Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ Leather thongs,” she suggested. “Possibly…”

“ But you don’t think so?”

“ No more than you.” Coudriet moved closer, extending his hand to her, and they shook, with smiles all around. “Lotta pressure on those wrists and the neck, and a great deal of moisture buildup in those wounds, too. The single intact wrist was near severed as a result.”

“ Not unlike the neck,” concurred Jessica.

“ Well, it does sound as if we’re pretty much in agreement as to how this unfortunate young woman came to be in this state.”

“ We are,” she replied, liking Coudriet instantly.

“ So do you wish me to tell you, or will you tell me what we have here?”

“ I would like very much for you to tell me whatever suspicions you harbor about our killer, Dr. Coudriet. I think you’ve already heard my own theories.”Coudriet looked at each of his assistants in turn, took a deep breath and paced before her, saying, “They were all dragged.”

“ Dragged?” asked Powers.

“ Maliciously, through the water, at relatively high speeds,” Coudriet continued.

Jessica nodded her agreement, saying, “Frankly, Doctor, I was beginning to suspect as much.”

“ Wanted verification, did you? That’s quite understandable,” he said, nodding. “Intelligent, I daresay. It’s what I want, too.”

“ Thank you, Doctor.” She said it both for the compliment and for the implication that he wanted full cooperation and give-and-take to reign here. She just wasn’t certain she could trust him to actually carry through on such promises.

“ You realize that we’ve all heard about your exploits, Dr. Coran, especially with respect to one Mad Matthew Matisak, and your daring on Hawaii with the Kowona case, not to mention the heart-taker-in New Orleans, was it?” Now Coudriet went to the monitor and shut down the camera and audio.

“ Yes, well, thank you. I do my best, and I’m sure we can work together, Doctor. I have the utmost respect for your work. I’ve read every paper you’ve ever presented at the Forensics Institute for Medical Advancement and in the Medical Examiner’s Eye.”

The mention of the newsletter for the Medical Examiner’s International Association brought a smile to Andrew Coudriet’s broad, passionate lips, and well it should have. Only the top men in the field were published in the prestigious and eclectic newsletter. But the old M.E.’s smile was quickly extinguished and replaced with a grim frown when Jessica turned to Owen Powers and asked, “Dr. Powers, can you get a close-up shot of the wrist? Follow that up with a close-up of the severed wrist. I know we have some, but the lighting here is far superior to what we had in Islamorada.”

Powers momentarily looked to Dr. Coudriet as if for permission, then snapped to it. “Ahh… yes, certainly, Dr. Coran.”

“ These close-ups of the wrists and throat will be helpful. I want to compare them to what we found in Islamorada.”

“ But Powers has already done a full set of photos,” protested Ted Thorn. “They’re in Dr. Coudriet’s portfolio on the corpse.”

“ I’m starting my own FBI collection, for the record.” She looked over to Dr. Coudriet now and added, “I believe we’re done here, Doctor.”

“ Good, and thank you…” he impishly replied.

“ For what?”

“ Showing my boys here a good time, and teaching them something in the bargain, Doctor.”

“ Well… thank you,” she replied, surprised at his courteous remark, and knowing also that her having further disfigured the body by opening up the throat took him off the hook with the senator from Florida, Allison’s bereaved father. She sensed that the elder M.E. would have no difficulty in passing information along to the senator. No wonder he’d worked it so that he would not even be in the room when she took to the body.

Coudriet walked her toward the changing room. “You’ll have to pardon my young assistants. We’re all on edge for many reasons, not the least being that we’ve had to stare into the bowels of a demon the likes of which no one truly wants to deal with, yet we are in no position to walk away, either.”

“ I can appreciate that.” She started to push through the door, but he quickly grabbed it and held it open for her.

“ I have since heard about what was found at the shark research center in the Keys. You will share what you have found there with us?”

“ Absolutely, and not to worry about Thorn and Powers. Floaters are the worst kinds of corpses to work on, even worse than burn victims. I understand their reluctance to work on the same floater twice,” Jessica tried to assure him. “Kinda like double jeopardy in the emotions department.”

“ And dealing with this floater on this table was particularly difficult work, because the Norris girl is… was, rather, the granddaughter of Congressman Bill Norris, and the niece of a former governor of the state as well as… well, you already know all that, now don’t you.”

Actually, she had not known the girl was quite so well- connected; still, beyond this indisputably political fact, the corpse was so damnably mannequinlike in appearance that it no longer resembled anything human, but rather a gelatin mold in places, a slick of albino tar in others. Strong political ties could no longer help her.

Coudriet laughed mildly at some deep inner thought. “You wish to share something funny, Doctor? I could use a laugh,” she said, unable to fathom what could possibly be funny in this affair.

“ No, not at all. It’s just that this is more than just a case of a simple floating victim perturbing my boys.

The two of them see this as an opportunity to advance their careers, if they can impress the former governor and Congressman Norris, or the senator, you see. “But you don’t?” He laughed further, more uproariously now. “Me? What can a congressman or a senator do for this old shell? No, my dear, I believe you could do more for me and my libido than all of the congressmen in all the states combined, thank you.” He laughed more-an infectious laugh-and this time Jessica joined him. Maybe she was wrong about him, she thought now.

Still, she thought the use of the term boys for Thorn and Powers spoke volumes, and she wondered if the doctors were some sort of threesome outside the office, say golfing buddies. But she rather doubted that. Coudriet likely simply thought of them as his underling children. “In a way, I’d rather work on a faceless, featureless corpse than the other extreme,” he said, confiding what she thought to be an odd statement, even for a medical examiner.

“ Really?” she replied, pulling wide another door and stepping into the closet where she could strip away her surgical garb and dump it into a basket.

He’d followed her in after taking a long, lingering look at her backside. “A floater like this isn’t near so bad as a victim with identifiable features,” he continued, trying to convince her of his sincerity but unable to fully do so. He was mostly talking to hear himself, she gathered. “Especially when the corpse has a familiar face, say that of an acquaintance. Ever happen to you, Coran?”

“ Once or twice, yes.”

“ Then you know what I mean. Good. Experience shows in you. Now, with this Norris girl’s cadaver here, unless you saw the pictures in the papers of this young woman before this happened to her, you could just treat her like a mannequin, like one of those corpses we had in medical school, right, Doctor?” He looked to Jessica for affirmation, but Jessica didn’t give him the satisfaction. He took another long, lingering look to admire her form as she removed the green gown, displaying her crisp, white blouse and beige slacks beneath. In the other room, she could hear the click-click-click of Powers’s Polaroid at work.