Something was snagged in the ear cavity.
It was a brown half-oval, no bigger than a grain of rice. Setting down the scalpel, I picked up a pair of small forceps and gently teased it free from the whorl of cartilaginous tissue. I raised it up to examine it, my surprise growing as I saw what it was. What on earth…?
It took me a few seconds to realize that the racing in my chest was excitement.
I started searching round for a specimen jar, and gave a start when there was a rap on the door. I looked round as Paul entered.
‘Not disturbing you, am I?’
‘Not at all’.
He came over and looked down at the body, eyes professionally assessing its tissue-stripped form. He’d have seen worse, just as I had. Sometimes it’s only when you see someone else’s reaction— or lack of it—that you realize how we become accustomed to even the most grotesque sights.
‘I just saw Tom. He said you were still working, so I thought I’d see how you were getting on.’
‘Still behind schedule. You don’t happen to know where the specimen jars are, do you?’
‘Sure.’ He went to a cupboard. ‘Tom wasn’t looking so good. Was he OK?’
I wasn’t sure how much to say, unsure if Paul knew about Tom’s condition. But he must have read my hesitation.
‘Don’t worry, I know about the angina. Did he have another attack?’
‘Not a bad one, but I persuaded him to go home,’ I said, relieved I didn’t have to pretend.
‘I’m glad he pays attention to someone. Usually you can’t beat him away with a stick.’ Paul handed me a specimen jar. ‘What’s that?’
I put the small brown object into it and held it up for him to see. ‘An empty pupal case. Blowfly, by the look of it. It must have lodged in the ear cavity when we hosed down the body.’
Paul looked at it incuriously at first; then I saw the realization hit him. He stared from the specimen jar to the body.
‘This came from the body you exhumed this morning?’
‘That’s right.’
He whistled, taking the jar from me. ‘Now how the hell did that get there?’
I’d been wondering that myself. Blowflies were ubiquitous in our line of work, laying their eggs in any bodily opening. They could find their way into most places, indoors or out.
But I’d never heard of any laying their eggs six feet underground.
I screwed the lid on to the jar. ‘The only thing I can think of is that the body must have been left on the surface before it was buried. Did Tom tell you about the decomposition?’
‘That it was worse than it should have been after six months?’ He nodded. ‘The casing’s empty, so the body must have been left out for at least ten or eleven days for the fly to hatch. And six months ago puts the time of death sometime last fall. Warm and wet, so the body wouldn’t mummify like it would in summer.’
It was starting to make sense. Either by accident or design, the body had been left to rot before it was put into the casket, which would explain why it was so badly decomposed. Paul was silent for a moment. I knew what he was thinking, and when he turned to me I saw that his excitement matched my own.
‘Is the casket still here?’
We left the autopsy suite and went to the storeroom where the casket and aluminium container were awaiting collection by forensic agents. When we opened it the smell of putrefaction was as bad as ever. The shroud was crumpled inside, clotted and rank.
Using a pair of forceps, Paul drew it open.
Until now it had been the body itself that had commanded everyone’s attention, not what it had been wrapped in. Now we knew what to look for, though, they weren’t hard to find. More pupal cases lay in the cotton sheet, camouflaged by the viscous black slurry from the corpse. Some were broken and empty, already hatched like the one I’d found, but others were still whole. There were no larvae, but after six months their softer bodies would have long since disintegrated.
‘Well, that settles it,’ Paul said. ‘You might explain away one, but not this many. The body must have been pretty badly decomposed before it was sealed in here.’
He reached for the casket lid, but I stopped him. ‘What’s that?’
Something else was half hidden in the folds of cotton. Taking the forceps from Paul, I gently teased it free.
‘What is it, some kind of cricket?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
It was an insect of some kind, that much was obvious. Well over an inch in length, it was slender with a long, segmented carapace. It had been partially crushed, and its legs had curled in death, emphasizing the elongated teardrop shape of its body.
I set it down on the sheet. Against the white background, the insect looked even more out of place and alien.
Paul leaned forward for a closer look. ‘Never seen anything like that before. How about you?’
I shook my head. I’d no idea what it was either. Only that it had no right to be there.
I worked for another two hours after Paul left. Finding the unknown insect had blown away any vestiges of my earlier tiredness, so I’d carried on until I’d got all the exhumed remains soaking in vats of detergent. I was still buzzing with adrenaline as I left the morgue. Paul and I had decided not to bother Tom with our discovery that night, but I felt convinced that it was a breakthrough. I didn’t know how or why, not yet. But my instincts told me the insect was important.
It was a good feeling.
Still preoccupied, I made my way across the car park. It was late and this part of the hospital was deserted. My car was almost the only one there. Streetlights ran round the edges of the car park, but its interior was in almost total darkness. I was halfway across, starting to reach in my pocket for my car keys, when suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I knew I wasn’t alone.
I turned quickly, but there was nothing to see. The car park was a field of darkness, the few other cars there solid blocks of shadow. Nothing moved, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something—someone— nearby.
You’re just tired. You’re imagining things. I set off for my car again. My footsteps sounded unnaturally loud on the gravelled surface.
And then I heard a stone skitter behind me.
I spun round and was blinded by a bright stab of light. Shielding my eyes, I squinted past it as a dark figure with a torch emerged from behind the tank-like shape of a pick-up truck.
It stopped a few feet away, the torch still directed on to my face. ‘Mind tellin’ me what you’re doing here?’
The voice was gruff and threateningly civil, the accent a heavy twang. I made out epaulettes beyond the torch beam, and relaxed as I realized it was only a security guard.
‘I’m going home,’ I said. He didn’t move the light from my face. Its brightness prevented me from making out anything apart from the uniform.
‘Got some ID?’
I fished out the pass I’d been given for the morgue and showed it to him. He didn’t take it, just dipped the torch beam on to the plastic card before raising it to my face again.
‘Could you shine that somewhere else?’ I said, blinking.
He lowered the torch a little. ‘Workin’ late, huh?’
‘That’s right.’ Blotches of light danced in my vision as my eyes tried to adjust.
There was a throaty chuckle. ‘Graveyard shift’s a bitch, ain’t it?’
The torch beam was switched off. I couldn’t see anything, but heard his footsteps crunch away across the gravel. His voice floated back to me from the darkness.
‘Y’all drive carefully, now.’
