'So has this gentleman.'
Catherine knew that was true. 'What's his overall condition?' she asked.
'The usual, pretty much. The correlation between poor health and homelessness is a complicated one. Issues of mental or physical health can drive people into homelessness, and once homeless, people are at risk for a great many diseases and conditions, so it's a vicious circle. HIV is more prevalent among the homeless than in the general population, as are communicative diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis. Most homeless deaths are from heart disease and cancer, just as they are for the rest of us, but there are additional complications involved in treating the homeless. Various sorts of substance abuse are common as well. In this gentleman's case, his arteries are in pretty bad shape, and he's got some melanoma, no doubt the result of too much exposure to the sun. His teeth are a mess. But even with that old head injury, it looks as if he would have lived a good while longer if he hadn't been shot.'
Doc Robbins took out a bone saw. Catherine didn't like the whirring noise or the sharp smell of burning bone, but then she had never liked having cavities filled, either. In the end, the sensations were pretty similar, except that she didn't have a dentist's hands digging around in her open mouth or the strange numbing of the novocaine.
For the benefit of the recording made of all autopsies, the coroner described what he was doing and seeing as he went. Every now and then, he looked up and caught Catherine's eye, and she knew which of his comments were meant for her.
'He's probably lucky he was shot,' he said.
'Lucky in what way?'
'Most homeless people are never autopsied. Like much else in our society, autopsies tend to be performed on those who are better off – more men than women, more whites than blacks or Hispanics, and so on. And since somewhere around a third of all official causes of death are incorrect -'
'You're kidding,' Catherine interrupted. 'A third?'
'At least. Many CODs are guesswork or are based on faulty or incomplete data. Sometimes they're simply made up for one reason or another. Overwhelming caseloads, lack of resources, general incompetence – a lot of factors come into play. Anyway, given the number of bodies that are never identified, this gentleman is fortunate that he's getting an autopsy that will determine his actual cause of death and lucky that he died in this jurisdiction so that every attempt will be made to figure out who he is and to locate his next of kin.'
'That's job one,' Catherine said. 'Somewhere, someone cares about him.'
Doc Robbins nodded his agreement, then bent to the body. 'I'm removing the calvarium,' he said. As he spoke, he did so, and he held up the skull's upper dome so Catherine could see it. 'Intact, undamaged.' He bent over again and took a deep whiff of the exposed brain. 'He passes the smell test.'
Sometimes odors that wafted out as soon as the brain was revealed could give a coroner important clues to the cause of death. In this case, they didn't, or Robbins would have said so. Everybody assumed the COD was the two bullets McCann had put into the man's chest, but none of them was paid to make assumptions. Doc Robbins would get some tissue into toxicology as well, to find out if there was any chemical component to the man's death.
'This is interesting, however,' he said.
'What is?'
Doc Robbins picked up tongs and reached into the dead man's skull, digging around with some effort and finally gripping something, and brought it out. 'Appears to be a forty-five to me,' he said. 'But I'm no ballistics expert.'
'We'll check it out,' Catherine said.
'I know you will,' He dropped the slug into a clean stainless-steel bowl.
'How long has that been inside him?' she asked.
'That I don't know, Catherine. But it's been there for a while. There's an abundance of scar tissue built up around it, holding it in place between skull and brain.'
'It was pressing against his brain?' Catherine asked, thinking she already knew the answer.
She could tell by the intent gaze he threw her that he understood what she was driving at. 'Yes,' he said. 'And I'll have to investigate further, but it's entirely possible that there was some brain damage as a result.'
'The shooter said he was acting crazy. Mentally unbalanced.'
'That's not quite how I'd phrase it. But yes, it could be that this old bullet wound affected his personality, his behavior, to the point where the layman would have called him crazy.'
'That,' Catherine said, 'might explain a lot.'
'It would answer some questions, wouldn't it?' Doc Robbins said. 'But then again, it seems to raise a lot more…'
Back in the lab, Catherine found Greg Sanders in the layout room with the dead man's clothing. Greg had dozens of small pieces of paper spread out on the large tabletop, as if a heavy snow had fallen. A snowfall with huge flakes and one that was already as gray and dirty as if it had been plowed and sprayed with exhaust for a week. Every bit of paper looked as if it had been written on and rewritten on and written on again over that.
'To-do lists?' Catherine asked. 'These were all in his pockets? He must have crinkled when he walked.'
'They were pretty stuffed. And I don't know what it all is yet,' Greg admitted. 'Most of it I can't read. Maybe the guy was a doctor, judging from his handwriting.'
Catherine looked more closely at the scraps. Greg was right – the man's handwriting, if it was his, was cramped, the letters tiny, and with all of the writing over other writing, layer upon layer, it was all essentially illegible.
'We'll get QD on it,' she said. If anyone could make sense of these notes, or whatever they were, the experts in Questioned Documents could. 'I have a feeling if the dead could talk, this guy would have some fascinating stories to tell.'
'If the dead could talk,' Mandy Webster said, having paused at the open door, 'it would be the beginning of the zombie uprising, and we'd all be in big trouble.'
Catherine looked over her shoulder at the fingerprint tech. 'Looking for something to do?'
'Greg thought maybe I should check some of his paper scraps for fingerprints.'
'I figure the John Doe's are most likely to be on them,' Greg said. 'But even if all we could find were someone else's, maybe that would still help us figure out who he is.'
'Have at it, then,' Catherine said, gesturing toward the bits strewn across the table. 'There are plenty to choose from.'
'I did find one note that's intriguing,' Greg said while Mandy picked up a few of the scraps with gloved hands and carried them away. 'I mean, maybe they're all intriguing, but I kind of doubt it, except in the most abstract sociological way. But this one is different.' He pointed to a sheet of paper larger than most of the rest, although it had been folded and crumpled down to the same small size as the other bits.
'Does that mean you can read it?'
'Some of it. The pieces of paper are mostly scraps of whatever the guy had available to write on. The margin of a newspaper, the back of an envelope, a cash-register receipt, whatever. Apparently, he had a lot of thoughts he wanted to get down on paper. But this one he carried around for a long time, and at least at one point, it was a contract.'
Catherine was surprised by this revelation. 'A contract? What do you mean?'
'I might be using that term a little loosely,' Greg said. 'It's sort of a rental agreement. I can't read the names on it, because they've been written over too many times. But the gist of it is that whoever signed it down at the bottom is agreeing to abide by the rules of some tent city.'
Another surprise. 'There are a few tent cities around, and I've heard the population has been swelling as more and more homes have been foreclosed. Does it say which one?'
'It doesn't have a name – at least, not that I can see. But there's an address at the top, way out on Green Valley Parkway.'
'I've seen that place, way out at the edge of the desert.'
