Wild (27 page)

He laughed out loud. “Sometimes you’re really funny. Trust me, there’s no way I would have confused you with a virgin.”

I felt insulted. At least he could have pretended. “Hey!” I slammed my fists into his chest, but they just bounced off.

“Really, I might be a little rusty when it comes to women, but the moves you put on me, angel, were not the moves of a virgin.” He was still laughing.

“Are you implying I seduced you into doing something you didn’t want to do?”

“Oh, you seduced me alright starting from the moment you woke up that first morning,” he grinned and paused. “But you sure didn’t seduce me into something I didn’t want to do.”

He took a hold of my hands. “And I hope you’ll continue doing it.”

He kissed me. “So, what were you saying about your connections?”

I gained my composure back. “Carmela.”

“Carmela?”

“Carmela works for the Medical Examiner. She can help us.”

He looked at me and suddenly it looked like a light bulb had gone on in his head. “I have a better idea. Do you think she can get us a fresh body?”

I threw him a questioning look. What had he come up with?

22. Vince’s Deception

“You guys are nuts,” Carmela exclaimed when we stood in her flat several hours later after we had prepared what we needed. She looked at me and then at Annette. It was past midnight, but we hadn’t woken her up. She had been surprised to see us though. Annette had announced herself on the intercom and Carmela had not expected her to have me in tow.

As soon as she had seen us arriving holding hands she had realized something else had to be wrong, rather than Annette’s love life.

“Please, we need your help,” Annette begged.

I tried my most charming smile with Carmela. “How would you like a shiny almost new BMW for your inconvenience?” I felt a little enticement was appropriate for the huge service she would render us.

“You’re kidding!” She didn’t believe me at first, but when I shook my head and stretched out my hand with the car key in it, she understood I was serious.

“I’ll sign the papers over to you when we’re done.”

I already had.

Her mouth was still wide open and even Annette seemed surprised at my gesture. Didn’t she know that these material things didn’t really mean anything to me? I barely used the car anyway. Of course, I would have to get a new one, but I wanted to let Annette choose what car she wanted, since she would be driving it too.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Carmela finally said. She smiled. “And, just so you know, I would have done it without the bribe.”

I winked at her. “And just so you know, I would have given you the car even if you hadn’t agreed to it, as a little thank you for talking Annette into coming back to me.”

I felt Annette press herself against me and I kissed the top of her head.

“How do we get in?” Annette asked.

Carmela frowned. “It’s going to be a little tricky. I hope you guys don’t mind squeezing into a tight space. But what am I saying?” She gave us a knowing look. “Of course you don’t mind.”

The Medical Examiner’s Offices were located in the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street and shared the space with the Police Station. The building made up an entire city block. Breaking into a police station was out of the question, even I had to admit this. However, as an employee of the Medical Examiner’s Office, Carmela had access rights and she would smuggle us in. “We’ll have to take my car, as much as I would like to try out my new ride.”

I was glad, that she seemed to like my gift. She deserved it.

As we piled into her decade old hatchback, I briefly wondered why she had said yes to our plan, especially since we hadn’t told her the whole story. Annette and I had agreed to tell her only what was absolutely necessary, partially to protect her should something go wrong, but also to protect my secret.

Despite the scarce facts we provided her with about the danger Entwhistle represented, she was willing to jeopardize her job and help us. I couldn’t tell what her motivation was, for it surely wasn’t my bribe.

Two blocks away from our destination, Carmela stopped the car.

“Time to get ready.”

All of us got out of the car. Carmela opened up the hatchback. There wasn’t a lot of space, but I squeezed in and pressed my back to the back of the rear seats.

“Your turn, Annette,” Carmela said.

I detected an uncertain look on Annette’s face. She hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Just a little claustrophobia,” Carmela said in Annette’s stead.

“Come on, angel, I’m going to be right here with you.” I opened my arms.

Annette still stood almost frozen.

“It’s not like a regular trunk of a car – you can lift the top off, see?” Carmela showed her. “So, you’re not locked in.”

