DIRTY SALLY
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3
10:30
A.M. Medical Examiner's Office
As
I walked in out of the sun, a hippie college boy,
skinny, about five-foot-six with long hair, a scraggly
beard, John Lennon glasses and an army knapsack, strode
up to me holding a scrap of paper and followed me
in. "Is this the Medical Examiner's?"
"Yeah." He trailed me past reception into
the back hallway.
"I
got a message at home about my roommate. They were
looking for his parents but they're in Houston. His
name is Rick Schate. Was he in an accident?"
I
stopped dead outside the autopsy room as a gurney
rolled toward us.
"Are
you a cop?" the kid asked. "Is he under
arrest?"
I
couldn't say anything before the gurney holding the
mashed remains of Rick Schate, globs of flesh placed
near what was left of each arm, crossed our path and
slowed long enough to push the autopsy room doors
open. The long-haired kid turned white.
- - -
An
assistant in green scrubs let me through the doors
of the cutting room, a spare operation with fluorescent
lights, concrete floor, metal sink and a butcher's
scale—Drop the organs in, see the dial spin,
Joey used to say. The faucet had a hose for spraying
and a clear hose for suction, so you could watch it
swallow.
Hay
in scrubs and a clear plastic face shield stood over
Schate. She clamped two vice grips on a lone fist
and broke the fingers open with a crunch, a dozen
tiny bones snapping in succession, and her mouth twisted
into something like a smile. "Sergeant Reles?"
"Yeah?”
She
didn't look up. "What's the current fare on Capital
Metro?"
"I
don't know. Fifty cents?"
"For
students?"
I
shrugged. "Twenty-five maybe? Yeah, why?"
Hay
exchanged a look with Number One. "I don't know
what I can say about the suicide theory. But you can
tell Capital Metro they have twenty-five cents coming
to 'em."
She
took a student ID and a quarter from Schate's palm
with her bloody glove and tossed the quarter onto
the metal gurney. The bloody coin fell with a dull
clink and stuck.
Assistant
Number Two wheeled in the second gurney, slamming
it through the double doors feet first if she'd had
feet. No limbs, pallid breasts and crotch, a fleshless
abdomen. I kept shifting my gaze. If there's a right
way to look at half a naked dead woman, I never learned
it.
Hay's
other assistant had to leave with Schate's body and
if Sergeant Reles wanted to stay, would he help out
as scribe?
Hay
cut down vertically between the breasts, peeled back
the flaps, took something like a chain cutter and
snipped open the ribs one by one. Then she stood over
the remains in fresh gloves, dictating: "liver
somewhat enlarged…"
"Alcohol?"
I asked.
"Just
take this down." Number One tubed blood and bile.
"Dead a few days. Refrigerated most of that time."
I could have told her that but I kept my mouth shut.
A three-day decomp leaves a stink you can't get out
of your nostrils for days. Makes you want to smell
some nice fresh shit for relief.
Hay
cut a lung loose and weighed it. "Right lung
three hundred eighty-five grams." Then, "Left
lung three ninety grams. Petechial hemorrhages on
surface of lungs." More cutting and weighing,
liver, spleen and heart.
"What
can you get from dissecting the heart?"
She
glared daggers. "It's diss-ect, with
a short 'i.' Not di-sect."
"Uh-huh."
"You
can bi-sect, you can dis-assemble.
You can't di-sect." She watched me for
some sign of assent, didn't get it, and looked back
at the table. The kidneys got a "Hmm" out
of her and she sliced one open. "See that?"
she asked. White specs freckled the cross-section
of kidney. "Talc. Or whatever they're using to
cut heroin nowadays. Probably heroin."
"Shit."
"Disappointed?"
She cut open what she told me was the uterus. "Papilloma.
Probably HPV. And chlamydia. For a while, too. The
fallopian tubes are clogged with scar tissue. I'd
say late teens, early twenties at the oldest."
"How…?”
She prodded the tissue with her scalpel so I could
see it bounce back. "The organs are full grown,
but still plenty of elasticity, in spite of the damage.
Ribs soft, not calcified. Iliac crest not fused yet.
No more than twenty-two. Young adult, no question."
Hay
cut open the stomach, flooded with a milky fluid.
"Semen," she said. "More than one brand.
Not much of an eater otherwise. Peptic ulcer, stomach
cashing in on itself. And this." With tweezers,
she lifted a small charm out of the stomach and held
it up, a ghoulish little black skull, chipped white
paint in the caverns of its cheek- bones and marking
its irregular front teeth. A loop on top for a string.
The teeth made me flash on Joey at the bottom of 2222,
in the white Chevy drenched with water from the fire
trucks, body burned beyond recognition, head flung
back at an impossible angle, chipped front tooth sticking
out of the black crepe of his face.
I
blinked and pulled myself back into the room. Why
this charm ? A cult killing? "Was it forced down
her throat?"
"It'd
be in her throat. I say she swallowed it."
I
asked if I could have the charm. Hay raised an eyebrow.
"You
want me to wash it off first?"
"Can
you test her for other diseases?"
"What
difference does it make? She's dead."
The
fumes burned my eyes. "Would you just do it."
Hay
to Number One: "Tell Serology to test her for
everything—HIV, syphilis—Sergeant Reles
is concerned about her health. While we're at it,
see what you can find out about different drugs, opiates
especially. Kidneys don't look so good. And do ABOs,
genotypes, phenotypes, PGM, EAPs. Maybe we can match
them to something."
I
shoved my way out to the reception area to breathe,
and think about this girl with the voodoo charm in
her belly. The long-haired boy still sat in the chair
where I'd parked him, pale and sweating in the cool
room.
"I
just talked to Rick this morning," he said when
I dropped into the seat next to him. "He stayed
at his girlfriend's. He was supposed to meet us."
"I'm
sorry."
He
looked at me, a lost kid. "What do I do?"
I couldn't think of anything so I gave him my card
and, like an idiot, wrote my home number on it. He
read the card. "Homicide?"
"Rick
was an accident. I'm here for something else."
I was trying to think about how I could cross out
my home number without it looking suspicious.
"You're the first decent cop I ever met."
"It
takes all kinds."
-
- -
Back
in the autopsy room, Hay dropped the skull charm in
a specimen cup of alcohol and handed it to me like
a highball.
For
a flash, Joey winked at me from the autopsy table
and vanished. "Cause of death?" I asked.
"Undetermined,"
she said. "The hemorrhages on her lungs, maybe
asphyxiation. If we had the neck I could tell you
if she'd been strangled. Figure strangled, maybe suffocated,
maybe bludgeoned. I'm making casts of the flesh cuts
in case you find something to match them to."
"Neat
work," I said. "Think he had a medical background?"
Or
a butcher," she said.
"Can you test the semen?" I asked, glancing
at the cavern where the girl's stomach had been.
Hay
peeled off her mask and gloves as she walked to the
sink. "Draw it," she told Number One. "See
what Serology can figure out." She pumped red
liquid soap into the palm of her hand, then turned
to me. "And if nobody claims it in thirty days,
it's yours."
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