as Knoxville was, this part of East Tennessee was still lush and verdant. The spring sun hadn’t yet developed the shirt-sticking heat and humidity of high summer, and at this time of day the air held an early morning freshness, unsullied by traffic fumes.
It was an easy twenty-minute drive to UT Medical Center. The morgue was located in a different part of the campus from the facility, but I knew my way there from previous trips.
The man on the morgue reception was so huge he made the desk look like a child’s toy. He was quilted with so much flesh that he seemed virtually boneless, the strap of his watch digging into the dimpled wrist like cheese wire into dough. His breath came in a faintly adenoidal wheeze as I explained who I was.
‘Autopsy suite five. Through the door and down the corridor.’ His voice was incongruously high-pitched for such a big frame. He gave a cherubic smile as he handed me an electronic pass card. ‘Cain’t miss it.’
I swiped the card on the door and went into the morgue itself. The familiar olfactory punch of formaldehyde, bleach and disinfectant greeted me. Tom was already in the tiled autopsy suite, dressed in surgical scrubs and a rubber apron. A portable CD player stood on a bench nearby, quietly playing a rhythmic drum track I didn’t recognize. Another, similarly dressed man was with him, hosing down the body that lay on the aluminium table to sluice off the insects and blowfly larvae.
‘Morning,’ Tom said brightly as the door swung shut behind me.
I tipped my head towards the CD player. ‘Buddy Rich?’
‘Not even close. Louie Belson.’ Tom straightened from the dripping wet chest cavity. ‘You’re early.’
‘Not as early as you.’
‘I wanted to get the body X-rayed and send the dental plates over to the TBL.’ He gestured to the younger man who was still hosing down the body. ‘David, this is Kyle, one of the morgue assistants. I’ve had him helping out till you got here, but don’t tell Hicks.’
Morgue assistants were employed by the Medical Examiner’s office, which meant that Hicks was technically Kyle’s boss. I’d forgotten that the pathologist was based here, and I didn’t envy anyone working for him. Not that it seemed to bother Kyle. He was tall, with a heavy-boned build that was just on the right side of plump. His pleasant moon face beamed from under an untidy mop of hair.
‘Hi,’ he said, raising a gloved hand.
‘One of my students is going to be lending a hand, as well,’ Tom went on. ‘It doesn’t really need three of us, but I promised I’d let her help out on my next examination.’
‘If you don’t need me here…’
‘There’s going to be plenty to do. It just means we’ll finish sooner.’ Tom’s smile said I wasn’t getting away that easily. ‘Scrubs and the rest are in the locker room down the corridor.’
I had the changing room to myself. Putting my own clothes in a locker, I pulled on surgical scrubs and a rubber apron. What we were about to do was perhaps the grimmest part of our work, and certainly one of the messiest. DNA tests could take up to eight weeks, and fingerprints only provided an identity match if the victim’s were already on record. But even with badly decomposed bodies such as this, the victim’s identity and sometimes also the cause of death could be gleaned from the skeleton itself. Before that could be done, though, every last trace of soft tissue had to be removed.
It wasn’t a pleasant job.
When I went back to the autopsy suite I paused outside. I could hear Tom humming along to the jazz over the sound of running water. What if you make another mistake? What if you can’t do this any more?
But I couldn’t afford to think like that. I opened the door and went in. Kyle had finished hosing down the body. Dripping water, the dead man’s remains glistened as though they had been varnished.
Tom was at a trolley of surgical instruments. He picked up a pair of tissue scissors and pulled the bright overhead light closer as I went over.
‘OK, let’s make a start.’
The first dead body I saw was when I was a student. It was a young woman, no more than twenty-five or six, who had been killed in a house fire. She’d asphyxiated from the smoke, but her body was untouched by the flames. She was lying on a cold table under the mortuary’s harsh, revealing light. Her eyes were partly open, slits of dull white showing between the lids, and the tip of her tongue was protruding ever so slightly from between bloodless lips. What struck me was how still she looked. As frozen and motionless as a photograph. Everything she’d done, everything she’d been and hoped to be, had come to an end. Forever.
The realization hit me with physical force. I knew then that no matter what I did, how much I learned, there would always be one mystery I couldn’t explain. But in the years that followed that only increased my determination to solve the more tangible puzzles that lay within my scope.
Then Kara and Alice, my wife and six-year-old daughter, were killed in a car accident. And suddenly such things were no longer academic.
For a time I’d retreated to my original profession of medical doctor, believing that way might bring a measure of peace, if not answers. But I’d only been fooling myself. As Jenny and I had found out to our cost, I couldn’t run away from my work. It was what I did, what I was. Or so I’d thought until I’d had a knife thrust into my stomach.
Now I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
I tried to put the doubts aside as I worked on the victim’s remains. After collecting tissue and fluid samples to send for analysis, I used a scalpel to carefully cut away the muscle, cartilage and internal organs, literally stripping the last vestiges of humanity from the body. Whoever it was, he’d been a big man. We’d need to take more accurate measurements from the skeleton itself, but he was at least six two, and heavily boned.
Not an easy man to overpower.
We worked in near silence, Tom humming absently along to a Dina Washington CD as Kyle wound up the hose and busied himself cleaning the tray where the insects and other detritus from the body were caught after being washed off. I’d begun to lose myself in the work when the double doors to the autopsy suite abruptly swung open.
It was Hicks.
‘Morning, Donald,’ Tom greeted him pleasantly. ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’
The pathologist didn’t bother to reply. The dome of his hairless head gleamed like marble under the bright lights as he glared at Kyle.
‘The hell are you doing in here, Webster? I’ve been looking for you.’
Kyle flushed. ‘I was just—’
‘He’s just finishing up,’ Tom put in smoothly. ‘I asked him to help out. Dan Gardner wants a report on this as soon as possible. Unless you have any objection?’
Hicks could hardly admit to it if he had. He turned his ire on Kyle again. ‘I’ve got an autopsy this morning. Is the suite ready?’
‘Uh, no, but I asked Jason to—’
‘I told you to do it, not Jason. I’m sure Dr Lieberman and his assistant can manage by themselves while you do what you’re paid for.’
It took a second or two to realize he meant me. Tom gave him a thin smile. ‘I’m sure we can.’
Hicks gave a sniff, disappointed to be deprived of a confrontation. ‘I want everything ready in half an hour, Webster. Make sure it is.’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry…’ Kyle said, but the pathologist had already turned away. The heavy door swung shut behind him.
‘Well, I’m sure we all feel better for that,’ Tom said into the silence. ‘Sorry, Kyle. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.’
The younger man smiled, but his cheeks still flamed red. ‘That’s OK. But Dr Hicks is right. I really ought to —’
The door burst open before he could finish. For a second I thought Hicks might have come back, but it was a harried-looking young woman who appeared rather than the pathologist.
I guessed she was the student Tom had mentioned would be helping us. She was in her early twenties and wore a faded pink T-shirt over well-worn cargo pants, both stretched by her ample build. The bleached blond hair had been pulled into some sort of order by a red and white polka-dot Alice band, and her round glasses gave her an
