“The refrigerator units are fine; it’s these particular bodies, Mr. Wyland. They smell of sulfur if you ask me.”
Each of the unusual bodies discovered tonight was pulled from its unit, and using leather gloves going up to their elbows, the boys placed each of the oddly light bodies onto a steel slab designed specifically for dissection. Directly over the table hung lights on swivel arms, magnifying glasses on another swivel arm, a hose to keep a constant flow of water to run off excess fluids and blood to a drainage pipe that took such unwanted matter to the floor and the sewer pipe at their feet. Meanwhile, Thomas switched on a huge machine in one corner of the room, and a lulling whoosh answered—air conditioning. Belfast’ Sirocco Works factory had pioneered air-conditioning for hospitals and such rooms as this to create Plenum ventilation, which nowadays was being applied to all such interiors dealing with medicine. Nearby Victoria Hospital had been the first building of such size to enjoy air-conditioning some six years before. Humdity control and choice of temperature. How wonderful, Ransom thought, trying to imagine a time when any hotel or home might enjoy this advanced industrial technology.
The night’s work stared at the excited young interns, who seemed—as Ransom took in their long, doubtful gaze into one another’s eyes—to be thinking of their efforts as having the potential of becoming a monumental and complicated failure. At the very least, the secretive night work would surely prove difficult and time consuming. Ransom had certainly thought so as Thomas pulled open the cold storage unit where his uncle’s body lay in repose. Both Declan and Ransom held back, allowing Thomas a moment alone with his Uncle Anton’s corpse.
The light illuminated three bodies now lying beneath sheets on three slabs in the wide open space of the operating theater. Looking around and up, Ransom studied the impressive operating theater and the large gallery where students like Thomas and Declan would be perched on a normal day to observe an autopsy conducted by Bellingham or another faculty member. He could just imagine the boys intent on watching every cut, every organ lifted during an autopsy from on high, safely behind the glass, but here they were on the front lines, dealing with God knows what, putting fear aside to determine cause of death, while disappointed in Bellingham for not guiding them this night.
The room brought back bad memories for Ransom. Being a police detective in Chicago with his reputation, he’d on more than one occasion gone under the knife, his life saved twice by the famous Dr. Christian Fenger during emergency surgery. The same doctor who failed to save that contemptible priest, Father Franklin Jurgen.
Ransom cautiously went to each body in turn and slipped the sheet from each distorted face. McAffey, looking like the dead beast from the mine with his horrid grimace and barred teeth. O’Toole, looking nearly the same, and Fiore, who had somehow retained the look of a pleasant little fellow despite the rigid grimace distorting his features. Ransom recognized the grimace as a natural phenomena of traumatic death.
“That’s Uncle Anton,” said Thomas who’d remained rigidly frozen in place at Ransom’s side. “What’s left of him. I could tell you so many wonderful stories about my uncle.”
“Perhaps another time, when we have more of it.”
“He was such a storyteller… loved to relate a tale over a pint—had such a knack for a twist or shot to the senses at the end!” Thomas laughed to recall a certain moment with his uncle. “Lovely man, wickedly funny and always with a kind word and a broad—”
“Enough with the sentiments, Thomas! We haven’t time right now,” Declan warned, moving about the room, preparing instruments, “and dawn is fast approaching. Dr. Bellingham is going to come crashing through that door, and when he does—”
“He’s going to have a cow.” Thomas finished for Declan.
“And he’s going to want answers. Hell, I want answers! Ready the Petri dishes for culturing samples, Tommie, while I prepare some slides. I want to see this thing under the microscope as soon as we do the incisions on our friend here, Mr. McAffey.”
“Why McAffey first?” asked Ransom, curious.
“We—or rather I—suspect he was the first to die of this thing, down in that mine.”
“That beastie found with McAffey is most likely what contaminated the man,” Thomas explained. “So we begin with him.”
“O’Toole was with him in the mine,” continued Declan, “but he managed to get out, and Reahall agrees that Anton—Mr. Fiore quite possibly crossed paths with O’Toole sometime later at the shipyard—as both men’s bodies were discovered inside Titanic.”
“Where inside Titanic? What deck?”
“Lowest deck. Mr. O’Toole here, he was found stuffed behind a bulkhead in the manner of a ragdoll, jammed between the interior and exterior iron walls. Mr. Fiore was jammed into a locker where he would’ve suffocated had he not died of this black disease.” Declan worked as he spoke. “Constable Reahall’s quite smart to’ve ordered Titanic searched.”
“Yes—quite brilliant deduction.” Ransom assumed his sarcasm was lost on the young men. Musing further, he said, “Obviously, someone hid their bodies in an attempt to conceal the crimes.”
“Not clear on that; Reahall says they could have just curled up in there to die.”
“But the missing Pinkerton agent, this man Tuttle… was not found on Titanic although he was there with others to guard the ship?”
“We spoke to Tuttle,” said Declan, removing the elbow length leather gloves and putting on the more comfortable and agile white cloth gloves. “Asked him if he’d seen Mr. Fiore. Said he had not.”
“He was on Titanic, yes,” added Thomas, placing on cloth gloves as well, “Tuttle shouted down to us from what seemed a mile overhead. Can you imagine the lifts on Titanic?”
“Upper decks near the forecastle and bridge,” Declan narrowed it down. “But he’s disappeared completely now.”
Thomas was rattling around with instruments and microscopes before finally declaring, “I’m ready.”
At this point, Thomas and Ransom turned to find that Declan was well underway, having sliced into McAffey with that ready scalpel of his. He had some trouble, however, as the darkened skin was like leather, but in short order, Declan managed to begin a classic Y-incision. Diagonally from each shoulder to the solar plexus, and from there straight down to the navel. The skin ripped like cord wood against the axe—creating a nerve-shattering noise as it split apart. Declan remarked on this, adding, “I can’t believe our teachers and the dean simply want to burn the bodies.”
“So you’ve said, and by whose authority? I mean who has ordered it?”
“Local judge awakened by Reahall and on recommendation of Dean Goodfriar and Dr. B.”
Thomas chimed in with, “But they have no idea what might result from burning the bodies in those ovens.”
“Yeah… what if this disease is spewed out with ash from those chimneys at the mill and it goes airborne?” asked Declan. “Well… who knows how far it might spread?”
“They have no idea what they’re dealing with,” added Thomas, but Declan stood frozen, staring into the open carcass he’d begun to autopsy. “Look at this, Thomas. Tell me what you see… or rather what you don’t see.”
Thomas went closer to stare into the open chest and abdominal cavity. Ransom looked over Declan’s shoulder. Together, Ransom and Thomas Coogan gasped at what they saw.
Ransom asked, “Where’re the bloody organs?”
“And for that matter, where’s the blood?” Thomas wanted to know.
“The man’s organs are here just… well…”
“Where?”
“Camouflaged against the backdrop of his insides—all discolored inside as well as out.”