Girl Missing Read Free Page A

basement. She glanced up once and saw that he was staring straight ahead, as though afraid to look anywhere else, as though afraid he’d lose what control he still had.
    When they stepped off the elevator, he paused, glancing around at the scuffed walls, the tired linoleum floor. Overhead was another bank of flickering fluorescent lights. The building was old, and down here in the basement you could see the decay in the chipped paint, the cracked walls; could smell it in the very air. When the whole city was in the process of decay, when every agency from social services to trash pickup was clamoring for a dwindling share of tax dollars, the ME’s office was always the last to be funded. Dead citizens, after all, do not vote.
    But if Adam Quantrell took note of his surroundings, he did not comment.
    “It’s down this hall,” said Kat.
    Wordlessly he followed her to the cold storage room.
    She paused at the door. “The body’s in here,” she said. “Are you … feeling up to it?”
    He nodded.
    She led him inside. The room was brightly lit, almost painfully so. Refrigerated drawers lined the far wall, some of them labeled with names and numbers. This time of year, the occupancy rate was running on the high side. The spring thaw, the warmer weather, brought the guns and knives out onto the street again, and these were the latest crop of victims. There were three Jane Does. Kat reached for the drawer labeled 373-4-3-A. Pausing, she glanced at Adam. “It’s not going to be pleasant.”
    He swallowed. “Go ahead.”
    She pulled open the drawer. It slid out noiselessly, releasing a waft of cold vapor. The body was almost formless under the shroud. Kat looked up at Adam, to see how he was holding up. It was the men who usually fainted, and the bigger they were, the harder they were to pull up off the linoleum. So far, this guy was doing okay. Grim and silent, but okay. Slowly she lifted off the shroud. Jane Doe’s alabaster-white face lay exposed.
    Again, Kat looked at Adam.
    He had paled slightly, but he hadn’t moved. Neither did his gaze waver from the corpse. For a solid ten seconds he stared at Jane Doe, as though trying to reconstruct her frozen features into something alive, something familiar.
    At last he let out a deep breath. Only then did Kat realize the man had been holding it. He looked across at her. In an utterly calm voice, he said, “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”
    Then he turned and walked out of the room.

K AT SHUT THE DRAWER AND FOLLOWED Adam into the hall. “Wait. Mr. Quantrell.”
    “I can’t help you. I don’t know who she is.”
    “But you thought you knew. Didn’t you?”
    “I don’t know what I thought.” He was striding toward the elevator, his long legs carrying him at a brisk pace.
    “Why did she have your phone number?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Is it a business number? One the public might know?”
    “No, it’s my home phone.”
    “Then how did she get it?”
    “I told you, I don’t know.” He reached the elevator and stabbed the UP button. “She’s a total stranger.”
    “But you were afraid you knew her. That’s why you came down here.”
    “I was doing my civic duty.” He shot her a look that said, No more questions .
    Kat asked anyway. “Who did you think she was, Mr. Quantrell?”
    He didn’t answer. He just regarded her with that impenetrable gaze.
    “I want you to sign a statement,” she said. “And I need to know how to reach you. In case the police have more questions.”
    He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card. “My home address,” he said, handing it to her.
    She glanced at it: 11 FAIR WIND LANE, SURRY HEIGHTS . Sykes had been correct about that phone prefix.
    “You’ll have to talk to the police,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “Routine questions.”
    “Is it a homicide or isn’t it?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    The doors slid open. “When you make up your mind, call me.”
    She slipped into the elevator after