, taking an elevator ride into the ground to check out a “nonhuman” pedestrian might have raised her adrenaline levels to something between hyperfreaked-out and spastic. Now she was just curious. She must be getting jaded.
They disembarked in a parking garage and took a right. Jazz led them along the wall for about one hundred yards and then stopped in front of a pale blue door mounted into the concrete wall. Next to it was a keypad. She tapped in four numbers and yanked on the doorknob.
“The perimeter of the underground parking facility is lined with storage rooms that are only used intermittently for some reason, probably because we are all too lazy or busy to come all the way down here to get stuff,” Jazz said, as they stepped into the dark. A moment later the door closed behind them with a metallic clank. “Wait right here. I don’t want you to trip over something. The brilliant architects of this garage put the light switch on the far wall.”
They heard her shuffle around in the dark room. With a loud snap, a set of fluorescent tubes recessed in the ceiling ignited. The room looked like a concrete bunker with a metal counter and two sets of metal shelves mounted to the wall opposite the door. The room was empty, except for a sheet-covered gurney in the center of the floor. Jazz stood on the far side and waved a hand over the sheet, like a model on a game show.
“This, Lady and Gentleman, is our mystery pedestrian,” she said. “Would you like to take a look?”
Mara paled. “You said he was hit by a taxi? I’m not sure I want to see this.”
“I told you, honey. No blood or guts.”