The DeWitt Science Library looked like some medieval fortress, and to Ruby the computer terminals, video booths, and digital scanners inside seemed tacked on, artificial, like a face-lift on an old dragon.
She moved quickly to one of the open computers and clicked through to her e-mail. Mr. Funk, whoever he was (and however he might smell), had replied to her the night before, attaching the coroner's report.
"Whoa, he sent it to you right away? Lookit you, Mr. G-Funk," said Rex.
"I told you she was for real, the lady," Ruby said. "Now, let's see what this thing looks like."
"Excuse me, you really mean I told you."
"'Scuse me, you nearly wet yourself walking by her door. OK, here it is."
The screen blinked, filled, and the two of them took a half step back. There it was, in black and white.
CASE 156724-1801
NAME: Ramachandran, Vijay Sanjit
Below were his address, his age, his medical conditions. Something about prescriptions he was taking for type 1 diabetes, for arthritis. Another page described tests run on the kidney, liver, brain; then more about the body being dissected and analyzed.
"I'm sorry, but that right there is a horror movie," Rex said. "The Toolbox Murderer, Part II. Seriously, I don't know how people want to do all that to a body."
"Is The Toolbox Murderer the only movie you ever saw?" Ruby replied. "It's the only one you ever talk about. Look, they're forensic experts. It's their job."
"Just be glad you never seen it, is my advice to you."
Rex ransacked his pockets and Ruby hers, finding just enough change to print out the eight pages of the report. Rex pulled the pages out of the machine, peering over his shoulder as if he were worried about being caught. He handed the report to Ruby-"Here, you hold these for a sec"-and turned to go.
"Slow down, where you going?" Ruby said.
"Bushes," he said, using his word for the bathroom.
"You're kidding-now?"
Rex found the men's room on the main floor locked, with an OUT OF ORDER sign on the door. He found a librarian and asked if there were any alternatives. "Elevator three levels down, dear," she replied, "then go left, and left again, then right, than angle left, finally right again. Can you remember that?"
"Thank you, ma'am," Rex said, without really listening.
Ruby followed him down. She did not want Rex getting lost beneath the library now that they had the coroner's report and someone waiting to read it. And he would have, she saw that right away. The subbasement was a world removed from above. Dim hallways, exposed pipes along the walls, no signs or arrows pointing the way. From somewhere close came the drip-drip of leaking liquid.
"Left and left again, and then right, and then… What did she say?" said Rex.
"I'm not the one who talked to her," Ruby answered.
Some of the bulbs were out, and Ruby moved close behind Rex. The two left turns were quick and seemed obvious. The right turn was not. The hallway forked before one intersection and it was not clear whether they should take a hard right or the slanted one.
"Oh no, three minutes and we're lost," Ruby said. "That's got to be a record, even for you."
"Well, one of us is lost and in need. I'm about to get whatyoucallit, when scuba divers come up outta the water too fast-"
"The bends."
"-my back teeth already floating."
Another turn, another dim hallway.
"We're gonna end up in the morgue, with bodies tumbling all over us," Ruby said. According to DeWitt rumor, whispered by older kids to younger ones, the morgue was a cavern under the library where the forensics department stacked bodies.
"Ruby, you take that back right now," Rex ordered. "You're gonna put a hex on us down here."
Finally, Ruby saw it: pretty much a hole in the wall with a male/female sign on the door. Hard to believe any librarian would send two kids down to this ruined-looking place. The woman must have messed up her directions. Or Rex had.
Ruby waited as Rex bumped around inside like a chubby rooster trapped in a crate. "Looks like nobody cleans in here, Ruby. There's toothpaste and things all over in here," he called through the door.
"Would you hurry up?" Ruby wanted to drop off the coroner's report to the Window Lady, and fast. She wandered a little ways down the hallway, three steps and one, then noticed a heavy door marked EXIT.
She stopped. To where? Where were they, exactly?
"Ruby, where'd you go? Let's get out of here," came Rex's voice from behind her.
"How? You have any idea where we are?"
"I been counting right and left turns, so yeah, pretty much."
"You mean like you figured out where the Window Lady lived? No way we can get back. I think we should just go out here. It says exit. Can you see anything through that hall window up there?"
On his tiptoes, craning his neck, Rex peered up through a small barred window near the hallway ceiling. "I don't know," he said. "It's outside, it goes outside; looks like there's a tree out there. I can't tell."
"One way to find out." Ruby pushed on the door-a fire exit, she saw-that opened easily to a flight of crumbling concrete stairs that went up and out of the building. She propped the door open, crept up the stairs for a better look-and stiffened.
She called to Rex in a low voice.
Underground hallways ran under the entire campus (or so Ruby had heard), connecting the library, the university buildings, the Lab School, all of it. And the forensics building, where her dad worked, was next to the science library.
The crumbling steps led to a narrow alleyway between two buildings. To the left was what looked like a small courtyard; Ruby saw a couple of old flowerpots and a wooden bench. To the right, just a few steps down, was a thick window that Ruby knew very well from the inside: the main forensics lab.