“Okay.”

Finally Annette stepped into the back and molded her body to mine.

“Everything will be ok.”

Carmela shut the hatchback and got into the driver’s seat.

“And no funny business back there,” I heard Carmela’s voice loud and clear.

I didn’t respond. My arms were wrapped around Annette’s body and my lips were busy kissing her neck. I could feel Annette relax under my touch.

“Thanks,” she whispered, and I knew only I could hear her.

“Anytime, angel.”

Carmela put the car back in gear and drove off. I knew we were only two blocks away from the building, but I could feel that Carmela made a left turn and then a right turn and another left turn. It was more than two blocks. Where was she going? Was I wrong to trust her?

The car came to a stop. I heard the sound of the window opening.

“Evening Carmela,” a male voice said.

“Hey, Michael,” Carmela responded.

“I don’t have you on my roster for tonight,” Michael continued.

“I know,” Carmela said sounding annoyed. “I got paged. Hank’s on vacation and wants me to scan in some reports to review urgently.”

“In the middle of the night?” Michael sounded suspicious.

“Go figure. He’s on a beach in Greece and has no idea what time it is over here!”

“Yeah, that’s Hank!” Michael confirmed.

“He owes me,” Carmela threatened.

“Drive right in.”

I felt the car move forward again for a few hundred yards, make a couple of turns and then stop. She shut the engine off.

“We’re in. Stay in the back, I’ll go in first to make sure nobody is there and to open up the back entrance. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Carmela got out and slammed the car door shut.

I whispered to Annette. “Are you ok?”

“Yes. Just a little nervous, though. It doesn’t happen every day that I break into a morgue.”

“I can’t say it’s a first for me to break in somewhere,” I chuckled.

She turned in my arms and her face was right in front of me. I knew she could barely see me in the dark, but I could see her face clearly.

“Does this now make me Bonnie, from Bonnie and Clyde?”

“Not quite. But while we’re talking about lovers …” I found her lips and sunk my mouth onto them, hungrily exploring her mouth with my tongue. She equaled me in passion and hunger as she responded to my kiss. All of a sudden I felt a cold wave hit me amongst the heat I felt from Annette’s body.

“Cut it out, you guys,” Carmela’s voice penetrated our passionate embrace. She had opened the hatchback.

As we stumbled out of the back of the car, Carmela kept watch. The parking lot we found ourselves in was small and only partially lit. I noticed Carmela had parked as close as possible to the building. She led us to a nondescript door next to a number of trash bins. She had propped it open with a waste basket and led us inside.

We entered a long corridor with doors on each side. The linoleum floor and the light green walls reminded me of a hospital. At the end of the corridor we turned left. Carmela opened the second door we came to and hurried us in. She shut the door behind us.

The office was large and had several cubicles as well as two private offices at one end. We followed Carmela through another door into an even larger room. It looked like an operating theater with benches on one side and a bank of refrigerators on the other. I knew what the refrigerators were for. I had seen them often enough at UCSF’s own morgue.

“What are you looking for?” Carmela asked me.

“I need a body where you guys haven’t performed the autopsy on yet. Preferably a Jane or John Doe.”

“Not a problem. We had three bodies come in today alone, and since we’re a little understaffed, we haven’t done the autopsies yet.”

She walked to the refrigerators and opened one of them. She pulled out the slab and revealed the first body. It was an old woman.

“Collapsed at Bloomingdale’s this morning,” she explained.

I shook my head. “No. That won’t work. What else do you have?”

She closed the refrigerator and opened another one. The body was that of a child. I shook my head again and she rolled the body back.

“This is the last one – we’ve done the autopsies on all the others already.”

She opened another refrigerator door and pointed at the body of a man in his thirties or forties. He had bruises all over his body.

“Accident victim. Hit and run.”

“Perfect!”

As we rolled the gurney over to the autopsy table to have better light I started explaining what we needed to do.

