The Perfect Body, page 12
part #8 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
“You get to look at that all day?” Pat asked me. “Depressing.”
“I’ll get used to it,” I said, stepping back from the window. “Besides, if you look off to the right you can see trees.”
“Over there!” Emma’s face was pressed to the window. We rushed over to see an ambulance pulling away from the side of the building and out onto the main road. It gave a single whoop of its siren as it slowly moved out of our sight.
“I hope whoever it is, is okay,” I said. “It’s always kind of disturbing to hear an ambulance and imagine—”
“Hello,” a voice echoed from somewhere in the building. “Anyone inside?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Security,” the voice yelled as we scrambled to leave the office. “Anyone here? Gotta clear the building.”
Pat quickly locked the door behind us and the three of us went thundering down the stairs. Pat’s long legs could take the steps three or four at a time, but Emma still got to the ground floor first. I, of course, brought up the rear. The ground floor was abandoned when I got there. I eventually found Pat, Emma, and a security guard outside, next to Emma’s car.
“Was someone hurt or what?” Emma was asking him.
The young man frowned.
“I not supposed to say nothing, Auntie.”
“We should probably go,” I said. “We can come back later—”
“Cannot,” the young man said evenly. “Gotta wait for the police.”
“I really have to get home,” I objected. I was starting to feel pressure in my chest, and mentally kicked myself for not having brought my breast pump. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my car with me. And Emma and Pat didn’t seem like they were going anywhere.
Just as I had made up my mind to walk home, a familiar silhouette came lumbering around the corner.
Detective Ka`imi Medeiros.
He nodded to the three of us by way of greeting, and again to the young guard to dismiss him.
“Mister Flanagan,” he said. “Professor Barda. Professor Nakamura. What brings you here today?”
“My dean told me to come here. So I did.” I knew Medeiros thought I was a loose cannon, so maybe he’d be impressed by my compliance with authority.
“Your dean. Is that Geoffrey Gunderson?” Medeiros asked.
“No, Dean Gunderson is Arts and Sciences. My dean is Dan Watanabe in the College of Commerce. Our new offices are in that building over there. Dan asked me to go in and pick the office I wanted, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“How about you, Professor Nakamura?” He asked Emma. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m helping Molly make good choices,” Emma replied.
“I’m doing research for my Mysterious Mahina series,” Pat said before Medeiros had a chance to address him. “For Island Confidential.”
“Did any of you see anything?” Medeiros asked. No one answered him. If we told Medeiros we had seen an ambulance pulling away, we might have to tell him that we saw it from the window of room 312, which would then bring up the awkward question of how we got into room 312.
“We heard a siren,” Emma said. “Then da kine came in the building and yelled at us to get out.”
“Detective, what is this about?” I asked. “Was someone hurt?”
“That’s what we’re trying…”
His eyes flicked to my shirt for a microsecond. He blinked.
“Okay. If you remember anything, any of you, please get in touch.”
Detective Medeiros turned abruptly and walked off.
“What just happened?” I asked. “What did I say?”
“Probably time for you to get home,” Emma said. “Look at your shirt.”
Pat had his back turned to us and appeared to be examining his phone with great interest.
I looked down to see two dark-blue milk stains spreading on the front of my shirt.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The three of us watched Detective Medeiros disappear around the corner of the old hospital building.
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked. “Doesn’t he see hacked-up bodies every day? I can’t believe I scared him off with a little breast—”
“Aah!” Pat interrupted, clamping his hands over his ears.
“You’re not a hacked-up body to Medeiros,” Emma said. “You’re Donnie’s wife. I think it’s different. Eh, you need a ride home?”
I looked down at my stained blouse.
“Do you mind if we kill fifteen or twenty minutes before we go? I’d like to get home after Margaret leaves. I’d rather Donnie saw me like this than Margaret.
“What, you think Margaret cares about your milk stains?” Emma asked. “Isn’t she there exactly to do baby stuff?”
“Yeah, but she used to be my student. That makes it more embarrassing for some reason. Hey, where did Pat go?”
“I dunno. Oh, here he comes. Eh, babooze, couldn’t handle a little grownup conversation about breast milk?”
Pat was sprinting up from the direction opposite to where Medeiros had gone.
“I’m going inside before they lock up the building,” he panted.
“I like come,” Emma said eagerly. “Molly, you can wait down here if you don’t feel like keeping up.”
“What? I can keep up. I’ll just follow you guys. I don’t want to just stand here oozing for twenty minutes. Where are we going?”
Pat led us around the other side of the hospital building, across an overgrown courtyard, through a splintery door, into a dark stairwell. Pat and Emma then bounded up what seemed like 17,000 flights of creaky stairs while I huffed and puffed behind them. Finally, Pat pushed open a door and we emerged into the end of a hallway.
“Sorry, Molly,” he said. “I didn’t want us to risk getting stuck in the elevator.”
“No, it’s fine,” I wheezed, bracing my hands on my knees. “It’s good. I can use the exercise.”
“So how come we’re here?” Emma asked.
