Maggie’s World
“Are you sure this
isn’t just a trick to get me arrested again?” Stephan asked as he and Maggie
strode down the first floor hallway of the New Orleans Police Department’s head
quarters.
A uniformed officer
passed them to the right without blinking an eye. Maggie was glad that Stephan had complied
with her request to dress down and in some form of normal. For him, that was a silky black button up
shirt and black jeans. A black baseball
cap covered his normally spiky hair, and he pulled the cap down almost low
enough to obscure his eyes. He was
devoid of his occasional goth
makeup. If not for his abnormally pale
skin, people would have no reason to suspect he was a creature of the night.
For herself, Maggie
had also dressed to stand out as little as possible. She wore blue jeans and a gray T-shirt, and
kept her hair in a loose ponytail under a fisherman’s hat. She figured that she and Stephan could easily
pass for innocent visitors.
Night had fallen
outside, and the lights in the building seemed to have dimmed as well. She supposed that was just as well given the
darkness of the work she was here to perform.
The linoleum floor reflected some light so as not to create a total
black hole, but the scuffs and scrapes littering the surfaces took away most of
the shine that might otherwise be there.
Judging by the
first floor of the headquarters, it was difficult to tell that a police
department operated there rather than an insurance company or a
corporation. Behind the main lobby door,
however, was a fully functional police department and a jail. Cells filled the second and third floors,
while detectives and supervisors were captive on the fourth and fifth. The first floor housed administrative
personnel. The basement housed the
target she needed tonight.
They’d only seen
two haggard looking men in suits, both of them with their ties loosened as if they’d
been hanging from them only moments before.
At
As they approached
the double doors that would take them into the heart of the station, Maggie
grabbed Stephan’s arm and stopped him.
“Are you sure this key card will get me in?” she asked.
“The guy who sold
it to me said that it would, and he’s never done me wrong. Just trust me, babe,” Stephan said, sporting
his confident smile.
“Yeah, I’ve heard
that before and those nights have always ended badly.”
Stephan tugged on
the bill of his hat and shrugged his shoulders.
“Not tonight. Let’s do this.”
They walked side by
side into the lobby, heads down, multiple contingencies ready depending on the
conditions inside. The room was a long
and thin rectangle with a wall length glass window on the far side. Three stations were set up that were usually
manned by receptionists who took turns greeting visitors to the
department. A door on either side of the
window led into the bowels of the building.
Maggie peeled off to
the right. Only one person worked
reception this late at night. She was in
her chair, but back further into the offices parked behind a computer. She didn’t look up when Stephan and Maggie
entered. Maggie proceeded to the door
that Stephan told her would lead to an elevator down to the morgue. He’d said he’d never been down there, but
he’d seen the signs on his multiple trips to the clink. Maggie remembered seeing a sign for the
dreary place on her recent visit to see Reed.
She placed her back against the wall beside the door and willed herself
still. She didn’t really become
invisible, but when she concentrated, she could make herself almost impossible
for the average joe to
see. She had no idea how it worked and
didn’t care. Knowing that the key card
Stephan bought wouldn’t get them in the main door,
they would need some good deception to get the plan started.
Stephan walked up
to the middle window as if he were going to the bank. He was very possibly about to go to jail and
he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. He put his palms flat against the ledge and
leaned in close to the glass.
“Hey, I need a
cop,” he said, slurring his words a little.
She didn’t move to
see the receptionist, but Maggie could hear movement inside the room. “What can I do for you, sir?” the woman
asked.
Stephan banged his
fist against the glass. “I need a cop, I
said.”
“Do you have a
problem, sir?” the voice asked again, this time more annoyed. The woman spoke to someone over the radio in
lowered tones.
Backing away from
the glass, Stephen squinted his eyes and pursed his
lips. “You ain’t
here for the people,” he said. He then
lifted a foot and kicked the window, his black boot leaving a smudge on the
window after bouncing off.
“Calm down,” the
woman said from inside.
Maggie could hear
steps growing louder from inside the door where she stood. Two people were coming and Stephan was likely
in a world of trouble. She hoped that he
had all his outstanding warrants taken care of, and a good story concocted to
explain his behavior tonight. Otherwise,
he’d be spending some time in jail and she wouldn’t be bailing him out anytime
soon.
The door opened and
two officers filed out. They both wore
the standard dark blue slacks and baby blue shirt. One had a navy police hat on covering a
standard of gray hair. The officers had
one hand on the handguns at their sides, ready to deal with their unruly
visitor.
The door worked as
Maggie had hoped, opening wide, then falling back into place slowly with the help
of a piston powered pump. The policemen
charged past her without a glance in her direction and left the door to close
on its own. Maggie turned through the
opening in a fluid movement and began searching for signs as she walked, not
even noting the sound of the door closing behind her. The initial hallway ended in a “T” and on the
wall in front of her was indeed a sign providing directions to the various
departments in the building. The morgue
was to the left and down.
The hallways inside
were clearly lighted and it could have been
Maggie came to the
side by side elevator and stairwell, and looked at the sign that said “To
Morgue.” The stairway would be quickest
and would likely provide one last sure path of solitude before bursting into
the morgue, where she’d probably scare some poor nerdy medical examiner. The card swiper
beside the door handle loomed over it like a barracuda ready to extract
punishment on anyone foolish enough to try to open the door.
