"Oh, come on, Laur!" the man said while stopping in his tracks. "Jack told me on the weekends things weren't so hard-nosed around here and that this is the way he dresses unless it's an infectious case."
"Lou?" Laurie questioned.
"Yeah, it's me. You're not going to make me get into one of those suits, are you? They drive me crazy."
"If Calvin comes in, you'll be banned for life."
"Realistically, what are the chances of him coming in?"
"Nil, I suppose."
"Well, there you go," Lou said. He walked over to Laurie and glanced down at the two boys, then quickly looked back up at Laurie. "Yuck! What a sight! How you do this for a living?"
"It does have its downside," Laurie agreed. "What brings you in here so early on a Saturday?"
"The headless horseman I came in with. It's caused another stir over at the Manhattan General. I tell you, that place is going to be the bane of me."
"I think you'd better fill me in."
"I got called at the crack of dawn this morning. Seems that the guy who takes care of the bodies over at the General came in to work as usual and then found a body that wasn't supposed to be there." Lou laughed. "I mean, there's some humor here, finding an extra body in a morgue. I've heard about bodies being misplaced or missing, but finding an extra one is a bit out of the ordinary."
"Why were you called? Why wasn't it just taken care of by the local precinct?"
"My captain got word of it subsequent to his sister-in-law's murder over there yesterday morning. He practically has an open line to the hospital. So he calls me right off the bat and tells me to get my ass over there. The problem is that there haven't been any breaks in his in-laws' case, so he's got the thumbscrews to me. Also, there are some similarities. This new corpse has what look like two bullet holes, just like his sister-in-law."
"No ID?"
"Nope, not a clue. And there's no one missing at the hospital, like patients or staff."
"And what about the head and the hands?"
"Gone. They're nowhere to be found."
"So your captain thinks this new corpse relates somehow to his wife's sister's case."
"He didn't say so in so many words, but that was obviously what was on his mind. It is weird. The corpse was as clean as a whistle when the guy found it in the back of their old anatomy cooler. No blood, no gore, no nothing, as if the guy just got out of the shower. The whole thing is kind of eerie if you ask me, and I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my career."
"How were the head and the hands cut off?"
"What do you mean?"
"Was it clean, or were they hacked off?"
"Clean. Very clean."
"Like maybe the way a doctor might do it?"
"I suppose. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes."
"Sounds like an intriguing case."
"Will you do it right away? The captain said he wants to hear from me ASAP."
"I'll be happy to do the case, but not until I finish with these two boys."
Lou glanced around Laurie and took another look at the remains. "What's the story here?"
"Two kids run over by an A train."
Lou grimaced. "Is this what attracted the media types up in the lobby?"
"I'm afraid so. Just the idea of being hit by a train is gruesome enough, but to make it even more appealing to the tabloids is the question whether it's a double suicide or a double homicide."
"Yeah," Marvin said, speaking up for the first time. "I was just about to hear the answer the moment you came in."
"Really?" Lou questioned. He overcame his hesitancy and stepped nearer. "These guys look like they went through a meat grinder. What was it, suicide or homicide?"
"Neither," Laurie said. "It was accidental."
With obvious surprise, both Lou and Marvin looked up at Laurie.
"How can you be so sure?" Lou questioned.
"I'm confident that when I do the posts, I'll find evidence the children were dead when the train struck them. Look at the slight charring on the feet." Laurie picked up a foot from each child in turn and pointed to the darkened, scorched areas.
"What am I looking at?" Lou questioned.
"Burns," Laurie said. Then she pointed to the children's penises. "Just like those on the tip of their glandes."
"What the hell are glandes?" Lou asked.
"It's plural for glans, or head of the penis."
"Ouch," Lou said, making a grimace of pain.
"I think these two boys made the fatal mistake of peeing in tandem on the third rail while standing either on the steel edge of the platform or on the rails themselves. There was such a good ground, the electricity arced up their urine streams and simultaneously electrocuted them."
"My good God!" Lou said, straightening up. "Remind me never to do that."
Lou stayed for the posts on the two boys, which went quickly. As Laurie had anticipated, there was visible evidence that the massive trauma the boys received occurred after their hearts had ceased to beat. While Laurie worked, she told Lou about the first case they had done, Patricia Pruit, and that as a consequence, her series of mysterious, inexplicable, unexpected deaths at the Manhattan General had risen to eight.
"Good grief," Lou responded. "Jack told me yesterday you had seven, and that he was coming around to your idea about a serial killer, but that the front office wasn't buying as of yet. What's Calvin's reaction now? Is the OCME willing to take a public stand?"
"Calvin doesn't know about the one this morning," Laurie said. "I don't know what his reaction will be, but I'm not optimistic. I'm afraid it's going to take some momentous event to get him to see the light, since no help has come from toxicology. When it concerns the Manhattan General, he has blinders on. He still thinks of it as the old, venerated academic center where he trained. The last thing he'd want to do is tarnish its reputation."
"If healthy people keep dying over there, its reputation is going to suffer, one way or the other. But let me know if he comes around to your way of thinking. Like I told Jack, with everything else that's happening at the moment, my hands are tied, at least officially. I'm up to my eyeballs with this Chapman case. If I don't come up with a suspect, I might be out selling pencils."
"Actually, I'm working with Dr. Roger Rousseau to generate some legitimate suspects, and he left me a voice message last night, saying he'd made some progress."
"I hate to hear you are 'working' with that guy, for obvious reasons. But if you and he can come up with some names, I can do something, even if it's not official."
"I think we already have one," Laurie said. She finished sewing up the last of the two boys and handed the instruments to Marvin. "Let's go ahead and put up the headless John Doe before the tourist." The tourist was the fourth case they planned on posting. He was a college student who had presumably died from acute alcohol toxicity. The level in his blood had already been shown to be off the charts. He'd been found in Central Park by an early-morning jogger.
While Marvin went out to get Sal to help him with the corpses of the two boys, Laurie continued to talk to Lou about her series. She explained her idea about the potential killer apparently moving from St. Francis to the Manhattan General, and that Roger was going to look into transferees, among other people, and might even have talked to some of them, including the anesthesiologist Najah.