Chapter Eighteen
“Found - come upon unexpectedly or after searching.”
Piper
Alarm clocks are evil and vile. They make constant noise, disrupting sleep and making it hard to stay buried under the covers away from the world.
I don’t know how many times I hit the snooze button, but I do know I didn’t become fully conscious until the shrill ringing of my phone finally had me throwing back my covers and searching for my bag. I didn’t really care who it was, but I wanted the ringing to stop.
“Hello?” I said in relief when I finally silenced the ring. I carried the phone back to my room and climbed back into bed, pulling the covers up over me.
“May I please speak with Piper McCall?” asked the woman on the other end.
“This is her,” I replied, trying to think up something evil to do to the telemarketer that would dare call this early.
“This is Nancy Holland calling from Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.” I pushed the covers back and listened a little more closely. “You called a few days ago about a man who was brought into the morgue.”
“Yes, that’s me,” I said, fully alert now.
“I have Doctor Patricks here and he would like to speak with you.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering if it was the same doctor I saw in the morgue.
The line was silent for a moment and then I heard someone pick it up and a man with a familiar voice came on the line. “Ma’am, I’m Doctor Patricks.”
“Yes, I remember,” I said, thinking of the little card still tucked in the frame of my mirror.
“I wanted to call and let you know the status of the body we discussed.”
I was surprised he called to tell me anything. “Go ahead.”
“It seems that…” He cleared his throat. “The body hadn’t been taken… It was more misplaced.”
“What do you mean misplaced?” I said, my voice rising.
“I was here the night the body was brought in, but then I left and another doctor arrived. He sent the body to be cremated. The paperwork was buried under more paperwork on my desk and I only just found it.”
“The body was cremated,” I said, hollow.
“Yes. Someone came forward and identified him and so the cremation was ordered.”
“Who came forward? Who was it?”
“I can’t divulge that information.”
“But you can tell me all this,” I snapped.
“I didn’t want you to keep thinking someone had stolen a body from the morgue.”
He didn’t want the hospital to get sued and he figured this would keep me from blabbing to the press about a missing body.
“I see,” I said, my mind still spinning. Then I blurted, “You can’t have the picture back.”
“I don’t want it back. I just wanted you to know he wasn’t missing.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning back against my headboard.
“Have a nice day,” the doctor said and then he hung up.
I laid the phone in my lap, still trying to decide how I felt.
On one hand, I was happy someone claimed him and his body wasn’t really missing.
On the other hand, I was disappointed. Because now that I knew the body really hadn’t been stolen, my whole theory that Dex knew more about it than he would admit was pretty weak.
Still, what about my vision? Was it a coincidence? A fluke?
Or was it something more?