S. Tooley - When the dead speak

Jake studied the woman whose back was to them. Her mass of untamed hair was pulled back in a clip. She wore a white lab coat but there was something familiar in the curve of those calves and the tone of her voice.

Sam approached King Tut. Only the front portion of the body was exposed. The back side was still wearing a thin concrete jacket. The right arm hung straight at the side while the left arm rested across the chest. Pieces of skin, brown and leathery, hung like sheets of phyllo pastry.

Fragments of clothing appeared well preserved but fragile. When her fingers touched what looked like a plaid shirt, the weaker sections of cloth crumbled in her hand.

Gingerly she touched the concrete framing the corpse. Her hand rested on top of the skull, holding it there for several moments like a mother feeling a child’s forehead.

“What on earth is she doing?” Frank whispered.

“I don’t know.” Jake turned the volume up on the intercom.

Sam closed her eyes. Immediately she saw lightning bolt shapes, smelled gun powder, blood. It all overshadowed the odor from King Tut. He spoke to her. Out of his gaping mouth she heard the screams of battle, of war. She sensed fear, terror.

Sam jerked away, stepped back from King Tut.

“Are you okay?” Benny placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Nothing that a little air won’t cure.” Studying the deceased, she wondered what kind of horrors this man had suffered. “He died about fifteen or twenty years ago, maybe longer.” Sam peeled off the latex gloves. “And I believe he knew his killer.”

Behind the plate glass window, Jake and Frank exchanged glances. Jake raised an eyebrow in skepticism. Frank’s eyes widened; he checked to see how high up the hair on his arms was standing. Benny waved them in.

“Jake, Frank, have you met Sam Casey?” Benny asked.

Sam turned and felt the blood slowly drain from her face. The tousled hair, ruddy complexion, and those interrogative eyes — there was no doubt he was the security guard from Preston’s.

Frank stood a couple of inches shorter than his partner, eyes lively and animated. His full lips formed a wide smile.

“Sergeant Sam Casey?” Frank almost seemed to laugh. And then he did, starting with a deep rumble in the back of his throat.

“You three know each other?” Benny asked.

“No,” Frank replied. “It’s just that we didn’t know our new sergeant was a… woman.” That low rumble started up again.

He had a contagious laugh and Sam couldn’t help but smile. She also couldn’t help feeling that a little private joke was going on between Jake and Frank.

Circling King Tut, Jake said, “Damn, ain’t he a sight.”

Sam exhaled slowly. Maybe Jake’s memory bank came up empty.

Jake glanced at King Tut’s face, studied the bone structure. “African American?”

“Yes.” Benny pointed with a pen to King Tut’s eyes. “The eye sockets are farther apart and rectangular-shaped. And there’s a little thrust to the lower jaw.”

Leaning against a stainless steel sink, Sam folded her arms in front of her and watched them.

Jake walked behind the body again. Sam could feel his eyes on her. She kept her eyes on Benny.

“Any guess yet, Benny, on how he died?” Jake asked.

“We’ll run him through the CAT-scan. I prefer not to dissect this gentleman if at all possible.” Benny turned to Sam and said, “Of course, Sam might be able to save us a few steps. Sam?”

“This was definitely a hit. No bullets, no knives. They buried him up to his neck just to watch him squirm and then covered him completely. He was buried alive.” She spoke matter-of-factly, letting her eyes glance at Jake and Frank only long enough to get their reactions.

In a condescending tone which irritated her, Jake said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon wait for the CAT-scan.”

Sam shot a piercing gaze his way. “I’d say he’s been dead about

…”

Jake cut her off in midsentence. “The overpass was reconstructed about twenty years ago.” He turned back to Benny. “What about fingerprints?”

Straightening up from his close inspection of the body, Frank asked, “You can get prints off a corpse entombed all these years?”

“Sure. The most successful method for mummified remains is the use of disodium ethylenediamine tetracetic acid in a saturated solution of Coleo.”

“How long will that take?” Jake asked.

“With luck, twenty-four hours. We’ll also get dental and DNA.”

“You can still get DNA outta this guy, too?” Frank asked.

“They have successfully extracted DNA from teeth that had been buried for up to eighty years,” Benny replied.

A young female intern walked in carrying an object. “Here you go, Doctor Lau.”

“Lift any prints off of it?” Benny asked as she laid the pin in the palm of his hand.

“Nothing.”

“Our friend here was clutching this in his hand,” Benny explained after the intern left the room.

Holding the pin up, Sam could see a similarity to the pin she found in Preston’s safe. She wrapped her hand tightly around it. Almost immediately she saw dozens of lightning bolt shapes. The tiny hairs on her body did their own version of the wave as cold swept up her body starting at her ankles. In vivid color, she saw limbs and other parts of bodies lying in a field. Lightning strike. The words echoed, the same words, the same smell. Everything was the same as when she touched the pin in Preston’s safe.

“Do you know what it is, Sam?” Benny asked.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure… yet.” She caught the puzzled look in Jake’s eyes, a look she couldn’t quite decipher. Taking one last walk around the body, she said, “I would check military records first. I don’t believe the deceased had a criminal record.”

Jake and Frank shifted their gaze. If she had to place their reactions on a skeptic meter of one through ten, theirs just hit a twenty. But it didn’t faze her. It was a typical reaction to which she had become accustomed.

“Do me a favor, Benny,” Sam continued. “Don’t mention to the press about the pin. I think it might be important.”

“Fine with me, Sam.”

Frank gazed back at King Tut, searching the body and clothing again as though trying to see where Sam was getting her information.

Reaching behind Benny, Jake picked up a piece of the torn fabric. It was a faded blue plaid. “Any possibility of getting the label off the shirt?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Benny replied. “I’m hesitant to try to chisel any more of the concrete away. I could try. I just don’t want to decapitate our friend here. Besides, I think running the prints through military records might be our best bet.” He looked around for Sam.

“Where did she go?” Frank asked.

Peering into his office through the plate glass, Benny said, “Probably for some air. She’ll be back.” He looked at the two detectives and smiled. “You two have never seen Sam in action, have you?”

“In action?” Jake repeated.

Frank’s body shuddered. “It gave me the heebie jeebies. How did she know all that stuff?”

Benny leaned closer to them as if he didn’t want King Tut to hear. He whispered, “The dead talk to her.”

“The dead talk to her?” Frank huffed as he carried the video recorder into Jake’s apartment.

Jake moved the morning papers to one side and placed the bags of hamburgers and fries on the coffee table. “You’ve repeated that about twenty times, Frank.”

“But she knew how long the body was there.”

“She knew how long ago the overpass was built.”

Jake slid open his balcony door. Three floors below a young mother was pushing an infant in a stroller. Jake paid six hundred and fifty dollars a month for what seemed like a day care center. Kids outnumbered the adults four to one.