Tess Gerritsen - Harvest

The belt ligature had been removed from the neck early in the autopsy. Rowbotham now examined the furrow left behind on the skin.

"Your classic inverted V shape," he noted aloud. "See here, Slug, you've got parallel ligature marks which match the edges of the belt. And at the back here, you see this?"

"Looks like a mark from the buckle."

"Right. No surprises so far." Rowbotham picked up his scalpel and began the neck dissection.

By now Lundquist had recovered and was back at the table, looking a little humble. Nausea, thought Katzka, was so satisfyingly democratic. It brought down even musclebound cops with full heads of hair.

Rowbotham's blade had already sliced through the skin of the anterior neck. He cut deeper, exposing the pearly white superior horns of the thyroid cartilage.

"No fractures. You've got some haemorrhage over here, in the strap muscles. But the thyroid and hyoid bones both seem intact." "Meaning?"

"Not a thing. Hanging doesn't necessarily cause much internal neck damage. Death results purely from interruption of the blood supply to the brain. All that's needed is compression of the carotid arteries. It's a relatively painless way to kill yourself."

"You seem pretty sure it's suicide."

"The only other possibility is accidental. Autoerotic asphyxiation. But you say there was no evidence of that."

Lundquist said, "His cock was still zipped up. Didn't look like he'd been jerking off."

"So we're talking suicide. Homicidal hanging is almost unheard of. If someone was strangled first, you'd see a different ligature pattern. Not this inverted V. And forcing a man's head in a noose, well, that would almost certainly leave other injuries. He'd fight back."

"There's that bruise on the upper arm."

Rowbotham shrugged. "He could have hurt himself in any number of ways."

"What if he was drugged and unconscious before he was hanged?"

"We'll do a tox screen, Slug, just to make you happy." Lundquist cut in with a laugh, "And we do have to keep Slug happy." He moved away from the table. "It's four o'clock. You coming, Slug?"

"I'd like to see the rest of the neck dissection."

"Whatever turns you on. I say we just call it a suicide and leave it."

"I would. Except for the lights."

"What lights?" said Rowbotham, his eyes finally registering interest behind the protective goggles.

"Slug's hung up on the lights in that room," said Lundquist. "Dr. Levi was found hanging in an unused patient room of the hospital," explained Katzka. "The workman who found the body was almost certain the lights were off."

"Go on," said Rowbotham.

"Well, your time-of-death finding correlates with what we think happened — that Dr. Levi died very early Saturday morning. Well before sunrise. Which means he either hung himself in the dark. Or someone else turned off the lights."

"Or the workman didn't remember what the fuck he saw," said Lundquist. "The guy was puking his guts into the toilet. You think he'd remember if the light switch was up or down?"

"It's just a detail that concerns me."

Lundquist laughed. "Doesn't bother me," he said, and tossed his gown into the laundry bag.

It was nearly six o'clock that evening when Katzka pulled his Volvo into a parking space at Bayside Hospital. He got out, walked into the lobby, and took the elevator to the thirteenth floor. That was as far as it would take him without a pass key. He had to leave the elevator and climb the emergency stairwell to reach the top level.

The first thing he noticed as he emerged from the stairwell was the silence. The sense of emptiness. For months, this area had been undergoing renovations. No construction workers had come in today, but their equipment was everywhere. The air smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. . and something else. An odor he recognized from the autopsy room. Death. Decay. He walked past ladders and a Makita saw, and turned the corner.

Halfway down the next corridor, yellow police tape was plastered across one of the doorways. He ducked under the tape and pushed through the closed door.

In this room, the renovations had been completed. There was new wallpaper, custom cabinetry, and a floor-to-ceiling window with a view over the city. A penthouse hospital suite for that special patient with a bottomless wallet. He went into the bathroom and flicked on the wall switch. More luxury. A marble vanity, brass fixtures, a mirror with cosmetic lighting. A thronelike toilet. He turned off the lights and walked back out of the bathroom.

He went to the closet.

This is where Dr. Aaron Levi had been found hanging. One end of the leather belt had been tied to the closet dowel. The other end had been looped around Levi's neck. Apparently, he had simply let his legs go limp, causing the belt to tighten around his throat, cutting off carotid blood flow to the brain. If he had changed his mind at the last moment, all he had to do was set his feet back on the floor, stand up, and loosen the belt. But he had not done so. He had hung there for the five to ten seconds it had taken for consciousness to fade.

Thirty-six hours later, on a Sunday afternoon, one of the workmen had come into this room to finish grouting the bathtub. He had not planned on finding a dead body.

Katzka crossed to the window. There he stood looking over the city of Boston. Dr. Aaron Levi, he thought, what could've gone so wrong in your life?

A cardiologist. A wife, a nice home, a Lexus. Two kids, grown and in college. For one irrational moment, Katzka felt a flash of rage at Aaron Levi. What the hell had he known about despair and hopelessness? What possible reason did he have to end his life? Coward. Coward. Katzka turned away from the window, shaken by his own anger. By his disgust at anyone who chose such an end. And why this end?Why hang yourself in this lonely room where no one might find you for days?

There were other ways to commit suicide. Levi was a doctor. He had access to narcotics, barbiturates, any number of drugs that could be ingested in fatal doses. Katzka knew exactly how much phenobarb it took to end a life. He had made it his business to know. Once, he had counted out the right number of pills, calculated for his own body weight. He had laid them on his dining room table, had contemplated the freedom they represented. An end to grief, to despair. An easy but irreversible way out, once his affairs were in order. But the time had never been quite right. He had too many responsibilities to take care of first. Annie's funeral arrangements. Paying off her hospital bills. Then there'd been a trial that required his testimony, then a double homicide in Roxbury, and the last eight car payments to complete, and then a triple homicide in Brookline, and another trial requiring his testimony.

In the end, Slug Katzka had simply been too busy to kill himself. Now it was three years later and Annie was buried and those phenobarb pills had long since been disposed of. He never thought about suicide these days. Every so often, though, he'd think about the pills lying on his dining-room table, and he would wonder why he had ever been tempted. How he had ever come so close to surrender. He had no sympathy for the Slug of three years ago. Nor did he have sympathy for anyone else with a bottle of pills and a terminal case of self-pity.

And what was your reason, Dr. Levi?

He looked at that glowing view of Boston, and he thought about how it must have been in the last hour of Aaron Levi's life. He tried to imagine climbing out of bed at three in the morning. Driving to the hospital. Riding the elevator to the thirteenth floor and then climbing the last flight of steps to the fourteenth. Walking into this room. Tying the belt over the closet dowel and slipping your head into the loop.

Katzka frowned.

He crossed to the light switch and flipped it up. The lights came on. They worked just fine. So who had turned them off?. Aaron Levi? The workman who'd found the body?