“Molly, are you okay?” Pat bent down and tried to look at my face. I nodded, not wanting to waste valuable oxygen by speaking.
“I managed to talk to the security guard before he left,” Pat said. “He was in pretty bad shape.”
“Why?” I heard Emma ask. With my hands clutching my knees, I studied the floor and tried to control my breath so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. The flooring here on the upper level was linoleum, just like in the Inebriates’ Asylum out back. The fancy marble was reserved for the lower floors that the public would see. Or maybe marble was too heavy for anything but the ground floor.
“He told me he was walking around the building, and thought he saw something shining in the bushes,” Pat said. “He went to check it out and saw it was a woman’s blonde hair. That’s when he called the police.”
“Was it a wig?” Emma asked.
“Emma,” I wheezed, “why would he call the police on a wig?”
“Cause maybe it was a stolen wig,” she countered.
“Who would steal a wig and then hide it in the bushes? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sorry to have to tell you this,” Pat said, “but the blonde hair was actually attached to a person. Sad to say.”
I finally caught my breath and stood up.
“Do they know who it was?” I asked.
“He said she was a haole lady, and she was wearing what he called one of those white doctor coats.”
Emma and I looked at each other.
“Bee!” we exclaimed.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Pat said.
“How do you know who Bee Corcoran is?” I asked him.
“Emma’s been keeping me up to date,” Pat said. “Good thing you have an alibi, Molly. In case it really was Bee down there.”
“Me? Why would I want to hurt Bee?”
“Molly, you can’t stand Bee,” Emma said.
“Emma, Shh!”
“What? All the doors on this hallway are closed. No can hear me.”
“You have no idea how loud your voice is,” I whispered. “Anyway, it’s not true. I don’t hate Bee. Not at all. I like Bee.”
“Even when she gives you unsolicited weight-loss advice?” Pat asked.
“She’s only trying to be helpful,” I said. “However misguided her efforts may be.”
“The directory says her lab’s on this floor,” Pat said. “Should be about halfway down on the left.”
“Emma, what did you tell him?” I asked.
Emma shrugged.
We followed Pat to Bee’s lab. No need to do any lock-picking here; the door was unlocked. Pat walked right in, and we followed him.
The lab smelled like cedar shavings and mothballs, with a hint of stinky mammal. Mounted on the wall to our left was a grid of cages, each of which contained a single rat. On the far side of the lab, floor-to-ceiling horizontal blinds clattered softly, stirred by a breeze. Hazy sunlight filtered through the slats.
“Hello?” A slender young man with wide-spaced blue eyes emerged from behind something that looked like a refrigerator. He was wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, and carrying a large cardboard Amazon box. Draped over the top of the box was a white lab coat. I quickly folded my arms over my milk-stained t-shirt and ducked behind Pat.
“Oh, hey,” the young man said. “Did you guys move my stuff?”
“We just got here,” Pat said. “What stuff?”
“Someone moved this,” the young man nodded at the box in his arms. “Looks like everything’s in there, though. No big.”
“We’re looking for Dr. Corcoran,” Emma said. “Is she around?”
“I haven’t seen her today,” the boy replied.
“You work here?” Pat asked.
“Not anymore.” He rested the box on the edge of a nearby counter. “I just came to get my things and say goodbye to my little buddies here. Refill their water, which someone forgot to do today.” He nodded toward the white rats in their cages. Most of the animals were sleeping, but here and there a pink nose twitched through the metal mesh of the cage. Each rat had a water bottle mounted on the cage, and each bottle was filled to the top with clear water.
Maybe that’s what I needed. A water bottle as tall as I was, mounted next to the glider chair in the master bedroom. Then I wouldn’t have to beg people to bring me water when I nursed Francesca. I could just lick the ball bearing at the end of the metal tube.
“We’ll just leave Dr. Corcoran a note, then,” Emma said. We all stepped aside to let the boy pick up his box and leave.
As soon as he was gone, we separated and began poking around. I went over to open the blinds.
“I’ll help,” Pat said as he came over. “This window is way too big for this heavy of blinds. They should’ve used vertical ones.”
“I never liked vertical blinds,” I remarked, watching Pat manipulate the strings carefully to avoid the blinds going crooked. “They remind me of depressing grad-school apartments. But I guess I see the point of them.”
“A balcony?” Emma exclaimed behind us.
“Pretty deluxe,” I said.
“Yeah, not in a Biosafety Level 2 lab,” Emma said. “There’s not supposed to be a window that opens to the outside like—whoa!”
Emma and I stepped back as Pat finished lifting the blinds. A pair of tall French doors opened onto a narrow balcony surrounded by rusty metalwork railing. The center part of the railing had been broken through. An unobstructed breeze blew in, which would have been pleasant if we weren’t standing on the fourth floor next to a busted railing where someone had probably just fallen to her death.
“What’s down there?” I asked Pat. He’d placed one foot on the balcony and was holding on to the door frame with one hand and was leaning out. I could barely stand to look at him.
