"Hold him on either side," I direct Marino. "Good. Just like that."
Marino grips either side of the dead man's head, trying to hold it still as I work a thin chisel into the side of the mouth, sliding it between molars to pry open the jaws. Steel scrapes against enamel. I am careful not to cut the lips, but it is inevitable that I chip the surfaces of the back teeth.
"It's just a damn good thing people are dead when you do shit like this to them," Marino says. "Bet you'll be glad when you got two hands again."
"Don't remind me." I am so sick of my cast, I have had thoughts of cutting it off myself with a Stryker saw.
The dead man's jaws give up and open, and I turn on the surgical lamp and fill the inside of his mouth with white light. There are fibers on his tongue, and I collect them. Marino helps me break the rigor mortis in the arms so we can get the jacket and shirt off, and then I take off shoes and socks, and finally the warm-up pants and running shorts. I PERK him and find no evidence of injury to his anus, nothing so far to suggest homosexual activity. Marino's pager goes off. It is Stan-field again. Marino has not said a word about Rocky this morning, but the specter of him hovers. Rocky is in the air, and the effect this has on his father is subtle but profound. A heavy, helpless anguish radiates from Marino like body heat. I should be worried about what Rocky has in store for me, but
all I can think about is what will happen to Marino.
Now that my patient is naked before me, I take in the full picture of who he was physically. He is five-foot-seven and a lean one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. He has muscular legs but little muscle development in his upper body, which is consistent with a runner. He has no tattoos, is circumcised and clearly cared about his grooming, based on his neatly manicured fingernails and toenails and clean-shaven face. So far, I find no evidence of injury externally, and X rays reveal no projectiles, no fractures. He has old scars on his knees and left elbow, but nothing fresh except the abrasions from being bound and gagged. What happened to you? Why did you die? He remains silent. Only Marino is talking in a blunt, loud way to disguise how unsettled he is. He thinks Stanfield is a dolt and treats him as such. Marino is more impatient, more insulting than usual.
"Yeah, well, it sure would be nice if we knew that," Marino blasts sarcasm into the wallphone. "Death don't take no holiday," he adds a moment later. "You tell whoever I'm coming and they will let me in." Then, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Pis the season. And Stanfield? Keep your mouth shut, okay? You got that? I read about this in the goddamn paper one more time… Oh really, well, maybe you didn't see the Richmond paper yet. I'll make sure and tear out this morning's article for you. All this Jamestown shit, hate crime shit. One more peep and I'm gonna get tear-ass. You never seen me tear-ass and you don't want to."
Marino pulls on fresh gloves as he returns to the gurney, his gown flapping around his legs. "Well, it just gets more squirrelly. Doc. Assuming this guy here's our disappeared jogger, it appears we're dealing with a garden-variety truck driver. No record. No trouble. Lived in a condo with a girlfriend who's ID'ed him by photo. That's who Stanfield talked to late last night, apparently, but she ain't answering the phone so far this morning." He gets a lost look on his face, not certain how much he has already told me.
"Let's get him on the table," I say.
I parallel-park the gurney next to the autopsy table. Marino
gets the feet, I grab an arm, and we pull. The body bangs
against steel and blood trickles from the nose. I turn on water and it drums into the steel sink, the dead man's X rays glowing from light boxes on the wall, revealing perfectly pristine bones, and the skull from different angles, and the zipper of the warm-up jacket snaking down each side of gracefully bowed ribs. The buzzer sounds out in the bay as I run a scalpel from shoulder to shoulder, then down to the pelvis, making a small detour around the navel. I observe Dr. Sam Terry's image on closed-circuit TV and hit a button with my elbow to open the bay door. He is one of our odontologists, or forensic dentists, whose bad luck it is to be on call Christmas Eve.
"I'm thinking we need to drop by and pay her a visit while we're in the area," Marino goes on. "I got her address, the girlfriend. The condo where they live." He glances down at the body. "Lived, I guess."
"And you think Stanfield can keep his mouth shut?" I reflect back tissue with staccato cuts of the scalpel, awkwardly gripping forceps in the gloved fingertips of my plaster-bound left hand.
"Yeah. Says he'll meet us at the motel, which ain't being real friendly, moaning and groaning it's Christmas Eve and they don't want any more attention because it's already hurt their business. Something like ten cancellations because of people hearing about it on the news. Yeah, like bullshit, is what I say. Most the people who stay in that dump probably don't know shit about what's happened around here or care."
Dr. Terry walks in, his scuffed black doctor's bag in hand, a fresh surgical gown untied in back and billowing as he heads to the counter. He is our youngest and newest odontologist and is almost seven feet tall. Legend has it that he could have had a career with the NBA but wanted to continue his education. The truth, and he'll tell you if you ask, is he was a mediocre guard at Virginia Commonwealth University, that the only good shooting he has ever done is with guns, the only good rebounding is with women and he only went into dentistry because he couldn't get into medical school. Terry desperately wanted to be a forensic pathologist. What he's doing as basically a volunteer is as close as he Will ever get.
"Thank you, thank you," I tell him as he begins arranging his paperwork on a clipboard. "You are a good man to come help us out this morning, Sam."
He grins, then jerks his head at Marino and says in his most exaggerated New Jersey accent, "How'ya doin', Marino?"
"You ever seen the Grinch steal Christmas? 'Cause if you haven't, just hang out with me for a while. I'm in a mood to take back little kids' toys and pat their mamas on the ass on my way up the chimney."
"Don't you be trying to go up no chimneys. You'll get stuck for sure."
"Hell, you could look out the top of a chimney and still have your feet in the fireplace. You still growing?"
"Not as much as you are, man. What you weighing in these days?" Terry thumbs through the dental charts Marino brought in. "Well, this won't take long. He's got a rotated right maxillary second premolar, the distal surface lingual. Annnndddd… lots of restorations. Saying this guy"_he holds up the charts_"and your guy are one and the same."
"How about them Rams beating Louisville?" Marino calls out above the drumming of running water.
"Were you there?"
"Nope, and you wasn't either, Terry, which is why they won."
"Probably true."
I pluck a surgical knife off the cart as the phone rings.
"Sam, you mind getting that?" I ask.
He trots to the corner, snaps up the phone and announces, "Morgue." I cut through the costochondral cartilage junctions, removing a triangle of sternum and parasternal ribs. "Hold on," Terry says to whoever has him on the line. "Dr. Scar-petta? Can you talk to Benton Wesley?"
The room becomes a vacuum that sucks out all light and sound. I freeze, staring, stunned, the steel surgical knife poised in my bloody, gloved right hand.
"What the fuck?" Marino blurts out. He strides over to
Terry and snatches the phone from him. "Who the hell is
this?" he yells into the mouthpiece. "Shit." He tosses the receiver back into the cradle on the wall. Obviously, the person hung up. Terry looks stricken. He has no idea what just hap- pened. He hasn't known me long. There is no reason for him to know about Benton unless someone else told him, and apparently no one has.