The crime scene.
She moved to get a closer look. Rex wedged a stick between the door and the wall so they could get back in and followed.
Through the thick window, the lab looked like it always did. Refrigerated cabinets banking the walls. Rows of work counters piled with the tools of forensics: racks of test tubes, circular centrifuges used to purify substances, pipettes; the hulking chromatographs, instruments that separated chemicals. There were lockers, too, where people hung their jackets and stored their lunches, and-straining now, looking at a steep angle through the glass-Ruby could make out the Toxin Archive, the large glass cabinet containing hundreds of poisons for research.
She leaned forward to get a better look at it-and ducked.
Occupied! Two men with thin latex gloves suddenly stood and came into view. Not regular police, either; older, much more serious-looking. Rex was down on the ground, staring up. What now?
Ruby instinctively pulled her sketchbook out of her back pocket and opened to a blank page. She sketched the lab from memory.
She counted three and one in her head several times, then peeked at Rex, who nodded. The two lifted their heads and had another look. The men had their backs to the window now. They appeared to be searching through a locker on the back wall that looked like it could be her dad's.
"Oh no," Ruby whispered.
The men's movements seemed to slow down: They had found something, something small, and were handling it with their gloves; Ruby strained to see what. And then she knew. A glimpse of red between pale-green gloved fingers told her all she needed to know. Two of the small, red-tinted vials from the Toxin Archive.
Ruby turned away. She assumed that the killer had gotten the poisons from the archive cabinet, and now these detectives, or whatever they were, had found two of them. In her dad's locker? Now, why on earth would-
"Ruby, they left-the men-in a hurry," whispered Rex. She sensed rather than heard footsteps.
"Move," she said.
Rex took three long steps and pulled on the door into the library. "Uh-oh," he said. Hadn't he propped it open? He looked down. The stick had fallen out.
"You there!" came a man's voice.
This was crazy, Ruby thought. Busted before they ever got started, all because the rooster had to find the bushes.
Rex pulled again, harder. The door swung open.
Into the subbasement hallways, half running, staying in the shadows close to the walls. One left turn, another, then right and left again, and through a door well before they looked back. Nothing. Waiting. Listening. Only that steady dripping noise and their own breath.
Casual now, like a couple of kids goofing off, Ruby and Rex wandered back in the direction of the elevator. Hours it seemed, strolling, moseying, wanting to run; and then there it was. Dumb luck, nothing else. Both took a step back when the doors opened, as if a policeman would lunge out. But it was empty, like most of the main library, yawning and sleepy as always.
Neither felt safe until their feet were back on College Avenue and they had passed Trevor's Tropical Corner Store, the two wig shops (House of Wig, and House of Wigs, plural), and the Orbit Room bar, and were stopped out front of Sister Paulette's Bakery, where most everyone in the Terraces seemed to spend some part of their day.
It was a miracle Rex did not stick his head into every one of those places, even the wig shops. He actually looked like-what was it?-like he was in a hurry. "This thing will take care of it," he said.
"What thing?"
"The report. The lady's gonna solve the crime so we can get our normal livelihoods back."
"Normal livelihoods? You mean, making fun of Simon and trying on orange wigs at the wig shops?"
"They're burnt orange. And you can hate the man, but why you want to go and hate a man's livelihood?"
"'Cuz that's who I am," said Ruby, now staring up at the window of 921, a mirror of gray light. "I just wonder who she is."
Looking through the other side of that window, a step back from her usual spot to avoid being seen, Mrs. Whitmore wished for a moment that she hadn't responded to the children's note. It was impulsive, with no thought of the possible consequences: very unlike her.
Too late now; the children were almost back.
"Why must they all walk in the middle of the street?" she said aloud, turning from the window.
She removed an advertisement from her bulletin board-Emmet Sloane and Bernie Diaz, Attorneys at Law-and made a phone call. A recorded voice answered, followed by a tone.
"Is this recording? Oh dear, I guess so. Bernie? Why, hello. It's me, Clara. Clara Whitmore. I do hope you'll forgive my dropping in on you like this after so many years. I so hope you are well. But I'm calling to send you a client. It's someone who-"
Beep. The machine cut her off.
She redialed. "I am sending you a client, Bernie; I hope you don't mind. You will know who it is the minute he walks in the door, and I can pay for your time, if needed. I hope we can catch up very soon."
She hung up. Not much time. She folded the ad in half, wrote For Ruby on it, and pushed it under the door. It disappeared instantly, replaced by a sheaf of papers coming the other direction-the coroner's report.
She swept the report off the floor and abruptly stood. She faced the door, light-headed. What was it? Nothing; nerves, maybe. They were kids, for heaven's sakes. She had seen them a hundred times. They seemed perfectly nice, if a little scruffy. Surely she would think of something to say as soon as they knocked.
But the knock never came.
