Tomich's hunched right shoulder.
'It's a defibrillator,' Dr. Tomich said as he flushed it with water, keeping the device pinched between his forceps. He reached to the side, practically elbowing Sheriff Clayton out of his way, and punched the intercom button.
'Matthew, come here. I need you to look up a serial number.'
'It seems too easy,' Clayton said. 'You're telling us there's a number on this apparatus and you'll be able to match it to a name?'
'Yes. That is exactly what I am telling you.'
'Sir.' Matthew was there in the room before anyone heard him enter.
Maggie found herself checking out his footwear, except he wore paper shoe covers like the rest of them.
Dr. Tomich placed the defibrillator onto a stainless-steel tray and handed it to Matthew.
'Look this up, please. Bring me the patient's name and the physician's.'
'Yes, sir.'
As the medical examiner returned to the torso, he caught Maggie eyeing the cart with the severed foot and hands.
'You're intrigued with the parts.'
It was an odd thing to say.
'Occupational hazard,' she answered, without further explanation.
Tomich nodded, bowed his head as if paying homage, then he did something Maggie didn't expect. He picked up the severed foot and placed it on a separate stainless-steel table.
'We'll take a look,' he said. He poked his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one gloved hand and waved his other at the torso. 'This gentleman won't mind if we wait for Matthew to tell us his name.'
It was an unexpected and rare courtesy. Maggie knew her surprise registered on her face, but Dr. Tomich didn't notice. He was already pulling open a new tray of instruments and resetting his wireless recording. Sheriff Clayton, who had been squeamish about watching the torso, didn't have a problem with getting a closer look at the severed foot.
'Are you trying to match any of these to one of your cases?'
It took Maggie a second to realize that Tomich was talking to her and not his wireless.
'Not this time. How many different victims do you think are here?'
'At least two.' Tomich slouched over the table as he began his examination. 'Or it could be five. I may be able to tell you that quickly with a simple blood test. Process of elimination. If all the parts are the same blood type, we'll need to wait for DNA tests.'
'If the hands don't belong to the torso,' Sheriff Clayton asked, 'we might not figure out whose they are. Fingerprints don't make much difference if we can't match them to somebody already in the system.'
'This is interesting.' Dr. Tomich poked at the ankle. 'Something beneath the skin.'
He picked up the scalpel and moved the severed foot onto its side, the inside of the ankle facing up. At first glimpse the object Dr. Tomich began to remove looked like a piece of metal. Another medical device? A pin or clip jabbing its way up to the surface?
Tomich cut, then held the small object up to the light, clasped in his forceps.
'Is it a bullet fragment?' Sheriff Clayton asked.
The medical examiner gave it only a cursory look before dropping it into a stainless-steel basin.
'There's more,' Tomich said.
One after another he plucked and dropped into the basin four more pieces of metal that had been embedded deep into the foot.
'Shotgun?' asked the sheriff.
Before the medical examiner had a chance to decide, Matthew appeared alongside of them. This time the sheriff jumped, but cleared his throat and shifted his weight as if he had been just readjusting his stance.
'Sir, I have the information you requested.'
'The patient who belongs to the defibrillator? This soon?'
'Yes, sir. The number is registered to Vince Coffland of Port St. Lucie, Florida.'
'Port St. Lucie?' Sheriff Clayton interrupted. 'That's over six hundred miles away. And it's on the Atlantic side. How the hell did he end up in a cooler floating in the Gulf?'
'Any information on what happened to Mr. Coffland?' Tomich asked his diener.
'He's been missing since July tenth. He disappeared after Hurricane Gaston.'
'Missing?'
'Disappeared.'
CHAPTER 37
Sometimes a corpse moved. Scott knew it was a fact that no one liked to talk about except at conferences after a few drinks. It'd never happened to Scott, but he'd heard stories of others who had experienced what they called 'spontaneous movement.' A leg or a foot twitched. He couldn't remember exactly what caused it. Some kind of biochemical reaction. But it usually occurred in the first ten to twelve hours after death. Maybe that's all this was, but when Scott called Joe he opted for the extreme. After the morning he'd experienced, he couldn't hide the stress.
'That stiff you left in my cooler is still alive.'
'What are you talking about?'
'He moved.'
Silence. Long enough that Scott second-guessed his approach. Would Joe think his partner prone to hysterics? That he couldn't handle the extra business?
'Look man,' Joe finally said in his usual calm and cool manner, 'it's just your imagination playing tricks on you.' Then he added like a buddy, a friend, 'Dude, you did have a lot to drink last night.'
There was something about Joe's voice--his calling him 'dude'--that made Scott relax ... a little.
By the time Joe arrived half an hour later, Scott had almost convinced himself that it probably was just his imagination. His head still throbbed. Earlier his vision seemed blurred. He hadn't gone back into the cooler and now he felt a bit ridiculous.
Scott tried to concentrate while he kept his employees busy in the funeral home preparing the memorial service for Uncle Mel, the reclusive bachelor whose family wanted him buried before the hurricane rolled in. Scott told the employees they couldn't go to the back offices because he was fumigating the walkway. It seemed like an absurd excuse even to him. Why fumigate anything before a hurricane? But no one questioned him, which further validated his salesmanship. Damn, he was good. Even in a crisis with all the stress he could make up stuff to believable levels.
He had left Joe for twenty minutes, tops. As soon as Scott could, he sneaked back, going outside and avoiding the walkway. Joe was closing and latching the walk-in refrigerator.
'Hey Scott,' Joe said. 'I have to tell you, man, I wish you could have heard your voice. 'The stiff moved.'' He laughed as he slapped Scott between the shoulder blades.
'Yeah, probably too much Scotch.'
'Or not enough,' Joe said as he pulled out his money clip and started peeling off hundred-dollar bills. 'I'll have a few more specimens to add before the storm, if that's okay,' he said as he placed the bills on the corner desk.
Scott couldn't count and listen at the same time.
'I'll come back tonight. Try and cut and package up as much as possible. Take less room that way.'
'Sure, no problem.' Scott found himself saying the words while he struggled to keep his eyes away from the pile of hundred-dollar bills.
'I'd offer to take you to dinner again, but I think you might need to rest,' Joe said with a grin, the kind that went along with terms like 'dude.'
'I'll see you later.'
