I nodded, leaned my staff in the corner, and left him in the room. He locked the door behind me, and I wandered up to sit down in the waiting area near the front doors. I took a chair that put the wall to my back, and where I could see Casey's video monitor, the front door, and the door leading back to the examination rooms.

I leaned my head back against the wall with my eyes mostly closed and waited. Over the next hour one doctor came in and another left. The mailman showed up with the day's deliveries, as did the UPS truck. An ambulance arrived with the cadaver of an old woman that Casey rolled away, presumably into storage.

Then a young couple came in. The girl was about five-six and pleasantly pretty, even without much in the way of makeup. She was dressed in sandals, a simple blue sundress, and a wool jacket. Her hair was cut into a bob full of unruly brown curls, and her eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. The young man wore a simple, well-cut business suit. He was a little under six feet tall, had Asian features, wire-rimmed glasses, wide shoulders, and wore his hair in a long ponytail.

I recognized them: Alicia Nelson and Li Xian, from the picture on the cover of the newsletter Rawlins had given me. Dr. Bartlesby's missing assistants had come to the morgue.

I remained very still, and tried to think thoughts that would make me blend in with the wall. They walked to the security desk and stood so close to me that I didn't need to bother with Listening to them.

"Good morning," Alicia said, producing a driver's license and showing it to Casey. "My name is Alicia Nelson. I'm the late Dr. Bartlesby's assistant. I understand that his remains have been brought here."

Casey regarded her without much in the way of expression. "Ma'am, we do not make that kind of information available to the public, in order to protect the relatives of the deceased."

She nodded, drew an envelope out of her purse, and passed that to Casey as well. "The doctor had no surviving family or next of kin," she said. "But he granted me power of attorney over his estate two years ago. The paperwork is all in order."

Casey scanned it, frowning. "Mmmmph."

Alicia pushed brown curls wearily from her eyes. "Please, sir, the doctor had several personal effects which I need to take into custody as soon as possible. Passwords, credit cards, keys, that sort of thing. They were in his wallet."

"What's the rush?" Casey drawled.

"Some of his effects could potentially grant a thief access to his accounts and security boxes. As you can see in the documents, he wanted control of them to pass to me until I could arrange to have them passed on to the charities he patronized."