“Not at the moment, thank you.”
“Very well. We performed a preliminary examination of the body earlier this morning and have noted several important anomalies. I will begin with the overall condition.”
He paused, cleared his throat. Hazen saw his eyes flicker toward the videocamera positioned above the gurney. Yeah, you look great, Doc.
“The first thing I noticed was the lack of insect activity on the body, and the fact that decomposition had barely initiated, despite the fact that the victim has been deceased for at least eighteen hours in temperatures not less than ninety-five degrees, and in full sun for no less than twelve hours.” He cleared his throat again.
“The second anomaly is more obvious. As can be seen, the flesh at the extremities has begun to separate from the bone. It is most pronounced here around the face, hands, and feet—the nose and lips almost appear to have melted. Both ears were missing; one was recovered at the scene. Here, across the hips and shoulders, the skin has ruptured, separated from, and ultimately withdrawn from the fatty tissue below. There is a preponderance of a sebaceous, tallowlike substance consistent with melting and subsequent cooling. The hair and scalp are gone—evidently removed post-mortem and post-, er, processing—and the fatty tissue appears to have partially liquefied. All these and a whole suite of other anomalous characteristics can be explained by one simple fact only.”
He paused and drew in some air.
“The body was boiled.”
Pendergast nodded. “Just so.”
For a minute Hazen couldn’t quite grasp it. “Boiled?”
“The body was apparently immersed in water, brought to a boil, and left in that state for at least three hours, probably more. The autopsy and some biochemical workups will pin down the duration a little more precisely. Suffice to say the boiling was long enough to cause the separations you see here at the maxilla, mandible”—he touched the open mouth with a finger, moving the cheek away from the bone underneath—“and here, on the foot, you will note that most of the toenails are actually missing, having sloughed off. And on the hand, here, the fingernails are likewise all missing, and the left second and third digits missing down to the medial metacarpals. Note how the capsule of the proximal interphalangeal joint is sloughed away, here and here.”
Hazen looked on with increasing disbelief. Damned if it didn’t look just like a parboiled pig. “But, look—to boil a body like that would take days.”
“Wrong, Sheriff. Once the temperature overall reaches one hundred degrees centigrade, an elephant will cook just as fast as a chicken. Cooking, you see, is essentially a process of breaking down the quaternary structure of the protein molecule through the application of heat—”
“I get the picture,” Hazen said.
“The missing digits were not recovered at the scene of the crime,” said Pendergast. “Therefore, one must assume they became separated at the time of boiling.”
“That is a reasonable assumption. In addition, you will note what appear to be severe rope burns on the wrists and ankles. It suggests to me that the, ah, boilingmight have started pre-mortem.”
This was too frigging much. Hazen felt his little world spinning out of control. Upstairs in the hospital lay Gasparilla, an eccentric but harmless old coot, with all the hair scalped not only from his head, but from his chin, upper lip, underarms, even groin; and here, downstairs, lay the second victim—boiled alive, no less. And he was looking at a hometown mass murderer who went around in bare feet, hacked and scalped his victims, and arranged them like a crèche.
“Where is someone going to get a pot big enough to boil a body in?” he asked. “And wouldn’t someone have smelled it cooking?”
He found Pendergast’s cool gray eyes settling on him. “Two excellent questions, Sheriff, suggesting two fruitful routes of inquiry.”
Fruitful routes of inquiry.Here was Stott, a guy he had lifted more than a few with at the Wagon Wheel.
“Needless to say,” the M.E. went on, “I will verify this hypothesis with tissue sections and biochemical assays. I might even be able to tell you how long he was boiled. And now, I direct your attention to the eight-centimeter diagonal tear on the left thigh. It is deep, going through the vastus lateralis and into the vastus intermedius, exposing the femur.”
Very unwillingly, Hazen looked closer at the bite mark. It was very ragged; the flesh, dark brown from the boiling, had been ripped away from the bone.
“A gross examination of this spot clearly reveals teeth marks,” said the M.E. “This body has been partially eaten.”
“Dogs?” Hazen could barely get the question out.
“I don’t believe so, no. The dentition pattern, although showing remarkably advanced dental caries, is definitely human.”
Hazen looked away again. No further questions came to mind.
“We’ve taken measurements and photographs and some tissue samples. The body was eaten post-cooking.”
“Most likely, directly after cooking,” Pendergast murmured. “Note that the first bites are small, exploratory, perhaps taken while waiting for the corpse to cool sufficiently.”
“Er, yes. Well. Hopefully we snagged some DNA from the saliva of the, ah, person who did the eating. Despite the very poor condition of the teeth there is nonetheless evidence of exceptionally vigorous masticatory action.”
The sheriff found himself studying the very interesting tile pattern of the floor, allowing Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya” to drown out the M.E.’s drone. Eaten.
The tune played in his head for quite some time. When it was finished and he finally raised his eyes, he found that Pendergast himself was now bending over the corpse, his face not three inches from the bloated, mottled skin. Hazen heard several loud sniffs.
“May I palpate?” Pendergast asked, holding out a finger.
The M.E. nodded.
Pendergast began prodding, prodding,the corpse with his finger, then rubbing his fingertip across the corpse’s arm, his face. He then looked at his finger, rubbed it against his thumb, smelled it.
This was too much. Hazen looked back down at the tile and mentally cued up “Lovesick Blues.” But just as the guitar intro began, he heard Pendergast’s voice. “May I make a suggestion?”
“Of course,” said the M.E.
“The skin of the body seems to have been coated in some oleaginous substance different from the liquefaction of human fat caused by the boiling. It almost seems as if the body has been coated deliberately. I’d recommend a series of chemical assays to determine the exact type of fats or fatty acids present.”
“We will take all that into consideration, Agent Pendergast.”
But Pendergast didn’t seem to hear. He was staring intently at the body. The room fell into silence. Hazen was aware that everybody, including himself, seemed to be waiting to hear what Pendergast would say next.
Pendergast looked up from the table. “In addition, I note a second substance on the skin,” he said, stepping back with an air of finality. “I would suggest testing for the presence of C 12H 22O 11.”
“You can’t possibly mean—?” The M.E. stopped abruptly.
Hazen glanced up. The M.E. looked astonished. But what in hell’s name could be more outrageous than what they’d already discovered?
“I’m afraid so,” said Pendergast. “The body, it appears, has been buttered and sugared.”
Twenty-Four
The Gro-Bain turkey plant squatted low and long in the great sea of corn that lapped right up to its corrugated metal walls. It was the same color as the corn, too: a dirty tan that rendered it almost invisible from a distance. Corrie Swanson pulled her Gremlin into the big parking lot. It was crowded with hot glittering cars and she had to park some distance from the entrance. Pendergast opened the passenger door, unfolded his black-clad legs, and emerged in a single, lithe movement. He looked around.