Something the size of a large cicada moved against Ben’s upper leg with a soft buzzing sound, startling him. He nearly cried out, but in a moment it was gone. He shuddered involuntarily, imagining its crunchy, crackling exoskeleton flitting up against him.
Suddenly, it came again, nestling up against his right thigh with a muffled burring noise. He leaped backward. “Shit! What was that?”
Susan looked over at him inquisitively, eyebrows raised. “What’s wrong with you?”
“A giant bug just hit me in the leg,” Ben advised her. “Twice!”
No sooner had he uttered these words than he realized two things: The first was that he had just cursed in front of his highly impressionable eight-year-old son, who would now most assuredly walk around his home, his school, and the local playground for the next week yelling “Shit!” at the top of his lungs. The second was that the flying cicada creature that had struck him—twice!—in the right thigh was nothing more than his own cell phone, which he’d left on vibrate in his front pants pocket. Feeling now like a complete idiot, he reached into his pocket and brought out the phone.
“Shit! That’s no giant bug, Dad. That’s your phone,” Joel pointed out enthusiastically.
“Thank you, Joel,” he said, looking at the phone’s digital display, which simply read: “CO.” It was his assistant calling from the Coroner’s Office, which meant that the body was either on its way to the CO or had already arrived and would soon be ready for autopsy. In a case such as this, they would expect him to perform the autopsy tonight. Answering this call would be the beginning of a long, unpleasant evening.
“Go ahead,” Susan said with a smile as he glanced in her direction. “You’d better answer your cicada.”
Ben flipped the phone open, and took a few steps away from his wife and son. “Yes, hello,” he said.
“Dr. S,” the voice on the other end spoke excitedly. “It’s Nat.”
“Hey. What’s up?”
“You heard about that kid they found dead in the woods this afternoon, I guess. The one who was stabbed to death?”
“Yeah. We heard.”
“Well, the cops have finished with their crime scene investigation, and they’re releasin’ the body to us. I’m about to head over there to pick him up right now.”
“Okay. Just give me a call when you get back to the office and everything’s ready.”
“Sure, Dr. S. No problem. But, hey. There’s a lot of reporters settin’ up outside the CO with their camera crews ’n’ stuff, you know. Body’s not even here yet and they’re startin’ to gather round like they’re expecting an Elvis sighting or somethin’. I mean, this is a big case for us, don’t you think?”
“Nat, listen to me.” Ben kept his voice as calm and as clear as he could. He spoke slowly, hoping that by maintaining his own composure he could exert some positive influence on his overenthusiastic assistant. He doubted that it would do much good, but at least it was worth a try.
“Yeah? What d’ya need me to do?”
Take two Valium and call me in the morning, Ben thought to himself. Instead, he said, “You’re right about this being an important case.”
“Sure ’nough,” Nat exclaimed. “Murder like this—in cold blood and all—ain’t somethin’ you see round here every day. That’s for sure.”
“That’s right,” Ben replied. “It’s not something we see around here every day. It’s big news in a small town, and those reporters are going to want some footage and a nice ten-second sound bite for the eight o’clock news.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Things are about to get a lot more interesting round here. It’s gonna be a regular three-ring circus.”
“You’re probably right,” Ben agreed. “But right now we have a job to do. It’s an important job. A boy was murdered today. He’s lying on the ground surrounded by yellow police tape. And somewhere out there is a family whose son won’t be returning home tonight. Now, our job is to gather as much information as we can about how he died, and the evidence that we have is his body. If we do our job carefully and professionally, we might find something that will help the police track down his killer.”
“That’s right,” Nat agreed excitedly. “Wouldn’t that be somethin’? You think they’d want me to testify in court?”
“Maybe. But I can tell you one thing for sure. If we let our emotions get the best of us—if we allow ourselves to be distracted and start thinking too much about the reporters and the police and the eight o’clock news—well, then we’ll screw it up. We’ll miss something, or allow a break in the chain of custody, or jump to some conclusion that we’ll regret later. But by then, it will be too late.”
“Too damn late,” Nat agreed seriously. His voice was quieter now, more subdued, and although Ben could still detect a hint of the earlier excitement just beneath the surface, the boy’s tone was held in check now by something of even greater significance: a sense of sobering responsibility. He could picture his young assistant standing in the lab’s small office with the phone held tightly in his right hand, the adrenaline-laced muscles of his body filled with purpose and ready to act. Nathan Banks was a good kid. At twenty-two, he was a bit young for the job of pathologist’s assistant. But Ben had known him for most of the boy’s life, and he was also friends with Nat’s father, who’d been flying for United Airlines for the past eighteen years and, as a commercial airline pilot, was away from home more often than not. Nat had taken an early fascination with the Coroner’s Office. He’d started volunteering there at the age of sixteen, helping Ben mostly by preparing and cleaning instruments, attending to certain janitorial duties, and the like. But Nat also enjoyed watching and eventually assisting with the autopsies Ben performed. His mother, Karen, had given her hesitant permission, although she’d expressed some reservations to Ben about the interest her son had taken in the field. One afternoon she’d shown up at the office and had asked Ben with a worried look if he thought it was normal or healthy for a sixteen-year-old boy to want to spend his days working around dead people. Ben, who had entered medical school at the age of twenty-six but had volunteered both in his local hospital’s emergency department as well as the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office since the age of eighteen, explained to Karen that her son’s interest in the work was probably nothing to worry about. It might even serve as a potential career someday, he’d suggested, and over the next two years Nat had slowly been allowed to assume a more hands-on role in the autopsies Ben performed. Eventually, he became skilled enough to be a real asset in the lab, and when Nat graduated from high school Ben had offered to turn his volunteer position into a paid one. Nat had enthusiastically accepted, and he had been working there ever since.
“What you and I have to decide,” Ben now said into the phone, “is whether we want to be part of the three-ring circus, or whether we want to act like professionals and focus on the job in front of us. You can do either one, Nat; but you can’t do both. What I need to know from you now is how you want to handle it.”
“Well, let’s do our J-O-B,” his assistant replied. “Don’t sweat it, Dr. S—I’ve got your back.”