John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

He parked the car on Oregon and hopped out. Shielding himself from the downpour with his jacket as much as possible, he trotted the half block through the gathering puddles toward Brady Circle. The rear of the CO stood mostly in darkness. The parking lot behind the building was vacant except for two vehicles. One was the coroner’s van that Nat had used to transport the body. Beside it, a second van, which Ben didn’t recognize, sat idling, a white plume of exhaust rising up in a dissipating cloud from its tailpipe. As he approached, the side door of the vehicle slid open and two men stepped out, making their way toward him across the parking lot.

“Dr. Stevenson?” one of them asked from the darkness.

“Yes?” he replied cautiously.

Ben was suddenly bathed in the bright light of a television camera.

“Dr. Stevenson, is it true the victim was stabbed forty-seven times? Has a positive identification been made yet?” asked the reporter, thrusting a microphone in his face.

“I haven’t examined the victim yet. That’s what I’m here to do now.”

The man with the microphone didn’t seem to appreciate the finer points of Ben’s statement, for he continued to fire off questions one after the other. “Is the victim a resident of the town, Dr. Stevenson? Someone you happen to know? Was there any weapon found at the scene?”

“How am I supposed to know that ? You should be talking to the police.” Ben fumbled for the keys in his pocket.

“What was the last homicide of this nature that you investigated, Doctor? Have you spoken with the County Coroner’s Office or the state police?”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone except my assistant.” Ben turned the key in the dead bolt and swung the door open just wide enough to step inside. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Dr. Stevenson, you have a son of your own that attends Indian Creek High School. How did he take the news of a murder only a few blocks away from the school?”

“He seems to be handling it much better than you are,” Ben replied, then closed the door against the deluge of questions from the overzealous reporter. He flipped on the light in the back hallway. It was blessedly quiet inside the building. He could hear the faint sounds of Nat moving around in the autopsy room beyond the door at the end of the hall. His assistant had the habit of humming softly to himself as he went about the task of laying out the equipment and preparing the body for examination. It was mildly endearing, although Ben could never recognize the melodies, which belonged to a musical generation that was not his own. Ben hung up his jacket on the coatrack to his left and proceeded down the hallway.

“Hi, Nat,” he said as he entered the room.

“What’s up?” Nat responded cheerfully. “Did you get hit by the reporter brigade on your way in?”

“Of course,” Ben replied. “I thought that I might outsmart them by coming in the back way, but they had their sentries waiting for me.”

“No doubt, no doubt. They were on me like flies on sh—, like flies at a picnic, you know, as soon as I pulled the wagon into the back parkin’ lot. ‘ Tell us this! Tell us that! ’ Those guys are pretty damn…”

“Importunate? Unremitting?” Ben offered.

“Pretty damn annoying, if you ask me. Hell, I don’ know the answers to any of those questions. Might as well be askin’ me who’s gonna win the Kentucky Derby. And if I did know, I wouldn’t be tellin’ ’em nothin’ anyway. Just like you said, Dr. S: ‘ No muthafuckin’ comment! ’ Right?”

“I think that was actually you who said that.” Ben glanced at the shape on the examination table, still zipped up inside of the black cadaver bag. “How are we doing?”

“I just got back about ten minutes ago. Fog’s gettin’ thick out there, and the wagon’s front windshield defroster ain’t workin’ so hot. Rainy days—and rainy nights especially—you’ve got to drive slow, or else you might find yourself joinin’ the gentleman in back, if you catch my meaning.”

His assistant continued to move about the room as he spoke, laying out instruments and checking connections. He was a study in controlled chaos: his light blond hair eternally tussled as if he had just recently climbed out of bed, the tail of his shirt tucked into his pants in some places but left free to fend for itself in others, one shoelace frequently loose and on the brink of coming untied—and yet within the autopsy room he was highly organized and efficient, as if the manner with which he conducted his personal life did not apply here.

“I’ll ask Jim Ducket to take a look at it,” Ben told him. “If you’re having trouble with the wagon, maybe we can get a replacement from the county until we get it fixed.”

“Aw, the wagon ain’t no trouble. Just needs a little kick in the nuts every now and then. If you want Jimmy Ducket to take a look at anything, have him check out the radio. Hell, half the stations were set to classic rock when I climbed in it tonight. I take one five-day vacation and the whole place has gone to hell.”

Ben smiled. Nat had gone on a ski trip to Utah with his father last week, and Ben had been left making the pickups himself, just as he’d done before his assistant had come on board with him full-time several years ago. A few radio station adjustments had been the first order of business on his way out to pick up Kendra Fields, who’d died in her home last week of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. When Ben arrived at the residence, Kendra’s husband, John, had been waiting for him at the front door. “ Guess she’s gone and done it this time, doc, ” the old man had said matter-of-factly. John was eighty-nine and belonged to the congregation at Ben’s church. Kendra had been three years his elder, and during the course of her life had survived two heart attacks, a serious stroke, breast cancer, and a small plane crash. All things considered, it was time for her to pack up and head for home. Ben had chatted with John for a half hour. Then he’d loaded Kendra’s body into the back of the wagon and had treated her to some Creedence Clearwater Revival on the short ride back to the CO, cranking the volume up enough to turn people’s heads as he drove past. Hell, on top of everything else, Kendra Fields had also been a touch deaf during her final ten years on this earth.

“Well, that’s what you get when you skip town and leave us old farts to drive the wagon,” he advised his young colleague.

“Yeah? Well, never again,” Nat assured him. “Next time I leave town I’m takin’ the keys to the wagon with me. You can use that old beat-up jalopy of yours to pick up folks if you have to. Stuff ’em in the trunk, for all I care.”

Ben crossed the room and pulled a plastic apron down from the hook on the wall where it hung. He donned an eye shield, head cap, shoe covers, and latex gloves, and approached the awaiting corpse. He was glad that Nat was here to assist him and to keep him company with his incessant, irreverent chatter. Ben filled his lungs with a deep breath, and let it out slowly through his nose. With his right hand he grasped the bag’s zipper and pulled it down.

The first thing he noticed was that the subject was young, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. His skin was smooth and slightly freckled around the face. His eyes, still open, were dark brown, interlaced with a touch of mahogany. His hair was also brown, but several shades lighter than his eyes. A long lock hung partially across his forehead, tapering to a point and ending just shy of his left cheek, above the first of several obvious facial wounds. The flesh in this area had been torn completely away, leaving a jagged vacancy.

“Jeeeesus,” Nat commented. “That’s one hell of a chunk gone from his face, Dr. S. What do you think he hit him with?”