Super Meals: Part Thirty Nine

“I’m on my way,” said Mimi, thumbing the phone off and slipping it into her pocket.

“What was that about,” asked Walter?

“We gotta go. Now.” Mimi pushed past them and went to the door, but stopped when she saw that they weren’t following her. “Come on! I said we gotta go!”

Walter jerked and grabbed a jacket from a hook by the door and tossed it to Adam. “Oh! Sure thing,” he said. “Come on, mate. Let’s go.”

They followed Mimi out the door, with Walter hanging back to close and lock his door, and as Adam went down the steps to the sidewalk he said, “Seriously, where are we going?”

Mimi stopped at the driver’s door and leaned on the roof of the car until Walter caught up with them. As he approached the rear passenger door he stopped as Mimi said, “Walt? That guy that beat you up this morning?”

“He didn’t beat me up…” muttered Walter.

“Adam,” said Mimi, ignoring him, “that guy who brought you your dinner last night?”

“Yeah? What about him?” asked Adam.

“He’s at the morgue, right now, doing something in the laboratory across the hallway from my ex-girlfriend’s dead sister. You guys want answers? Get in the car.”

Walter and Adam shared a quick look, then got in the car without another word.

They drove the first few blocks in silence before Adam asked, “Wait, your ex-girlfriend works at the morgue?”

“Yeah,” said Mimi. “She’s the county coroner.”

“What was her sister’s name?” asked Adam.

“Bethany, why?”

“She’s dead!?”

“You knew her?”

“Holy fuck…” said Adam, dropping his head.

“What’s going on?” asked Walter.

“Yeah,” said Mimi. “What do you know?”

“You know what Bethany did for a living, don’t you?” asked Adam.

“Yes,” said Mimi.

“No,” said Walter.

“She was… She offered…negotiable affection,” said Adam.

“She what?” asked Walter.

“She was a prostitute,” said Mimi. “Jane tried getting her out of it over and over again, but it never stuck.”

“And now she’s dead?” asked Walter.

“Yeah,” said Mimi. “She is.”

“When did it happen?” asked Adam.

“Last night,” said Mimi. She paused in thought for a minute, then said, “Right before your house blew up, actually.”

“What?” asked Adam? “How do you know?”

“Because I was the investigating officer.”

“Where’d they find her?” asked Adam. “Was she in her room at the Down Town Motel?”

“Yeah, how’d you know about that?” asked Mimi.

“I told you, I knew her.”

Mimi threw him a nasty look and he said, “Relax, I wasn’t a customer. She and I used together a couple years back, but when she got clean, so did I. We helped each other out – kept each other accountable. Now that she’s gone…” He sighed. “It’s gonna be rough without her.”

They drove another block in silence, then Adam asked, “Did you show that picture of the guy to Ronnie?”

“What picture? And who’s Ronnie?” said Mimi.

“The guy who’s picture you showed me – the guy who brought my food last night. Did you show that to Ronnie?”

“Ronnie who?”

“The guy who works the front desk at the motel. Maybe he saw your mysterious dude when Bethany checked in.”

They were only a block away from the morgue now, but Mimi swung the car in a hard turn and pulled her phone from her pocket, hitting the redial button. As soon as it picked up, she said, “Jane? Mimi. Stall him, I gotta make a quick stop on the way.”

Doctor Ralph measured out the ingredients very carefully in the lab, and added them to an assortment of beakers. He wanted the mixtures to be stable, but volatile, so he could carry several of them in pockets but have them explode on impact. His firearms lay on a side table next to a hacksaw, a fine metallic dust sprinkled around them. He’d sawed the barrel off of the AR-7, along with the stock, making it little more than an oversized, awkwardly shaped pistol. The shotgun was now several inches shorter as well.

He hummed to himself as he worked, and smiled. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but he would get his test subject.

Out in the hallway, Jane slammed the phone down on the receiver and swore. She immediately covered her mouth in surprise and hoped that Doctor Ralph hadn’t heard her.

He did.

The Down Town Motel was about six blocks from the morgue, and Mimi ran through every intersection on the way. When she finally pulled in, she stormed into the office and slammed her phone on the counter, face up, with a picture of Doctor Ralph displayed.

“Ronnie, is it?” she said.

The desk clerk backed away a step and hit the wall behind him, rattling the keys on the hooks. “Y…yeah,” he said. “I already answered all that other cops’ questions. What do you want?”

“I want you to look at this picture very carefully,” said Mimi. “And then I want you to show me the guest registry for last night.”

He leaned in and peeked at the screen of her phone, then said, “Yeah, that’s him.”

