'They're always peeled.'
'I mean, even try to lead the conversation. But be subtle. Think along the line of, `Do any of you have any dirt on Spritz or Tanarkle or Foster'?'
'Oh, that's real subtle.'
'I don't mean come right out and ask them. If they're talking about those guys, milk it along. Belle, you're a pain in the ass.' He knew she smiled inside.
'You already said that today. Are they your suspects?'
'And Coughlin.' David's. voice took on a deeper texture. 'Of course, everyone's a suspect until proven otherwise.'
'Well, I'll be darned,' she said, fondling an amber locket that hung from her neck.
'What?'
'You're becoming a pro.'
Chapter 6
Dating back to his medical school days and continuing on through his tenure in the Department of Pathology, David hated the sights, sounds and smells of a postmortem examination. He called them 'flesh-in-the-raw' smells. But, particularly the sounds were awful. He could never harness the jolt to his body by the screech of rotary saw on skull bone or the splash of water hose on body parts, its sound shriller than the dousing of his front lawn on a dog day in August. The saw and hose seemed so out of place there, giving him as they did, the feel from chalk high- pitched on a blackboard.
At twelve-fifty, he set foot in the autopsy room and expected to watch Ted Tanarkle do the post on Charlie Bugles for only the time required to form an impression of the pathologist's demeanor. Besides, he had just yesterday witnessed the slaughter and later scrutinized the havoc in Bugles' belly.
David deliberately arrived early to catch Tanarkle's initial reaction to the 'Y' incision across the chest from shoulder to shoulder and down the front of the abdomen to the pubis. The pathologist would extend the vertical slit across the abdominal incision made earlier by the imposter in the operating room, and David believed it would be at that point that Tanarkle's facial expression would be the most revealing.
He leaned against a wall feeling like a traitor to his longtime friend and mentor, awaiting his arrival, intent, therefore, not in collecting pathological evidence, but in detecting a flinch, a subtle twitch, an incriminating comment. David let his eyes drift over the varied shapes of stainless steel he'd seen many times before: the mobile cart for transporting bodies to the morgue; the autopsy table with holes to allow water and fluids to drain; the small-parts dissection table with its own set of drain holes; the tank for delivering water to the tables; the scale to weigh each organ-another misplaced item, he thought.
The room was warm, so warm that he believed he would not have been surprised to see vapor lifting from the cold steel surfaces and from the cold, naked body. Sun poured from a thin bank of windows at ceiling height, dissolving onto the walls, rendering them creamy, the body more wax-like.
He removed the phone from his hip to call the Hole, hoping Belle had returned from lunch.
'You're back early,' he whispered.
'Hospital food's good for dieting. No, I didn't learn anything yet from my crew, and why are you whispering?'
'The post should start any minute. Do me a favor, will you?' David looked at his watch. 'Unless I call you back, buzz me at exactly five after, and when I answer, hang up.'
'Why, pray tell?'
'So I can leave.'
'Why be there in the first place?'
'So Ted will think I'm conscientious.' David clicked off.
At two minutes before one, Tanarkle entered the room alone through a swinging door. He wore a green scrub suit and brown rubber apron.
'Hello, David. You're right on time.' David nodded.
The pathologist clipped a tiny microphone to the neckline of his shirt and squeezed his hands into a pair of latex surgical gloves. He opened a metal-bound chart and flipped through its first few pages as he moved to the foot of the body. He checked the number on a tag tied to the big toe against a line on the chart. Then he dictated: 'This postmortem examination is performed at the request of Dr. T. Y. Tippett, Medical Examiner of the city of Hollings. Deceased is Charles J. Bugles, Accession Number 1569777. Hospital Chart Number 100745. The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished white male who appears his stated age of 65. His head is bald; his eyebrows and pubic hair appear gray-white. Height and weight listed are 70 inches and 182 pounds.'
Holding the chart in one hand, he ran his other over the body's face, neck, arms and legs. 'Skin is generally greenish-red; neck and jaws slack; rigor mortis resolving in extremities. There is a tattoo of a bird's head on the lateral surface of his right upper arm …' He put the chart aside and, rummaging through a steel jar, pulled out a small Stanley retractable ruler and held it against the arm. '… measuring 5-by-6 centimeters.'
The autopsy room was excluded from the hospital's paging system and Tanarkle's words echoed in the silence. David stood on the other side of the body, his eyes riveted on the pathologist's face.
'Externally, there is an obvious trans-abdominal incision between the xiphoid and umbilicus, measuring … 19 centimeters. There are no other skin lesions.'
So far, nothing, David said to himself. Tanarkle's voice was firm, his face expressionless.
He swept a scalpel deftly from the right shoulder to the lower part of the sternum and repeated the process on the left side. Next, he cut straight down in the midline, over the trans-abdominal incision to the symphysis pubis. Then, he retraced the incisions for a deeper cut.
The grainy sound ignited David's nerve endings, and he was relieved by the phone vibration at his beltline. He didn't want to hear the separation of ribs and cartilage which was soon to follow.
He spoke softly into a dead phone: 'I'll be right there.'
David thought himself foolish for not having activated the audible ring because Tanarkle had no way of knowing he was being summoned. Yet, David excused himself with no apology. He had learned little from the pathologist's stoic demeanor and ritualistic conduct.
But maybe, he rationalized, in learning nothing, he learned something.
David decided to skip lunch at the cafeteria, instead opting for a fast-food takeout on the way to his first house call. Top down on his Mercedes, black scarf starched in the wind, he munched as he drove along well-plowed streets. A Pavarotti aria blared from his tape deck as high C's and the aroma of French fries escaped into the dry but brisk afternoon. He liked the burn of the wind on his leathery face. On one long stretch, he was unable to shake a tailgater and, more than once, tucked in a shoulder to feel the reassuring rock that was his Beretta Minx. He split his eyes between highway and mirror until the car turned out of sight.
The first visit was to a male patient of thirty-two who over-complained about a sore back. He had first felt it after fixing a flat tire. After his thorough orthopedic and neurological assessment revealed no pathology, David resorted to misdirection.
'You know,' he said, 'I used to complain about the screams and loud laughter of children playing-until I said to myself I'm lucky I can hear them.'
'I don't get it,' the patient said.
'Your problem is only a pulled muscle, and think of it this way, Danny, my boy. You're lucky you can walk.' David outlined a treatment regimen as Danny looked on sheepishly.
It took David two hours to complete the other three calls and to phone reports to doctors' offices.
At the Hole, he gave Belle four three-by-four cards, one for each patient he had examined. He had scribbled date, name, diagnosis and treatment on each card. There were no exotic diagnoses that day.
'These would really stand up in court, you know,' she said, sarcastically.
'Screw the courts,' he fired back. He remembered Foster's earlier word choice but toned it down. Even so, he added, 'Scratch that comment. If a court of law required more information, I could easily elaborate.'
