I glanced around the empty parking lot and across Main Street. A car rushed past, tires swishing over wet pavement. Streetlights were smudges in the fog.
“Hell, not me. I wouldn't even miss a coffee break for Waddell.”
The officer cupped his hand around his lighter and began puffing on a cigarette. “After what he done to that Naismith girl. You know, I remember watching her on TV. Now, I like my women the same way I like my coffee - sweet and white. But I have to admit, she was the prettiest black girl I ever seen.”
I had quit smoking barely two months ago, and it still made me crazy to watch someone else doing it.
“Lord, that must've been dose to ten years ago,” he went on. “I'll never forget the uproar, though. One of the worst cases we've ever had around here. You'd've thought a grizzly bear got hold of -” I interrupted him. “You'll let us know what's going on?”
“Yes, ma'am. They'll radio me and I'll give you the word.”
He headed back to the shelter of his car. Inside the morgue, fluorescent light bleached the corridor of color, the smell of deodorizer cloying. I passed the small office where funeral homes signed in bodies, then the X-ray room, and the refrigerator, which was really a large refrigerated room with doubledecker gurneys and two massive steel doors. The autopsy suite was lit up, stainless steel tables polished bright. Susan was sharpening a long knife and Fielding was labeling blood tubes. Both of them looked as tired and unenthusiastic as I felt.
“Ben's upstairs in the library watching TV,” Fielding said to me. “He'll let us know if there are any new developments.”
“What's the chance this guy had AIDS?” Susan referred to Waddell as if he already were dead.
“I don't know,” I said. “We'll double-glove, take the usual precautions.”
“I hope they'll say something if he had it,” she persisted. “You know, I don't trust it when they send these prisoners in. I don't think they care if they're HIV positive because it's not their problem. They're not the ones doing the posts and worrying about needle sticks.”