Free K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 12 - Death at the Wheel by K.J. Emrick Page B

doing this.  She’d call him on her cell phone to let him know, but there was that whole thing about her not owning a cell phone.  So.
    The call she had gotten from that eerie voice in the static came to mind again.  If it was connected to the Town Hall, it couldn’t mean anything good.
    For now, she flattened herself against the side wall of the elevator as it dinged and opened up onto the basement level.  Subtle, she told herself with a frown.  Real subtle.  No one would ever think it was suspicious for her to be down here if they saw her pressed up against the wall, hiding.
    Right.
    Clearing her throat she caught the doors with her hand as they started to close and stepped through.  The elevator opened up on a T intersection, a hallway leading to her left and right and one leading away straight ahead of her.  She knew her way to the morgue.  Thankfully, there was no one around.
    It was darker down here in the basement level where long fluorescent bulbs hung suspended in their fixtures from a bare concrete ceiling.  The walls were poured concrete as well, part of the original foundation.  The floors were tiled with grayish-brown squares that were cracked at their corners and scuffed from years of foot traffic and hospital gurneys being run over them.  Equipment and boxes full of file folders were stacked up against the walls haphazardly, leaving a narrow space to walk through. 
    She started down the hall in front of her, hearing voices at the far end.
    “Great,” she whispered to herself.  She’d been hoping that everyone would be on dinner break or something but now she would have to figure out a way to get past at least two hospital employees, based on the conversation she was listening to.  Sports.  Two men talking about sports.
    At the end of the hall a brighter light shone from inside a room, through one of those industrial grade windows with metal mesh set into the glass.  The door next to it was painted a dull green with MORGUE spelled out in black letters.  Under that, someone had taped up a hand drawn sign on orange construction paper that read “No admittance to the living dead.”
    Darcy smiled at the lame joke and stood back a little to watch through the glass.  The door was open a crack, which was why she could hear the two men inside so well.  They were both tall and skinny, she saw, wearing blue scrubs and blue gloves and blue hairnets.  One wore glasses.  The other had a big, bushy brown mustache, big enough to make Yosemite Sam jealous.  Those were about the only differences between the two.
    “I’m telling you, they really should move the Buffalo Bills to Toronto,” said the one with the mustache.  “It would make up for America taking the Expos away from Montreal and then renaming them the Nationals.  It’s like America has to make everything in the world theirs or they can’t enjoy it.”
    The one in the glasses laughed.
    “I mean,” the mustache went on, “Toronto could take the Buffalo Bills and call them the Canadian Mounties or something.  You don’t see Canada trying to make up for an inferiority complex, do you?”
    The Morgue room was bright with overhead lights that reflected off light green walls and a bright white floor.  Against the far wall Darcy could see the nine square metal doors of the cadaver freezers, locked and secured.  Three stainless steel examination tables stood in a row across the center of the room.  The two Morgue assistants were busy over one of the tables, and at first Darcy thought they were prepping a body for an autopsy.  Maybe even Jarred Perrigon’s body.  Then she saw the one with the glasses lift up a hand with three cards in them and throw them down on the table.  They were playing a game.  Poker, most likely.
    “Bam,” the guy with glasses almost shouted.  “How d’you like them apples?”
    Mustache Man groaned and shook his head.  “You have the best luck of anyone I’ve ever seen.”
    If that was true, Darcy