“That’s who,” asked Mimi?

“That’s the guy. That’s what you wanna know, right?”

Adam and Walter entered the room just then, and Adam said, “What guy, Ronnie? You saying he was here last night?”

“Oh fuck, Adam!?” said Ronnie. “Dude, I heard your house blew up! Thank christ you’re alive!” Ronnie moved to come out from behind the desk, but Mimi put a hand on his chest and stopped him.

“Uh-uh,” she said. “Guest registry. Now.”

Ronnie looked at her and glanced towards Adam, who said, “Dude, don’t look at me, I can’t help you out here. Is that the dude?”

“Come on, man, you know I’m clean,” Ronnie said to Adam. “I’m not dealing, I’m not letting anybody else deal outta here no more, all I do is rent to the girls and whatever tourists and drunks don’t know any better.”

“Um, why are you trying to tell him all this,” said Walter, cutting in. “She’s the cop, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but…I mean…” Ronnie wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence.

Mimi got right in front of him, then, and leaned in. He was easily a head taller than her, but judging from how he was backing away, she was very clearly the bigger person. “Do you have any idea how many assholes I’ve had to deal with who will talk to any man in the room before they talk to a woman, even though I’m a cop?” she asked.

“Look, lady, I –” he started.

“Officer,” she corrected him. “You will call me officer, or I will run your ass in right now.”

“For what?” asked Ronnie.

“I’ll figure something out.”

He stared back at her hard, desperately, and stammered a few syllables, but couldn’t make words. He dared to glance over at Adam again, but Mimi caught his face in her hand and forced him to look her in the eye.

“That motherfucker can’t help you now,” she said. “And you got one chance to help yourself. Now show me the goddamn registry.”

Jane was standing at the door of the lab, pacing. She was trying to find a reasonable way to go in there, but every excuse that crossed her mind sounded weak and obviously fake.

She tried to think of Mimi and what she would do.

She straightened up, set her jaw, and pushed her way into the lab.

Everything was wrong.

It was her lab, after all, and she knew where everything was, and where everything went.

But this was wrong. All of her equipment had been pulled out and used and hadn’t been put away correctly. The mass spectrometer was still on and wasting electricity, and whatever samples had been placed in it were still there, waiting to be cleaned out and sterilized. Beakers and burners were set up at any old workstation, apparently, and several racks of test tubes were lined up and stoppered with an ugly brown mixture in them.

On the table next to the racks was a hacksaw and two guns, which had been cut down to size.

And with his back to her, in the middle of it all, was Doctor Ralph himself, humming.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

This jarred Doctor Ralph out of her reverie, but his hands never slipped in their measurements and mixtures. He paused, though, and turned to her and said, “Ah, doctor. Checking up on me, I presume?” He turned back to his work before she could answer, but she moved into the room and spoke anyway.

“Yes, doctor, I was making sure that our facilities here were enough for your needs and that you had everything you…needed.” She felt stupid saying it, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was back to his mixture, and not even looking at her.

He said, “Of course, thank you very much. I appreciate your consideration. Tell me, did you ever determine cause of death for that young lady that you were examining?”

Jane froze at the thought of her sister and felt tears welling up in her eyes, but she swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked the tears away as she opened her mouth to speak.

Then she stopped.

“I’m sorry?” she said. “Who do you mean?”

“The young woman who was murdered at the motel,” said Doctor Ralph. “I’m sure we discussed it previously.”

“No, we discussed an elderly transient gentleman who had been found dead under an overpass,” said Jane. In her mind, curiosity had well overtaken sadness, and rage was knocking on the door. “What do you know about the dead woman?”

Doctor Ralph’s hands shook, ever so slightly, but Jane saw it.

He sighed, stoppered the last bottle in his hand, and shook it as he turned towards her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m going to need you to step away from that door, please, or else I’m going to throw this and most likely kill you.”

            Out in the hallway, the phone rang.

            Several blocks away, Mimi, Walter, and Adam were in her unmarked squad car with the lights on and the siren warming up. She had the pedal to the floor and her phone to her ear.

            After several rings, the morgue’s ancient answering machine picked up.

            “Shit!” said Mimi, waiting for the message to end and the recording to start. When she heard the beep she said, “Jane! It’s Mimi, get the fuck out of there now. I’m on my way, but if you can, get out of the building, get somewhere safe, and call 911…” She heard a click and paused, thinking that the receiver had been picked up. “Jane? Is that you, honey?”

            Doctor Ralph said “No, Officer Spatchcock, I’m afraid Doctor Jane isn’t available to speak right now, but I am very interested in speaking with you.”