Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ We're going ahead with the cut, Eriq. I'll be sending it to HQ for analysis if I'm not sent packing, in which case, I'll personally bring it to you.”

With the help of attendants, they turned Amanda. Jessica pleading with them to be careful not to create a' coroner's snap-a broken neck from careless handling. After the attendants left, Jessica assured J.T., “I'll make the cut as small as possible.”

“ We can replace the piece with a Bonemide,” he suggested. Bonemide was the newest product in a line of concretelike, yet elastic, molding materials designed to replace bone parts. The white finish of earlier products was now replaced by a bone-gray that could easily be cosmetically enhanced to match any cadaver's bone coloration perfectly. It had first found use in dental offices for making casts of teeth.

J.T. added, “I've already created a replacement part for both the forehead and scalp.” He held the cast up for her appraisal.

“ You're a genius, John. Do whatever you can to patch her up.”

“ Working on a latex skin covering. She won't look beautiful, but she'll at least look intact, if no one looks too closely.”

“ As for the interior cut, no one should be looking for it… whereas the wound to the forehead, by the time her parents arrange a funeral, will likely be front-page news.”

“ And how long before the cross inside the skull is front-page news?”

“ We've got to swear everyone here to secrecy. We need this kept in-house, John.”

“ Between us and the killer.”

They both knew the value of that detail being kept under wraps. Anyone apprehended or confessing to the crime would have to know of the strange cross left behind and in what location on the body. That way, they could quickly dispense with any of the hundreds of false confessions bound to come from across the nation.

Jessica lifted the bone saw and was taking a deep breath when Dr. Ira Koening appeared. “Put the saw down,” he said.

Jessica expected a fight, but instead, the quiet little white-haired man examined the find he'd heard news of. “Combs told me about it. This is extraordinary indeed, Dr. Coran… Dr. Thorpe.” He saw that they had readied surgical scissors and shaving equipment, a red marker and a set of scalpels and sponges. A Bonemide kit sat prepared nearby. “I see you've already decided to go ahead with the procedure, Dr. Coran,” said the Jacksonville M.E. “But you know, Doctors,” Koening continued, “the best way to proceed is with a guided laser cutter.”

“ It would take days to get one down here from Quantico,” said J.T.

Such precision instruments were extremely expensive and rarely available. “Are you saying that you have one available, sir?” asked Jessica.

“ My office does not, but the FDLE has recently acquired one, state-of-the-art.”

“ With a precision guided laser, we can calculate the depth of the cut to encompass only the bone, and we can do it straight through the already existing hole in the forehead,” said Ira Koening.

“ That way we remove only the bone, no skin… no hair loss at the site,” added J.T., “and I can reconstruct the bone loss from the inside wall.”

“ Nobody would ever know it was ever tampered with, whereas with your primitive bone saw, there's no hiding the fact,” added Koening.

“ Where is it? Do we need a damned requisition form?” asked Jessica.

“ I've already taken the liberty of ordering the laser be brought to you, Dr. Coran, but it will take ten or fifteen minutes. Paper and tape, you know. So… shall we find a cup of coffee? Take a break while awaiting the instrument?”

AS they relaxed over pastries and coffee in the office turned over to Jessica, Dr. Koening said, “I'll do the cutting, Dr. Coran. That way no one can blame you. It is, after all, my jurisdiction, and I agree with you that it needs to come out for close microscopic inspection.”

“ I think I speak for both of us,” J.T. said, raising his cup as a toast, “when I say that we happily concede the chore, and our sincere thanks.”

Koening returned the gesture and drank from his cup.

Jessica sighed. “I really didn't want to use that awful bone cutter on her or go through the same ritual her killer followed, Dr. Koening. Thanks for alerting us. It didn't occur to me that a laser cutter would be within reach.”

“ It's not every city the size of Jacksonville that has a precision guided laser. It came with a new influx of governmental dollars since Nine-Eleven.”

They then returned to the autopsy room where Amanda's remains awaited them alongside the laser, a robotic-looking tool chest on wheels, a square version of R2D2 from Star Wars, with multiple swivel arms. Dr. Ira, as he asked them to call him, went immediately to work, as the other two suited-up doctors looked on. Ira had obviously handled the laser before. In a matter of minutes, with no noise whatsoever, no markers or scalpels, he had removed the silver dollar-shaped bone fragment with the design etched in it. The laser mechanism had a long needlelike arm with a catch basin at its tip, which Ira had positioned to catch the thick chip of bone, and the procedure was complete. It had taken only two and a quarter minutes. It would take J.T. an hour to reconstruct the inner wall.

“ An excellent job… perfectly done. My compliments, Dr. Ira,” said Jessica.

“ It's hardly my accomplishment. Our thanks to science, Dr. Coran. With the explosion in medical technology, I imagine a time when someone will invent a mechanism that will record and play back our dreams!”

“ I've never heard of that one, Doctor,” replied Jessica, “but you're probably right.”

“ They'll turn the human mind into a DVD player.” He laughed lightly at his own words. “Of course, we won't be around to see the day… but perhaps that's as it should be…”

Jessica looked overhead. In the viewing gallery, she saw Combs and Cutter. The two appeared all right with the compromise that Dr. Ira had worked out by using the laser.

Later in the day, with the bone chip secured in a polyethylene bag, Jessica had arranged for print copies of the sign left by the killer to be made and distributed. The information was also sent to Quantico for dissemination there. The unusual symbol and its placement might lead to something tangible.

She still had to await toxicology and serology reports, but she imagined they would find the same as in the earlier cases-high levels of Demoral, nothing more.

How many people in the state were using Demoral as a sleep aid, she wondered. The killer used it to induce compliance until his victim's own shock mechanisms kicked in. Shock as a merciful savior come to rescue her with the first screaming touch of the bone saw, and the smell of her own skull being cut as she lay helplessly strapped down, her head, hands and legs in restraints.

Jessica must get her thoughts off the awful details of the case for a time, to ease her mind and rest her brain. Easier said than done at nightfall in the Ocean View Inn, she quietly determined. Still, she willed the case away and continued willing it away, searching the eternal blue-green sea in her mind's eye for peace and comfort from where she stood on the fourteenth floor balcony.

When the phone rang, she came in from the pleasingly warm, salt-filled ocean breeze, lifted the phone and brought it onto the bed with her, but she couldn't bring herself to lift the receiver. Instead, she closed her eyes and allowed it to ring on while her thoughts continued where she and Richard languidly existed among stars lying amid the depths of the ocean in a dream world, until consciousness suddenly told her that a telephone wasn't part of her dream state. The phone remained insistent, floating just above her lap in the ocean water, and just out of Richard's reach. It continued to ring, and still her eyes remained closed, yet she saw all the coral colors of the sea and the beautiful creatures of the deep.