Free Red Angel by William Heffernan Page A

places—”
    Adrianna shook her head, cutting him off. “No, I think I’ll wait here in the park. I brought a sketch pad with me. I’ll just find a place to sit and draw. I don’t need this to be any grimmer than it already is.”
    The floor and walls of the lobby were covered with stark pink marble that had not been polished in a long time, and it gave off a dull, flat, lifeless look that offered little hope of comfort. From the lobby Martínez and Devlin entered a long, wide room where the marble gave way to stone. Here a line of identical wooden rocking chairs ran down the room’s center. Freestanding ashtrays had been placed between the chairs, all of which were now empty. Smaller rooms opened off the larger one. Devlin entered one and found an old man lying in an open coffin, its lid standing on end against a nearby wall. There was an elderly woman seated in a chair beside the old man’s bier. Devlin nodded a condolence, or an apology, he wasn’t certain which, then turned away. A stained-glass window at the far end of the room drew his eye. It offered the only natural light in this otherwise dimly lighted space, and it depicted a scene of a sailing ship out atsea. Devlin wondered if it was meant to imply some final journey now under way.
    “How long do bodies stay here?” he asked.
    “Normally, only one day. Burials are done quickly here, because of the heat.”
    “Is there any security when the place is empty?”
    “It is never empty,” Martínez said. “It is our custom to have a family member remain with the body until it is buried the next day.”
    “But that didn’t happen in this case.”
    Martínez shook his head. “The Red Angel’s body never reached this room.”
    “Let’s go see the room it did reach.”
    The office was off the lobby. There were four people inside—a middle-aged woman seated behind a cluttered metal desk and four men lounging about, drinking coffee. All wore lab coats and bored faces.
    Martínez flashed his badge and asked several questions in Spanish, the words coming too rapidly for Devlin to make even a stab at interpretation.
    The woman nodded and signaled to one of the men, who immediately opened a rear door, beckoning them to follow. The man, who was tall and slender and somewhere in his mid-thirties, led them down a dark, narrow staircase that opened into a large, dingy room. Several carts were lined up along one wall, two of which held bodies covered with graying, white sheets. There was a hole in one of the sheets, through which the nose of one corpse protruded as if getting a final whiff of life. To the left was an open bay with two hearses parked in tandem, the hood of one jutting out into the street. An old man sat in a chair beside the open door.
    Devlin raised his chin toward the old man. “Is he the only guard?”
    Martínez relayed the question to their guide.
    He answered with a terse “
Sí. Solo.
”
    Martínez walked to the first of two other doors and opened it. Beyond. Devlin could see a refrigerated room that held more carts and bodies. He closed it and opened the second door, revealing the naked body of a young woman on a mortician’s table. Two men dressed in lab coats looked up quickly. The older of the pair stared at Martínez with annoyance. His younger assistant simply looked startled, as though he had been caught doing something illicit. Martínez displayed his badge and apologized, then turned back to Devlin and shrugged.
    “What time did the body disappear?” Devlin asked.
    Martínez glanced at his watch. “It was about this time of day.”
    “Let’s find out if the old man was working then.”
    The old man stared up at them, a slightly amused look spread across a weathered face.
    Martínez loosed a string of questions, which the old man answered with a nod, a raised eyebrow, and a rapid flow of Spanish that Devlin could not follow.
    “He was working here when the body disappeared,” Martínez said. A small smile played across his