Prodigal Son

raised a spoonful to her mouth, she took it with a soft, protracted slurp.

Appalled, Victor watched her dip the spoon into the bowl once more.

Soup had not been on the menu at either of their previous dinner parties, and Victor had taken a meal with Erika only twice otherwise. Her faux pas surprised and unsettled him.

She sucked in the second spoonful no less noisily than she had the first.

Although none of the guests appeared to notice this ghastly play of tongue and lips, Victor took offense that as his wife she should risk being mocked. Those who might laugh at her behind her back would also laugh at him.

He announced, 'The bisque is curdled. William, Christine, please remove it at once.'

'Curdled?' the mayor's wife asked, bewildered. 'Not mine.'

'Curdled,' Victor insisted as the servants quickly retrieved the soup bowls. ?And you don't want to eat a lobster dish when it might be in any way off.'

Stricken, Erika watched as the bowls were removed from the table.

'I'm sorry, Erika,' Victor said, into an awkward silence. 'This is the first time I've ever found fault with your cooking-or with anything about you.'

John Watkins protested, 'Mine was delicious.'

Although she might not have understood the cause of Victor's action, Erika recovered quickly. 'No, John. 'You've always got my vote for district attorney. But in culinary matters, I trust Victor. His palate is as refined as any chef's.'

Victor felt his clenched jaw relaxing into a genuine smile. In part, Erika had redeemed herself.

CHAPTER 25

The gray vinyl-tile floor squeaked under Carson's and Michael's shoes. Although subtle, the sounds seemed loud in the otherwise silent hallway.

The forensic pathology unit appeared to be deserted. At this hour, staffing should have been reduced but not this drastically

They found Jack Rogers where he said he'd be-in Autopsy Room Number 2. With him were the professionally fileted corpse of Bobby Allwine, supine upon a guttered steel table, and a lanky young assistant whom Jack introduced as Luke.

'Trumped up an excuse to send the rest of the night staff home,' Jack said. 'Didn't want to take a chance of some chatterbox getting a glimpse of what we've got here.'

'And what do we have?' Carson asked.

'A miracle,' Jack said. 'Except I get a squamous feeling, like it's too dark a miracle to have anything to do with God. That's why only Luke and I are here. Luke isn't a gossiping jackass, are you, Luke?'

'No, sir.'

Luke's slightly protuberant eyes, long nose, and longer chin gave him a scholarly look, as if books exerted such an attraction on him that they had pulled his features toward the contents of their pages.

Potbellied, with a hound-dog face full of sags and swags that added years to his true age, Jack Rogers looked older now than he usually did. Although his excitement was palpable, his face had a gray tinge.

'Luke's got a good eye for physiological anomalies,' Jack said. 'He knows his guts.'

Luke nodded, taking pride in his boss's praise. 'I've just always been interested in viscera since I was a kid.'

'With me,' Michael said, 'it was baseball.'

Jack said, 'Luke and I completed every phase of the internal examination. Head, body cavities, neck, respiratory tract-'

'Cardiovascular system,' Luke continued, 'gastrointestinal tract, biliary tract, pancreas, spleen, adrenals-'

'Urinary tract, reproductive tract, and musculoskeletal system,' Jack concluded.

The cadaver on the table certainly appeared to have been well explored.

If the body had not been so fresh, Carson would have wanted to grease her nostrils with Vicks. She could tolerate this lesser stench of violated stomach and intestines.

'Every phase revealed such bizarre anatomy,' Jack said, 'we're going back through again to see what we might've missed.'

'Bizarre? Such as?'

'He had two hearts.'

'What do you mean two hearts?'

'Two. The number after one, before three. Uno, dos.'

'In other words,' Luke said earnestly, 'twice as many as he should have had.'

'We got that part,' Michael assured him. 'But at the library, we saw Allwine's chest open. You could have parked a Volkswagen in there. If everything's missing, how do you know he had two hearts?'

'For one thing, the associated plumbing,' Jack said. 'He had the arteries and veins to serve a double pump. The indicators are numerous. They'll all be in my final report. But that's not the only thing weird about Allwine.'

'What else?'

'Skull bone's as dense as armor. I burnt out two electric trepanning saws trying to cut through it.'

'He had a pair of livers, too,' said Luke, 'and a twelve-ounce spleen. The average spleen is seven ounces.'

?A more extensive lymphatic system than you'll ever see in a textbook,' Jack continued. 'Plus two organs-I don't even know what they are.'

'So he was some kind of freak,' Michael said. 'He looked normal on the outside. Maybe not a male model, but not the Elephant Man, either. Inside, he's all screwed up.'

'Nature is full of freaks,' Luke said. 'Snakes with two heads. Frogs with five legs. Siamese twins. You'd be surprised how many people are born with six fingers on one hand or the other. But that's not like'-he patted Allwine's bare foot-'our buddy here.'

Having trouble getting her mind around the meaning of all this, Carson said, 'So what are the odds of this? Ten million to one?'

Wiping the back of his shirt sleeve across his damp brow, Jack Rogers said, 'Get real, O'Connor. Nothing like this is possible, period. This isn't mutation. This is design.'

For a moment she didn't know what to say, and perhaps for the first time ever, even Michael was at a loss for words.

Anticipating them, Jack said, ?And don't ask me what I mean by design. Damn if I know.'

'It's just,' Luke elaborated, 'that all these things look like they're meant to be? improvements.'

Carson said, 'The Surgeon's other victims? you didn't find anything weird in them?'

'Zip, zero, nada. You read the reports.'

Such an aura of unreality had descended upon the room that Carson wouldn't have been entirely surprised if the eviscerated cadaver had sat up on the autopsy table and tried to explain itself.

Michael said, 'Jack, we'd sure like to embargo your autopsy report on Allwine. File it here but don't send a copy to us. Our doc box is being raided lately, and we don't want anyone else to know about this for? say forty-eight hours.'

'And don't file it under Allwine's name or the case number where it can be found,' Carson suggested. 'Blind file it under?'

'Munster, Herman,' Michael suggested.

Jack Rogers was smart about a lot more things than viscera. The bags under his eyes seemed to darken as he said, 'This isn't the only weird thing you've got, is it?'

'Well, you know the crime scene was strange,' Carson said.