Barry Lando: Deep Strike

“No, Joanne, listen, I’ve got proof, just…”

She cut him off, shaking with rage. “Brian told me what a jerk you were,” she yelled. “He was almost out of his mind when he came back from the bar the last time he went drinking with you. He said you were a coward. You refused to back him up. He was simply asking for help.” She leapt to her feet. “But he was wrong. You’re not a coward. You’re just nuts!”

“Joanne, wait.” He reached for his backpack.

“No. Get the fuck out of here!” She shouted before grabbing the coffee tray from the table and brandishing it menacingly.

“Joanne, goddammit! I’ve got evidence. Look!” He pulled the fragment of Brian’s crimson biking helmet from his backpack and held it out, the image of the pouncing leopard towards her.

She stared at the jagged object, then slowly lowered the tray and took the shard into her hands. She turned it over and saw the traces of blood inside, then hugged it to her breast. When she looked up at Steve again, her eyes were brimming. “Where did you get this?”

“At the Fountainhead Regional Park. At the top of the ridge Brian supposedly fell from. I was there this morning. Joanne,” he said, “Brian was murdered.”

Steve promised Joanne he would follow Brian’s new autopsy every step of the way. He arrived at the stone gates of the Columbia Gardens Cemetery at 9:00 a.m. on what promised to be another damp, miserable day. His shoes swished in the soggy grass as he walked toward Brian’s grave. There was no tombstone yet; a simple black granite memorial would be ready next week. Wearing yellow rain slickers and rubber boots, the same two cemetery workers who had buried Brian now labored to retrieve the oak casket.

Their efforts could be the opening scene of a macabre film, thought Steve, a grisly tale of a life in reverse. First, the dirt comes flying out of the hole in the cemetery. Then the coffin is raised. The mud and dirt are brushed off. Then it’s carried back to the waiting hearse; driven back to the medical examiner’s office. The horror continues: a naked Brian, his body stiff and his skin gray, rises from the coroner’s bright steel examining table, stretches, dons his biking gear, puts on his crimson helmet, and rides off to once again challenge the Bear Claw Trail.

Such were the scenes churning through Steve’s mind as he drove behind the hearse to the medical examiner’s office on Southampton Avenue in Norfolk. Joanne stipulated that it be a different office and a different medical examiner than Dr. Stone, who’d issued the first verdict of death by drowning. Though traffic was light, it took more than three hours before they pulled into the arrival bay of the Norfolk office.

The coffin was unloaded from the hearse and placed on a gantry that ran down to the mortuary in the basement. The residue of filth and muck on the coffin was blasted away by a high-pressure hose, along with a quivering swarm of worms and maggots. An attendant in an orange rubber jumpsuit wearing a pale green mask sprayed an industrial deodorant, but there was still the sweet, cloying smell of putrification as the coffin was opened and the body lifted out. Despite the mask that had been given him, Steve almost gagged.

Brian’s corpse was wheeled into the examining room, placed on a flat steel table, his clothes carefully removed and folded. The walls and ceiling were white. The only discordant note was a United Airlines calendar featuring scenes from Hawaii hanging beside the door. Under the harsh overhead light, the corpse lay there greenish-purple and swollen, like a slab of rotted beef thought Steve. He couldn’t recognize any of the features of his friend.

A medical assistant wearing a pale green operating robe and a mask stood by the array of tools carefully laid out by the table: shears, scalpels, pliers, tongs, electric drill, and saw. There was also a row of porcelain dishes ready to receive any body parts the examiner, Dr. Bill Snyder, might want to send to the lab for further study.

Steve introduced himself to the doctor and explained his suspicions about Brian’s death. Then he handed him a small carefully labeled glass bottle.

“That’s the water sample,” he said.

The doctor, a large florid man, with a thick neck, graying eyebrows, and steel-rimmed glasses, seemed uninterested in instructions from a layman. He took the bottle impatiently and handed it to his assistant. “Get this to the lab,” he barked.

He picked up the large scalpel and nodded coolly at Steve. “Sure you want to stay?”

“I promised I would.”

“Your first autopsy?”

“I’ve seen lots of dead bodies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but yeah, this is the first time for this.”

“I’ll give you a guided tour,” said Snyder. “I also teach pathology at UVA Med School.”

“Thanks,” said Steve not very convincingly.

The doctor adjusted his facemask. “Frankly, no one likes to do this kind of autopsy – so long after the fact, you might say. It’s the smells that really gets to you – no matter how many of these you do – like Sulphur, an intestinal gas.” He gestured toward the corpse’s stomach. “Then there’s also the bacteria from the colon that help us digest our food during life.” He took a large scalpel and made a bloodless incision down the center of the bloated chest. “But as soon as we’re gone, those bacteria go to work on us. A cocktail fact for you: two of the chemicals produced during putrification are named putrescine and cadaverine. Interesting, right?”

“Look,” he said, pushing his finger into the flaccid skin of the belly and upper arms. “That’s the bacteria also. It bloats the body. You see what’s already happening there?” He pointed to the large blood-tinged blisters on the legs and arms, “That’s also normal; collapse of the red blood cells. If I wanted to I could peel the skin away like a banana.”

Steve made it as far as the green plastic wastebasket by the wall before he vomited.

“Sorry,” he said between retches.

“It’s okay,” said the doctor continuing his work. “Happened to me too the first time around. Happens to most medical students. Not much fun to see and smell what’s ahead for us. Sure you want to stay in the room?”

“I told his wife I would,” said Steve, wiping his mouth with Kleenex as he returned to the table.

“Understood,” said Snyder as he continued his work.

Suddenly the silence was shattered by the wail of an electric circular saw slicing the breastbone. Then the doctor thrust a large vice into the cavity to pry apart the chest wall as if opening a giant clam. The heart and lungs were now on display. Snyder deftly cut through the bronchus and pulmonary vessels on each side removing the lungs.

“Let’s see what’s doing here,” said the doctor as he tipped the lung up and poured out some darkly stained mixture into a specimen pot. He sliced into the spongy, purplish tissue of the lungs, and examined the porous mass taking other samples to look at under the microscope.

“Much water?” asked Steve.

“A fair amount,” said the doctor. “No question, he drowned. Certainly enough liquid still here for what you’re supposedly interested in. It’s a mixture of water and guck from the body, but the lab should be able to figure things out.” He continued probing the corpse, examining the spine and each swollen organ, dictating his findings into a microphone attached to his gown. He was just about to start on the skull to fully understand the extent of the head injury when the receptionist announced over a wall speaker that there was a call.