Dark Crimes: Great Noir Fiction From The '40's To The '90's (Jerry eBooks) by Ed Gorman (ed)

Author:Ed Gorman (ed) [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, Crime, dark, Detective, Hard-Boiled, Mystery, noir
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2013-12-22T07:00:00+00:00

Tony

William Relling

William Relling is currently a screenwriter in Hollywood where he continues to write quite good horror stories that seem, slowly, to be edging more toward the crime category. He has his own style and it is nowhere more evident than in his fine horror novels.

First published in 1990.

They found what was left of the night nurse, the pretty one named Theresa, stuffed in a linen closet near the tub room on the second floor. She wasn’t very pretty when they found her. One of the housekeepers opened the door and saw her first, and she screamed and screamed. They let her go home early for the day.

Judy, the head nurse on the day shift, called the police. A couple of orderlies took Theresa’s body down to the hospital morgue on a stretcher, covered with a white sheet that they brought with them. They couldn’t use any of the ones from the closet where they found Theresa. They were all red and sticky.

The orderlies didn’t take her body away until after the first policemen came, the ones who wore uniforms. The policemen who came later wore suits and ties. One of them had a camera, and another had something that looked kind of like a fishing tackle box. He took out some kind of powder and they brushed it around the closet. He was looking for fingerprints, just like they do on television.

Another one was with Dr. Woodburn when he came to do his rounds. The policeman went into the conference room with Dr. Woodburn after the doctor had stopped off at the nurses’ station and got all of his patients’ charts. I didn’t find out that the man with Dr. Woodburn was a policeman until later.

Dr. Woodburn called me into conference after he had talked to Lila. I sat down in my same seat as always. Dr. Woodburn sat in his seat at the other end of the table. The policeman was sitting next to him. I pulled an ashtray over next to me and lit a cigarette.

“Are you feeling all right today, John?” asked Dr. Woodburn. He had my chart open in front of him.

“Not so bad now,” I said.

He paged through my chart. Then he looked at me, and he made a noise like he was clearing his throat. “John,” Dr. Woodburn said, “this man is a police detective. A homicide detective. I think it will be all right if he asks you some questions.”

I sort of smiled, then nodded to them.

“My name is Sergeant Stephens,” said the policeman.

“How do you do,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he answered. He had a funny look on his face, like he wasn’t sure what to say to me.

“You don’t have to be afraid to talk to me, Sergeant,” I said. “I know where I am and why I’m here. And I don’t rant or rave or hit myself or make trouble. And I know why you’re here, too.” He looked at Dr. Woodburn.

“He didn’t tell me anything,” I went on. “We all know.

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