“Down there is where they found her,” Pat said. “There’s the road that goes around the hospital, and I can see a piece of yellow tape from here. Too bad my ghost cam wasn’t positioned to catch what happened.”
“Ghost cam?” I asked.
Pat came back inside and lowered the blinds carefully.
“I put a camera out to catch supernatural activity,” he said. “But I set it up directly in the front. That’s where the building looks the best.”
“Do you really think that was Bee down there?” I asked. “The person that they found? Bee Corcoran is dead?”
Pat perched on a countertop and folded his arms.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“That boy who was just in here,” Emma said. “Think he did it? He said it was his last day here.”
“You mean she fired him,” I asked. “And for revenge, he pushed her out the window?”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Pat said. “If he killed her, would he come back later to get his things?”
“Maybe to throw us off,” Emma said. “Pun intended.”
“That’s a terrible pun, Emma,” I said. “You’re right, Pat. He was pretty calm for someone who had just murdered someone earlier in the day.”
“Probably a psychopath,” Emma said. “There’s a lot of ‘em out there, you know.”
“Hey, I teach creative writing,” Pat said. “You don’t have to tell me about psychopaths. I don’t know what’s worse, the number of guys who write stories about murdering some girl who rejected them, or the fact that they all think they’re being original and edgy. Okay, as long as we’re here, I’m going to get some pictures.”
“Here?” I asked. “Why?”
But Pat already had his phone out.
“You never know what’s going to come in handy later,” he said.
“Shouldn’t we go?” I asked. “I don’t want to be here when Detective Medeiros figures out their body is Bee and comes back here.”
“Hey, look” Emma called out from a corner of the room. “The phone.”
A black push-button landline phone sat on the countertop, the receiver lying off the hook. A crumpled paper towel lay next to it.
“There’s nothing connecting it to the wall,” I said.
“That’s right,” Emma said. “No wire. How does that fit in? Hmm. Murderer comes in, steals the phone wire so no one can call for help, pushes Bee out the window, closes the blinds, and runs away.”
“Speaking of running away,” I said, “can we go? And how does it help to steal a telephone cord? I’m sure Bee has a cell phone. Had.”
“Eh Molly,” Emma said, “I guess our theory doesn’t work so good anymore, ah?”
“Yeah, whatever. No one left any fingerprints, right?” I asked as the door closed behind us.
“We have an eyewitness who can place all three of us here,” Pat said. “I’m not sure fingerprints will make a difference.”
“Oh. Right,” I said.
“So, still think Bee killed Stephen?” Emma asked me as we followed Pat out.
“Molly,” Pat asked, “you thought Bee killed Stephen Park?”
“No. Maybe.” We followed Pat to the end of the hallway and into the emergency exit stairwell.
“Are Stephen’s parents still on island?” Emma asked. “What did they think of Bee?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think they killed her though, if that’s what you’re asking. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d do.”
“A lot of murderers don’t seem like murderers,” Pat said. “You’d be surprised.”
The stairs seemed a lot shorter on the way down than they had on the way up. But that might have been because we were all running.
It didn’t really hit me until we were downstairs, standing around Emma’s car.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “Bee Corcoran is dead.”
“If it is Bee,” Pat said. “But yeah, who else would it be? Blonde hair, wearing a lab coat?”
“I wonder if it was suicide,” I said. “How sad.”
“Why would Bee commit suicide?” Emma demanded. “She just got the life sciences research award.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Emma,” Pat said. “You never know what kind of things people are struggling with in secret.”
“I know one thing,” I said.
Pat and Emma looked at me.
“Bee is transgender. Was.”
“Nah!” Emma exclaimed.
“How did you know?” Pat asked.
“Stephen told me.”
“How come you never told me?” Emma demanded. “I can’t believe you kept it a secret. You’re usually such a blabbermouth.”
“It wasn’t my place to say anything. If she wanted people to know, she would have told them. And you have no evidence for your claim that I’m a blabbermouth.”
“Why did Stephen tell you about it?” Pat asked.
“Oh, probably to make sure I knew how interesting and awesome Bee was. I’m sure in his mind being trans gives you extra ‘cool’ points or something.”
“Like how he went around fooling people into thinking he was half-Korean cause his last name was Park?” Emma asked.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Pat said. “Anything to strike the right pose.”
“I wonder who’s gonna get her lab space,” Emma said. “Her lab’s got at least twenty percent more square footage than mines.”
“I know you two think Bee led a charmed life,” Pat said, “But Molly, if what you just told us is true…seriously, what would you do if you woke up tomorrow in a man’s body?”
“Go to HR and demand my thirty percent raise,” I said.
“Helicopter!” Emma raised her arms and rotated her hips.
“How about both at once?” I said. “That’d make an impression.”
Pat sighed.
“Okay. I gotta go. Enjoy your straight cis privilege, ladies.”
We watched Pat disappear into the hospital building’s late-afternoon shadows.
“Wow. Tough crowd,” I said.
“He should know I was just kidding about the helicopter thing,” Emma said. “I can’t even hula-hoop.”
