The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 27

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"Jack?" I summon him and begin collecting blank forms and body diagrams, attaching them to a clipboard.

"I can't believe you're going to work with that damn cast on." He walks across the autopsy suite, his bulging biceps straining against the short sleeves of his scrubs. My deputy chief may be famous for his body, but no amount of weightlifting or chocolate cream Myoplex high-protein meals in a glass can stop him from losing his hair. It is eerie, but in recent weeks his light brown hair has started falling out before our very eyes, clinging to his clothing, drifting through the air like down, as if he is molting.

He frowns at the misspelling on the toe tag. "The guy from the removal service must be Asian. John Dooo."

"Who's the detective?" I ask.

"Stanfield. Don't know him. Just don't get a puncture in your glove or you'll be wearing a biological hazard for the next few weeks." He indicates my latex-coated cast. "Actually, what would you do, now that I think of it?"

"Cut it off and put on a new one."

"So maybe we should have disposable casts down here."

"I feel like cutting it off anyway. This guy's burn pattern isn't making sense to me," I tell him. "Do we know how far the body was from the fire?"

"About ten feet from the bed. I was told the bed's the only thing that burned and only partially. He was nude, sitting on the floor, back against the wall."

"I wonder why only his upper body got burned." I point out discrete burns the size and shape of silver dollars. "Arms, chest. One here on his left shoulder. And these on his face. And he has several on his back, which should have been spared if he was leaning against the wall. What about the drag marks?"

"As I understand it, when the fire department got there, they dragged his body out into the parking lot. One thing's for sure, he must've been unconscious or incapacitated when the fire started," Jack says. "Sure as hell don't know why else someone would just sit there getting burned and breathing in smoke. Obviously that happy-holiday time of year." My second-in-command is cloaked in a hung-over weariness that causes me to suspect he had a very bad night. I wonder if he and his ex-wife had another one of their explosions. "Everybody killing themselves. That woman over there." He points to the body on table 1, where Dr. Chong is busy taking photographs from a stepladder. "Dead on the kitchen floor, a pillow, a blanket. The neighbor heard one shot. Mother found her. There's a note. And behind door number two"_Jack stares at table 2_"a motor vehicle death the state police are suspicious is a suicide. She has extensive injuries. Plowed right into a tree."

"Did her clothes come in?"

"Yup."

"Let's X-ray her feet and get the labs to check the bottom of her shoes to see if she was braking or accelerating when she hit the tree." I shade areas of a body diagram, indicating soot.

"And we got a known diabetic with a history of overdose,"

Jack recites our guest list of the morning. "Was found outside in the yard. Question is drugs, alcohol or exposure."

"Or a combination of the above."

"Right. I see what you mean about the burns, though." He leans closer to look, blinking often, reminding me he wears contact lenses. "And it's weird they're all about the same size and shape. You want me to help with this?"

"Thanks. I'll manage. How are you?" I glance up from my clipboard.

His eyes are tired, his boyish good looks strained. "Maybe we can grab some coffee sometime," he says. "One of these days. And I should be asking about you."

I pat his shoulder to let him know I am okay. "As well as can be expected, Jack," I add.

I begin the external examination of John Doe with a PERK. This is a physical evidence recovery kit, a decided unpleasantness that includes swabbing orifices, clipping fingernails and plucking head, body and pubic hair. We PERK all bodies when there is any reason to suspect something other than a natural death, and I will always PERK a body that is nude, unless there is an acceptable reason for the person's not being clothed when he died_in the bathtub or on the operating table, for example. For the most part, I don't spare my patients indignities. I can't. Sometimes the most important evidence lurks in the darkest, most delicate hollows, and clings underneath nails and in hair. During my violation of this man's most private places I discover healing tears of his anal ring. He has abrasions at the angles of his mouth. Fibers adhere to his tongue and the inside of his cheeks.

I go over every inch of him with a lens and the story he tells grows more suspicious. His elbows and knees are slightly abraded and covered with dirt and fibers, which I mundanely collect by pressing them with the adhesive backs of Post-its, which I seal inside plastic bags. Over the bony prominences of both wrists are incomplete circumferential dry, reddish-brown abrasions and minute skin tags. I draw blood from the iliac veins and vitreous fluid from the eyes, and test tubes ride up on the dumbwaiter to the third-floor toxicology lab for STAT alcohol and carbon monoxide tests. At half past ten, I am reflecting back tissue from the Y incision when I notice a tall, older man heading toward my station. He has a wide, tired face and maintains a safe distance from my table, gripping a grocery-size brown paper bag, the top folded over and sealed with red evidence tape. I have a flash of my bagged clothing on my red Jarrah Wood dining room table.

"Detective Stanfield, I hope?" I hold up a flap of skin and free it from ribs with small, quick strokes of the scalpel.

"Good morning." He catches himself as he stares at the body. "Well, I guess not for him."

Stanfield hasn't bothered with protective clothing over his ill-fitting herringbone suit. He wears no gloves or shoe covers. He glances at my bulky left arm and refrains from asking me how I broke it, telling me he already knows. I am reminded that my life has been all over the news, which I am adamant in my refusal to follow. Anna has halfway accused me of being chicken, as much as a psychiatrist is allowed to accuse, and she would never actually use the word "chicken." "Denial" is her word. I don't care. I am staying away from newspapers. I don't watch or listen to a goddamn thing that is said about me.

"Sorry it took so long, but the roads out there are bad on their way to awful, ma'am," Stanfield says. "Hope you got chains on your tires, 'cause I didn't and got stuck. Had to get the tow truck and then get the chains put on, so that's why I wasn't here earlier. You found out anything?"

"His CO's seventy-two percent." Vernacular for carbon monoxide. "Notice how cherry-red the blood is? Typical in high levels of CO." I pick up rib shears from the surgical cart. "STAT alcohol's zero."

"So it was the fire that got him, for sure?"

"We know he had a needle in his arm, but carbon monoxide poisoning is his cause of death. Doesn't tell us much, I'm afraid." I cut through ribs. ''He's got anal tunneling_evidence of homosexual activity, in other words_and his wrists were bound at some point prior to his death. It appears he was gagged." I point out the abrasions on the wrists and the cor- ners of the mouth. Stanfield's eyes pop open, "The abrasions on his wrists aren't crusty," I go on. "They don't look old, in other words. And because he has fibers in his mouth, you can be pretty certain he was gagged at or around the time of death." I hold a lens over the anticubital fossa, or crook of the arm, and show Stanfield two tiny blood spots. "Fresh injection sites," I explain. "But what's interesting is he has no old needle tracks to suggest a history of drug abuse. I'll put a block of liver through to check for triaditis_mild inflammation of the structural support system of bile duct, artery and vein. And we'll see what comes back on his tox."

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