Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman

Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman Read Online Free PDF
Author: Alan Edward Nourse
Tags: Fiction, General
her."
    "Frank, you don't understand. Pam's dead. She was dead when the hiker found her. We brought out her body."
    The big man stood frozen by the door for long seconds. Then in horrible slow motion he raised a huge clenched fist and drove it smashing into the wall by the door, once, twice, three times,
    \
    until the plaster crumbled. "You aren't lying to me?" he said finally. "This isn't some kind of lousy joke?"
    "1 don't make that kind of joke," the Super said, "and I'm not lying. I'm as sick about it as you are." His voice broke momentarily. "I don't know what happened up there, Frank, but whatever it was, it was something foul. Doc Edmonds should still be there at the morgue in Wenatchee. He may have some answers by the time you get there, if you want to go down."
    He didn't know how he got there, his vision frozen down to a lunnel, his mind frozen, his emotions frozen. He didn't even know where the morgue in Wenatchee was located, but presently he found it, a long, gray, antiseptic-smelling room with two bare stainless-steel tables and white bathroom tiles on the floor dipping down to two metal drains. A bank of big filelike drawers along one side of the room, with red tags on the doors. At the end of the room was a small office-laboratory with glass windows looking out onto the morgue room. He saw Dr. Harry tidmonds there, writing on a long yellow legal pad. The doctor, Ihin and bearded and fortyish, came out to meet him. "Frank, I'm sorry as hell about this. ..."
    Frank shook his head. "Nothing you did."
    "If there's anything I can do . . ."
    "Yes. You can tell me what happened."
    Doc spread his hands. "It looks like pneumonia, plain and simple. She'd been dead about ten hours when the hiker found her on Wednesday. That's about all I can tell you."
    "Pneumonia! I can't believe it. Doc, I was up at four Monday morning, helping her stuff her pack for that patrol. She wasn't sick then, not even a little. She hasn't been sick all summer, and she was in absolutely prime physical shape on Monday morning. Now you tell me what kind of pneumonia cuts somebody like that down in forty-eight hours or less?"
    "I don't know. Sometimes an atypical bug turns up."
    "Did you take any tests?"
    "I took a sputum smear and stained it. It just showed a gram-negative rod, looked a lot like an ordinary colon bacillus except it didn't take the stain very well. But some strains of E. coli can be murder when they get into the lung."
    "What about cultures?"
    Doc sighed. "I plated out the sputum, of course, and some lung tissue, and some blood. But I'm not sure anything will grow, it was almost thirty hours post-mortem before we even got the stuff in an incubator. The X rays were pretty plain, though." He pulled out films and stuck them up on a viewer. "I took these with a portable machine. Even post-mortem you can tell there was no functioning lung tissue at all. Solid beefsteak. And my physical exam confirmed it—no air movement at all."
    "But so fast ..." Frank groped for something to say. "What about the autopsy?"
    "No legal permission. Her only family is her father. We contacted his engineering office in New York. He's down in the jungle in southern India somewhere, designing artesian wells. There aren't any phones, no way to reach him."
    "What about the Coroner?"
    "He's satisfied there was no foul play. Won't issue the order."
    "Look, I was engaged to that girl," Frank said angrily. "Maybe not officially, exactly, but I was. Let me give permission for an autopsy."
    "That wouldn't satisfy a judge, Frank. I'm sorry. But that reminds me." He picked up a small box from the office desk and handed it to Frank. "I think you ought to have these, legal or not."
    The box contained two plain gold earrings and a small star-sapphire pendant on a white-gold chain. There was a brownish smudge on the oval surface of the blue stone. Frank worked consciously to control his shaking hands as he tucked the box in his pocket. "I want to see her, Doc."
    The
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