Nocturnal: A Novel

She lifted the solid, metal power tool. Its high-pitched buzz filled the air as she cut through the ribs where they curved down to the man’s sides. Blade on bone produced the smell of burning hair. After so many years at this job, that odor didn’t really bother her anymore.

After she finished with the saw, she set it aside and rinsed the body down. She sliced through the diaphragm, then lifted the now-severed, arrow-pierced rib cage away from the body.

The rib cage felt far heavier than she would have expected. Did the thicker, denser bone exist to withstand the stresses generated by stronger muscles?

Holding the pierced rib cage in her hands, she examined the embedded arrowhead.

“Arrowhead is a three-bladed broadhead configuration, approximately seven centimeters from tip to attachment point. Each blade’s cutting edge is approximately seven-point-eight centimeters. The blades are serrated. The bottom corner of each blade has a small hook, curving up toward the point.”

Such a horrible weapon. The point had penetrated John Doe’s sternum, driving right into the heart. The arrowhead probably would have punched clean through were it not for those little hooks. That seemed counterintuitive, as it would do more damage the farther in it went. The way this was made, the way it embedded in the rib cage … it looked like the designer wanted it to stick.

She set the rib cage aside.

Robin reached for the heart — then stopped.

The broadhead had sliced into the right ventricle, nearly severing the pulmonary artery. A kill shot, no question. But it wasn’t the heart that stopped her cold.

“What the hell is that?”

The private room’s door opened. Bryan and Pookie walked in.

“Robin-Robin, Bo-Bah …” Pookie’s voice trailed off when he saw the corpse on the table. “Ew. That’s nasty.”

She lifted her visor and waved them over. “Guys, look at this!”

Bryan looked her up and down. “Don’t we need to suit up or something?”

“Screw OSHA,” Robin said. “Come here.”

The small room fit three comfortably. The boys walked up to the body. She pointed to the bloody, open chest, to a glossy, purple shape just above the heart. “What the hell is that?”

Bryan and Pookie looked at it, then at each other, then at her. She saw Bryan’s right hand move to his chest, his palm lightly resting against his sternum, making a slow-motion circle there. He again looked at the purple shape, then leaned back a little as if the sight horrified him.

Pookie didn’t look horrified; he looked excited. He leaned in close. “That’s his heart, right? Do I get a prize?”

“No, you idiot,” Robin said. She pointed to the maroon-red heart. “That is his heart, and it looks normal.” She again pointed to the purple shape. “I’m talking about this thing. I’ve never seen it before.”

She slid her left hand into the body and cupped her fingers under the strange bit of flesh — if felt firm, yet giving. Her right hand reached in with the scalpel. She carefully cut the purple thing free.

“Blargh,” Pookie said.

Robin lifted it out of the body. It was a shallow disc about the size of her palm, purple and slimed with tacky blood. She held it for Bryan to see.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Is it a tumor or something?”

“I don’t think so,” Robin said. “If it is, it’s not like any cancer or tumor I’ve ever seen, or even heard described. It could be an ectopic dysplasic organ — that’s a malformed organ that winds up in a different spot in the body than is typical. Sometimes, dysplasic organs are even functional, but … there isn’t any known organ that looks like this.”

Pookie tried to lean in and look but he clearly didn’t want to come close enough to touch it. “What does it do?”

Robin shrugged. “I have no idea.”

She walked a few feet to the scale. She had to weigh all the organs, might as well start with this curiosity.

“Hey,” Pookie said. He pointed to the man’s crotch. “This guy has no balls.”

Bryan let out a dismissive huff of a laugh. “Figures you’d look there first.”

“I’m serious,” Pookie said. “Look at Mister No-Nuts.”

Robin did. She’d been in such a hurry to get the body in here and remove the arrowhead that she hadn’t paid much attention to the subject’s genitalia.

“You’re right, Pooks,” she said. “I see no testicles.”

“Ball-less,” Pookie said. “And he’s not going to get any dates based on the rest of what he’s got, if you know what I’m saying.”

The subject’s penis was barely larger than that of a small boy. Robin lifted it and felt underneath.

“No scrotum,” she said. “And there doesn’t appear to be any scar tissue, so he was probably born that way.”

Pookie shook his head. “The poor, poor bastard.”

“He has multiple mutations,” Robin said. “Thick, oversized bones, abnormally dense muscle and an unknown organ. You guys, this is a really big deal.”

Bryan looked up to a clock on the wall. “It sounds important, but we need to hurry. Can we get the arrow?”

“Sure, sorry.” Robin left the organ in the hanging scale’s tray.

She picked up the bone saw and made a few more cuts to the severed rib cage, freeing the arrow. She held it point-up so they could all look at it. The room’s powerful lights cast glaring reflections off the bloody arrowhead’s bright metal. Robin noticed lines in the flats of the blades — blood had coagulated in them, showing an engraved symbol. It looked like a cross with little Vs at the end of each point.

Bryan took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.

Pookie poked the blade with a pen. “Bri-Bri, you seen this cross symbol before?”

Bryan shook his head. “I’m … I’m not sure. I’ve never drawn it.”

Drawn it? Robin had lived with Bryan for two years. She had never seen him draw so much as a doodle. She’d also never seen him afraid in that time, of anything, yet each new discovery from this John Doe’s body seemed to affect him even more.

Pookie pointed his pen at the arrowhead’s base, where it connected to the wooden shaft. Robin saw another symbol there, a different one: it looked like a knife or a sword, pointing down, the blade partly hidden behind a big circle with a smaller circle in the middle.

“Looks like a dagger,” Pookie said. “And the circle … that look familiar, Bri-Bri?”

Bryan nodded. “It’s an eye.”

It was a circle in a circle. In context with the dagger, Robin thought the circle might represent a shield, but Bryan seemed very sure. “How do you know it’s an eye?”

“We’ve seen other symbols like it,” he said. “Stuff that’s directly related to the case. We’ll tell you about it later, I promise.” He pointed to the hooks at the base of the arrowhead. “This why it stuck in Blackbeard’s chest?”

Blackbeard. She liked that. Much better than John Doe.

“I think so,” she said. “I can do some math on it later — mass of the arrow and arrowhead, distance traveled — try to come up with some force calculations, but I’m sure this arrowhead is designed to partially penetrate, then stop. Stop and stick.”

“That’s weird,” Pookie said. “Wouldn’t it do more fucking-shit-up if those big-honkin’ blades just went all the way through?”

Robin nodded. “If the arrow hadn’t lodged in Blackbeard’s sternum, it would have sliced his heart in half.”