Dead Man's Song

now to go back to her place,” Crow said. “Which is why I called. I can’t afford to have the shop closed down for too long, not this time of the year. I won’t be at the store today, but tomorrow bright and early I want to meet you there to show you how to run things. In the meantime if you can swing it today I’d like you to feed my cats. My guinea pig, too. There’s a key hidden under a flagstone in the back. It’s the second from the left-hand side of the step and there’s a chip out of one corner. Lift the opposite corner and you’ll see the key in one of those plastic thingees.”

“Okay, I can do that, but when you said ‘run things’ I—”

“I may be staying at Val’s for a couple of days.”

“Wait…you want me to run the store by myself?”

“Yeah.”

Mike sat there, too stunned to even feel pain. “Alone?”

“Yeah…good with that?” Crow paused. “Mike—I’m counting on you here.”

“Crow, I don’t know if I—”

“Yes, you can. Jeez, kid, you know the layout of that store better than I do. The register is a snap, and you can open up right after school each day. Mornings and early afternoon are never my best times anyway, so you working afternoons and evenings will keep me out of the poorhouse. Besides, let’s face it, isn’t the store a better place to spend your days than hanging around the house?”

That said it all. Mike could not talk about Vic with anyone, not even Crow, but he knew that Crow understood. He felt tears stinging in the corners of his eyes. “Crow…I…”

“Dude,” Crow cut him off, “if you are planning to make some kind of ‘I won’t let you down’ speech, then save it. Both of us hurt too much for that and besides it’s way too After-School Special for either of us. Just say, ‘Thanks, Crow, you’re one helluva guy.’”

Mike laughed. “Thanks, Crow, you’re one helluva guy.”

“This I know. Now, I called Judy from the yarn place across the street, and she’ll keep her eye on you if I’m not there. She has the same kind of register if you have questions.”

“Wow,” Mike said. “Okay…this sounds great.”

(8)

Saul Weinstock said, “Turn him over,” and watched as his nurse tugged the cold, limp body of Nels Cowan on its side. Bending close, Weinstock examined the buttocks, the backs of the thighs. He frowned and reached for a scalpel. “Hold him steady,” he said and plunged the razor sharp blade into the corpse’s white left buttock, then drew a long line down toward the top of the thigh. He removed the scalpel and stared at the black mouth of the wound. “That’s weird,” he said.

The male nurse, still supporting the ponderous weight of the corpse, peered over its shoulder. “What’s weird?”

“Well, as you know, when the heart stops pumping, all of the blood settles down to the lowest points on the body, it gathers in the buttocks, the backs of the thighs, the back, so the procedure to drain the blood is to open those areas and let the blood drain out.”

“Uh huh,” said the nurse, who did know this and wondered why he was getting a lecture.

“So, tell me, Barney,” said Weinstock, “what’s wrong with this picture?”

The nurse looked again. “Oh,” he said after a handful of seconds.

“Yes indeed,” agreed Weinstock. “Oh.”

“There’s no—”

“Not a drop.”

“None?”

“None,” said Weinstock flatly.

Barney lowered the body back onto the stainless steel table. “Well, doctor, look at all the massive trauma to the neck and chest. Surely with all that flesh torn away the blood would have drained out.”

Weinstock shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. No matter how traumatic a wound, there is pretty much no way to completely exsanguinate a body short of hanging it upside down after decapitation. This body is completely drained. Look at the face, at the arms. The veins are collapsed, the body is shrunken.”

“He was lying out there in the mud,” Barney said. “Maybe the blood just drained into the mud.”

Weinstock thought about that, then shook his head. “Nope. I saw the crime scene photos. I read Dr. Colbert’s report. There was some blood, true enough, but not nearly enough.”

“Then…what?”

“Hell if I know,” Weinstock said, and then shrugged. “Okay, now I want to take a look at the other guy. Castle. Wheel him out here. Let’s look at him right now.”

Barney gave his own shrug and went into the cold room. While he wrestled with the body of Jimmy Castle, Weinstock glanced over at the tape recorder that he’d started running at the beginning of the autopsy. The counter was ticking along steadily, having recorded all of his remarks to Barney. Frowning, he did a few more tests to Cowan, piercing the lower back, upper back, calves, thighs: trying to find blood. His frown deepened as he examined the ragged wounds at the throat. Strange wounds, not like knife wounds, not like any kind of wounds he had ever seen outside of a textbook. He bent close, gingerly pressing the flaps of skin back into place like puzzle pieces, reconstructing the throat as accurately as possible. The loose strips of skin added up to most of the throat, though some small sections were missing. Probably lost in the mud or destroyed when Boyd did whatever it was he did to the corpse the night he broke into the morgue to steal Ruger’s body. Even so, there was enough to piece together most of the throat. Weinstock used his fingers to hold the patchwork in place, and stared at what the marks on the flesh told him.

“Oh my…God!” he breathed softly, and he could feel sweat popping on his forehead and spreading under his arms. He looked up quickly as the nurse came crashing through the double doors, pushing a gurney. The naked body of Jimmy Castle lay on the steel surface, his white face wiped clean of all its former easy smiles, his body robbed of animation, dignity, and humanity.

Barney barely glanced at the doctor, didn’t see the brightness of his eyes or the sweat that ran in trails down the sides of his face. “You okay, Doc?”

Weinstock grunted something and reached out to pull the second gurney closer. Together, Weinstock and the nurse hoisted him onto the second of the steel surgical tables. Weinstock said, “Help me get him on his side. Good. Hand me that scalpel. Thanks.” Weinstock repeated the same cuts he made on Cowan’s body.

Barney looked at the incisions and then at Weinstock. “No blood.”

“No blood,” Weinstock agreed slowly, his voice soft, thoughtful. He set the scalpel down and eased the body onto its back. He shifted position, standing near to Castle’s head, his body blocking the view from the nurse as he poked and probed at the dead officer’s throat.

“What’s it mean?”

Weinstock turned toward him, and now Barney could see that sweat was pouring down the doctor’s face. Weinstock folded his hairy arms and leaned a hip against Cowan’s table, looking slowly from one body to the other and back again. He was trying to look casual, but his face was hard and his eyes almost glassy. Then he reached over and punched the Off button on the tape recorder and looked up at the nurse, who was beginning to fidget. “Let me ask you something, Barney,” he said slowly, his voice as taut as violin strings. “How much do you like this job?”

“Huh?”

“Your job, being a nurse here at the hospital, how much do you like it?”

“Uh…well, I like it just fine, Doc.”

“Means a lot to you, this job?”

“Yes sir.”

“Got a wife? Kids?”

“Sure, Jenny and I have just the one. She’ll be ten months on Monday.”

“Ten months? My oh my. Babies are expensive, aren’t they?”

“You said it.”

“So, I guess it would be a safe assumption that you really need this job?”

“Sir?” Barney was frowning, beginning to feel really nervous.