“Gloves everybody. We don’t want to leave any of our fingerprints on the material.”

Carmela provided us with latex gloves which we all put on. I pulled out a large envelope from my jacket pocket and spilled the contents onto the autopsy table.

“We need his fingerprints on each piece of paper, to prove he had the papers in his possession.”

“What are they?” Carmela asked curiously while Annette and I got started on the task at hand.

“Papers on the clinical trial,” Annette explained instead of me. “We’ve made copies of the protocol, the patient enrollment list and Entwhistle’s private notes. It will look like this person got access to Entwhistle’s papers and blackmailed him.”

Carmela raised an eyebrow. “Not bad, but are you sure that it’ll work?”

I continued pressing the fingers of the body onto the papers to leave fingerprints.

“I’ve also prepared a list of payoffs with dates and amounts which will look like Entwhistle actually paid blackmail money to him over the months,” I added.

“But how are you going to make sure the police find the papers? We don’t even know who this guy is. There was no ID on him,” Carmela informed me.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to plant a key on him, that’s why I needed somebody where your colleagues haven’t done the autopsy yet.”

“I don’t understand. What key?”

I was almost done with the fingerprints.

“The key to a locker. We’ll place the papers into a locker at Transbay Terminal and plant the key on his body. When the M.E. does his autopsy, he’ll discover the key. The police will find out what it belongs to and find the papers which will link to Entwhistle. They’ll believe this guy here blackmailed Entwhistle, which in itself will trigger an investigation of why he could be blackmailed about a clinical trial. It’ll raise enough questions for them to look into what the trial was about. Once they realize what Entwhistle has to hide about the clinical trial, namely that it is not sanctioned and extremely dangerous, they will reconsider whether the hit and run was an accident or whether Entwhistle was involved in the death of this man.”

Carmela nodded, and I saw Annette smile proudly.

“There’s just one flaw in your plan,” Carmela suddenly said.

“What flaw?” Annette wanted to know.

“Well, if you have the papers right here to put his fingerprints on it, and want to plant the key on him now, how are you going to get the papers into the locker without the key?”

I grinned. “I’ve thought of that. I have a little workshop in my basement so to speak, and have cut myself a double.” I pulled two identical locker keys out of my pocket.

I pressed the guy’s thumb and index finger onto one of the keys.

“Where are you going to hide it?” Annette asked. “The body is already naked, so we can’t hide it in his clothes.”

“Not a problem. Carmela, I need a small strip of tape.”

She opened a drawer, pulled out a small roll of tape and handed it to me. I cut off a small piece large enough to cover the key completely.

I approached the guy’s pubic area. I pushed aside his testicles giving me better access to his inner thigh. I placed the key in the area between his uppermost thigh and the base of his testicles and stuck the tape over it, pressing it down firmly, so it would stick. I made sure a little bit of the tape would be visible when I let his testicles fall back into place. That way I was certain the key would be discovered during the autopsy.

As I looked up I saw both Carmela and Annette stare at the scene with mild disgust on their faces.

“Let’s not get squeamish here,” I smiled calmly.

“I’m not squeamish,” Carmela said. “Don’t forget, I work here. You just look like a natural doing this.”

“Funny,” I said sarcastically and threw Annette a cautious look.

“I’m fine. No problem. I just didn’t expect to see my boyfriend handle the testicles of some guy.”

“Trust me, there are other things I’d much rather do,” I said while looking deeply into her eyes. After all the things that had happened between us, she surprised me by blushing like a schoolgirl.

I collected all papers and put them back into the envelope which I stuck back into my jacket pocket. As we rolled the body back into the refrigerator, I suddenly heard steps in the corridor. I could tell they were still far away, but they were getting closer.

“Somebody’s coming,” I alerted them.

They both panicked.

“Hide us,” I told Carmela.

She looked around the room frantically until her eyes stopped. I followed them. She stared at the refrigerators. Annette saw it at the same time I did.

“No,” she said.

“There’s no other place,” Carmela insisted.