Pulling the hot
card out of her back pocket and a pair of thin rubber gloves, Maggie shook her
head. She wanted it to work, but she
didn’t want to have to go down the stairs and perform her deed. She supposed that after going to the trouble
of buying the card and getting this far into the police headquarters, though,
she couldn’t back out now. Sighing, she
pulled on the gloves and she slid the card through the device. The red light at the top changed to green,
and an internal mechanism in the door clicked.
Wasting no more
time, Maggie opened the door and sprinted down the stairs. She covered three flights before a heavy,
black door appeared labeling itself as the morgue. She swiped her card again, and it triggered
the door to open. She pulled on it with
swift force and charged through. Finding
herself inside her destination, Maggie searched for her next target.
The lights were
dimmed in the room, and Maggie let her eyes adjust momentarily to the
darkness. Two halls branched off from
the small room where she’d entered. It
appeared to be a supply area. Each wall
was lined with cabinets and bins of medical supplies sat on the floor. One wall had a counter that held newspapers
and books. She grabbed several of both
and continued. At the end of the hall to
her right, she could see what looked like small offices branching from it. The walkway to the left had only one door at
the end. She broke for the left without
further hesitation.
She entered the
room and saw for what she was looking.
Along the walls, rows and rows of body compartments covered the surface
like checkerboard squares. If needed, it
appeared that the city of
The box fronts were
black metal and about two feet by two feet.
Each had a slot at the front to hold a card with identifying information
for the occupant. Maggie assumed that if
there was an empty slot, there would be no body. Scanning the cards to look for Marco’s name,
or his alias, Maggie didn’t find one in the ten engaged compartments. There were two unnamed bodies. She supposed that since Marco didn’t have an
ID and went by multiple names, they might not put positive identification on
him yet.
After setting down
her stack of newspapers and books, Maggie pulled open the drawer of the first
card showing no name. The tray slid out
smoothly and rattled like a worn out file cabinet as the metal passed over ball
bearings. The corpse was inside of a
black body bag, zipped up tight to totally conceal its contents. The way the top end of the bag stuck up
reminded her of an uncut green bean. Maggie
felt of the bag to determine if she needed to pull the tray out all the
way. The coarse material of the body bag
did not hide the head underneath her hand, nor dampen the feeling of disgust
that settled in the pit of her stomach.
Unzipping the bag,
Maggie hoped that this was Marco. She
didn’t know if she could take looking at some other dead person, not to mention
that she didn’t have time to be wrong. As
the cloth parted to reveal flesh beneath, however, it didn’t take long to
realize that she had the incorrect compartment.
For a moment, Maggie had the odd feeling that she was looking at
herself. The body inside was a female
with dark hair and fair skin. Her eyes
were closed and sunken slightly, and her lips were tinted blue. Maggie stopped unzipping the bag, thankful
that the cause of this woman’s death was not grossly evident. She looked at her, and wondered briefly about
the deep peace that Maggie might never have, and pulled the zipper closed.
The next
compartment with an unidentified body had to be Marco. She noticed on this card the “m” marking
labeling it as male. Maggie cleared her
mind and pulled open the compartment, not allowing herself
time to contemplate anything before unzipping the body bag. The sound of the teeth passing through the
clasp of the zipper sounded like a machine gun in the empty chamber. She looked around to the far end of the room
to confirm no one had yet discovered her.
Marco’s body was
indeed inside the bag. His eyes were
closed and sunken into his head more than one might expect with a body dead
only one day, especially after preservation with the coroner. While his face did not look peaceful, it also
did not look frozen in fear. His lips
seemed to be perked into a perpetual smirk, as if he knew his death would bring
more trouble to Drake than his life, and that pleased Marco. Maggie didn’t doubt that was true.
She unzipped the
bag until she could see his naked chest.
Several bullet wounds, all within millimeters of each other, appeared to
have partially healed, but the thin layers of skin that had formed over the
wounds were surgically pierced with a scalpel.
The medical examiner must have done at least a cursory exam of his body,
but judging by the lack of a full Y cut to open the chest, a complete investigation
had not been done. The state of the
knife wound likely made the ME wonder what was going on with the corpse. While the bullet holes were almost unnoticeable,
the knife wound on the left side of his rib cage stood out like a bloody red
neon sign. The flesh around the hole had
putrefied and turned black, increasing the original size of the wound. A green puss appeared to have bubbled out of
it at one end, and still looked sticky where it clung to Marco’s cold, dead
skin.
Though she found it
harder than she would have imagined, Maggie pulled her eyes away from the
wound. She zipped up the bag and didn’t
mind not saying goodbye to Marco.
Bending down, she picked up her bundle of combustible material off the
floor and began spreading it over the body bag.
When it was covered with books and newspapers, she pulled a small vial
of lighter fluid out of her jeans pocket.
She doused the pulp with every ounce of liquid, then
replaced it in her pocket.
Carefully, so as
not to disturb the thin papers over Marco’s body, she returned the drawer to an
almost closed position. Retrieving a
matchbook out of her back pocket, Maggie hoped that she wouldn’t have trouble
bringing some last warmth to Marco’s body, assuming he wasn’t in a hell
somewhere feeling the heat for eternity.
She folded the book over so that the front flap provided more friction
for the end of the match. The first time
she pulled the small stick through, nothing happened. Maggie took a breath and tried again. This time, the match hissed, and a flame
raged out of the charcoal end.
Maggie backed away
a couple of feet so that only her hand and arm were near the box. She tossed the match in the compartment. Flame immediately burst forth from the accelerated
tender. The flames licked up toward her
hand and she felt searing heat near her flesh, but none touched her skin. An orange glow filled the otherwise dark room
and she new that if anyone was paying attention at
all, she could be in trouble.