The Backwoods

“And you’re sure this is Dwayne Parker? You’re sure it’s not some elaborate stage dummy or something, some kind of joke?”

“It’s no dummy, Ms. White. I personally performed the Y-section and a clinical evisceration. I weighed every organ in that man’s body. There are pictures of that too, if you’d like to—”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” Patricia hastened to say.

“The Bureau of Prisons verified the fingerprints, along with two five-probe DNA profiles. And the body that I autopsied had tattoos that matched the county corrections inductee log of distinguishing marks. The body in the photograph is Dwayne Parker, and I’m very sorry I can’t give you any useful information regarding his decapitation. One of the dermatologists at the hospital suggested that maybe some kind of mold or fungus grew over the transection area—”

“Is that possible?”

“In my opinion, no.” The coroner shrugged, just as frustrated now as Patricia. “That’s why we call this kind of death undetermined and curious.”

You can say that again. . . . Patricia passed back the folder. She was glad not to have it in her hands anymore. What am I going to tell Judy? She struggled with the thought.

Nothing, I guess. I just won’t tell her anything.

“What’s stranger,” Baker said, “is the fact that Dwayne Parker was a resident of Agan’s Point, the crabbing town out on the water.”

“Why is that strange?” Patricia asked.

“Because it really is a quiet little place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decedent from Agan’s Point who didn’t die from old age. Then all of a sudden, in little more than a week we get Dwayne Parker, plus two brutal mutilations and two people burned to death.”

The Hilds and the Ealds, Patricia knew. “All from Agan’s Point. Did you find any evidence of drugs in any of the bodies?”

Baker shook her head. “The narcotics unit and the Agan’s Point police chief both asked me for full tox screens—something about crystal methamphetamine. There was nothing in any of them, no CDS of any kind, no marijuana, not even any trace alcohol. But that’s not even what I was going to mention. That’s not the strange part.”

“What is?”

“The body that came in this morning.”

Patricia’s brow furrowed. “Not another Agan’s Point resident . . .”

“I’m afraid so. The sixth one now.”

“Who?”

“Forty-five-year-old male Caucasian named Robert Caudill, aka Junior.”

The name rang a bell. “I remember when I was a kid, he and his twin brother were the neighborhood bullies.” Patricia pinched her chin. “And he was murdered?”

“Don’t know,” Baker replied. “I don’t see how it could be a homicide, but . . .” She sighed, blowing a tress of blond hair. “Since the governor’s office told me to open all doors to you . . . I guess I can show you. You want to see?”

She’s asking me if I want to see a fat redneck’s corpse. Patricia told herself. She gritted her teeth and said, “Yes, please.”

Whatever it is, it can’t be any weirder than the picture of Dwayne.

Patricia was quite wrong about that, which she would discern in a moment. She followed the attractive coroner through the front office and into a door that read, SUITE 1—DO NOT ENTER. At once a strong scent accosted her nostrils. “It’s formalin; you’ll get used to it,” Baker said. “All-purpose preservative.” Overhead fluorescent tubes threw the ghastliest tint about the room; Patricia supposed it was just her imagination—she was in a morgue—but somehow that tint made her feel unnaturally close to death. Ranks of storage shelves behind them sat heavy with big smoke-colored glass bottles: JORE’S, ZENKER’S SOLUTION, PHENOL 20 PERCENT. A tin tray marked AMYLOID/FAT NECROSIS PREP held several bottles of iodine and copper sulphate. A large sink and heat-sealing iron hung on the same wall. Basically the room could’ve passed for any high school biology lab, save for one fact: high school biology labs didn’t have a covered dead body sitting in the middle of them.

Patricia’s stomach flipped when she glimpsed the covered bulk. White light glinted like abstract art in the crinkles of the black plastic sheet.

Baker seemed nonchalant when she whipped the sheet off the table.

What am I doing here? Patricia yelled at herself.

The body lay there so candidly it seemed surreal, like the graphics in a CD-ROM game—a spooky veil like tulle that somehow enhanced details instead of detracting from them. The body lay on a stainless-steel morgue platform that came equipped with a removable drain trap, gutters for “organic outflow,” and a motorized height adjustment. The corpse’s image was blatant, like a surprise shout in the dark.

“Here he is,” Baker announced in her snippy Southern drawl. “Robert—Junior—Caudill.”

Patricia didn’t allow herself to look at the body directly, opting for peripheral side glances. The pallor of the flesh reminded her of the water chestnuts that Byron used to make rumaki at home; the unused chestnuts would always sit in the fridge too long, and start to turn brown. Junior Caudill was a big man—and a plump one—much of his body fat settling like raw lard on the stainless-steel table. One morbid glimpse at his groin showed her the purple nose of a penis shriveled so severely that it could’ve been a mushroom in a bird’s nest. Oh, my God, I’m looking at a cadaver. . . . When she closed her eyes she found the formalin fumes seemed to sting. The afterimage of the white face lingered behind her eyes. She only vaguely remembered the man from her youth, a problem child and troublemaker who’d dropped out of school early. Had she seen him and his brother at Dwayne’s funeral? Probably, but she didn’t even care. Come to think of it, she didn’t even care that he was dead. At least the body hadn’t been cut open yet. Had Baker been able to establish cause of death without a full autopsy?

Finally she choked out the question: “Okay, it’s a dead body, so what’s so strange about it?”

Baker snapped on a light board on the wall. “Here’s a transabdominal X-ray of Dwayne Parker,” she said, clipping a large sheet of film to the board. Murky shades and shapes seemed to throb. “It’s normal.” Her lithe finger pointed. “Normal GI tract, cardiopulmonary process, liver, bladder, spleen. Everything that’s supposed to be there is there.”

“Except his head,” Patricia noted when she looked higher and saw that the boundary of the X-ray ended at the shoulders.

“Yes, but this isn’t about Dwayne Parker’s head. This is about Robert Caudill.” And then just as quickly as she spoke, she pinned up another sheet of X-ray film.

Patricia caught the dissimilarity in an instant. Dwayne’s X-ray clearly showed the presence of his internal organs.

Junior Caudill’s X-ray clearly showed an absence of internal organs.

“Where are his organs?” Patricia asked baldly. “You haven’t autopsied the body yet—I don’t even see any cuts on it.”

“There aren’t any cuts, and, no, I haven’t done the post yet. I’ve only done some preliminaries so far.” Baker sat down as if fatigued or repressing an agitation. “The only thing I can think of is maybe the decedent was exposed to a strain of flesh-eating bacteria, like an internalized version of the one in England, or maybe he died from a corrosive digestive virus.”

Patricia asked the strangest question, then, ever to pass her lips: “So his organs dissolved?”

Baker’s sleek shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. There are no other contraindications if that’s the case. E. coli, for instance, has been known to liquefy parts of the digestive system, and then the effluent drains from the rectal canal—”

Patricia was suddenly delighted she hadn’t eaten yet today, for surely she would’ve deposited her last meal right here on the floor or perhaps even on the corpse of Robert “Junior” Caudill.

“But there’s virtually no clinical evidence of an effluent void from the rectum, because I inspected his rectum thoroughly,? Baker insisted, as though her competency were in question.

Patricia closed her eyes. This woman has a lousy. job. . . . She let her eyes stray