Nobody Lives Forever by Edna Buchanan Page B

looked…”
    â€œThe guy with the ponytail? I thought he was gay.” Jim scowled.
    â€œYou’re impossible.”
    â€œHell hath no fury…” He grinned.
    The jukebox in the background made it obvious that Rick was not calling home from the Justice Building. “Where are you?” Laurel asked.
    â€œWe’re grabbing a bite to eat downtown,” he said. “Our case took a wrong turn in court. We have some things to go over.”
    â€œWho are you with?”
    â€œJim and Dusty.”
    â€œOh.” Laurel sounded thoughtful.
    â€œI should be there in a couple of hours.”
    â€œYou need to get some sleep. Are you all right?”
    â€œSure. See you later, sweets.”
    Miriam Kelton looked up from her desk at the medical examiner’s office. The man wore a chauffeur’s cap. “We are here to pick up the body,” he announced politely. He glanced casually at a slip of paper that he drew from his pocket. “José López-Gómez.” Miriam looked puzzled. “Do you have a release signed by the doctor?” she said, reaching for the paper.
    â€œ Sí ,” he said, and drew a machine pistol from under his dark jacket. “Where is he?”
    The two attendants, Lester and Sam, dropped their jaws and raised their hands as the stranger prodded a protesting Miriam into the morgue with his pistol. “I don’t know who’s who back here,” she told him in the high-pitched peevish tone usually reserved for a misbehaving grandchild. “I just handle the paperwork.”
    A short, horse-faced man had joined the gunman. He too was armed. The man in the chauffeur’s cap signaled to him, jerking his head toward the covered gurneys in the autopsy room, referred to as the Pit by those who labor there. The second man stalked through the rows, jerking back paper sheets to expose naked bodies.
    The barrel of his own gun aimed at the ceiling, he twisted his neck to peer into the face of a dark-complected corpse. “ No es el ,” he called, snatching the flimsy sheet off another. He stared somberly into the face of an elderly woman. She resembled his grandmother. He crossed himself with his free hand and devoutly rolled his eyes toward heaven. A shotgun victim was next, a man who had already been autopsied.
    â€œ ¡Dios mío! ” the gunman muttered softly, then stopped to scrutinize the corpse more closely, a look of recognition spreading across his face. “Hey, I know him, it’s Pepe!” He reached for the tag that hung from the dead man’s big toe, stared at the name printed there and nodded. “ ¿Que pasa, Pepe? ” He turned to his companion. “ Es Pepe .”
    â€œ ¿Pepe? ” The first man looked interested, craned his neck, then muttered a curse. “ ¡Apurate! ¡Apurate! Hurry up!”
    â€œ ¿Adónde? ¿Adónde? ” said the shorter man, shrugging his shoulders. He swung open the door to another small room. It emitted cold air that smelled sour, like a refrigerator in which something has spoiled. Bodies were stacked three deep.
    The man in the cap brandished the gun. “ ¿Adónde? Where? Where?”
    Miriam exchanged glances with the morgue attendant named Lester, a middle-aged black man. Her snippy look said that this situation had gone just about far enough. “Outside,” she snapped. “The one you want must be in the trailer. Outside.”
    They all stepped out a side door onto the loading dock, as the shorter man swiveled his head back toward the last corpse he had uncovered. “ Adiós, Pepe ,” he said softly.
    A huge refrigerated trailer purred out in the warm, damp parking lot. When Miami broke all records for homicide in 1981, the county had been forced to lease a refrigerated Burger King trailer to store the overflow of bodies.
    The shorter man scrambled up the breakaway stairs and disappeared into the trailer. He