Stephen Cannell - The Devil_s Workshop

He hurried to the elevator and took it to the third floor, exiting into a bland waiting room with picture windows overlooking the ocean. He had never been in this facility before, and he looked around for someone to tell him where he could get scrubbed. Because he had sounded the first alarm, he had been cleared by Dr. Welsh to observe the autopsy. He saw a tanned dark-haired man dressed in an Armani suit and T-shirt looking out the window at the ocean. The man didn't turn when he moved past.

It took Wendell Kinney ten minutes to get scrubbed, gowned, and gloved. A female lab assistant then led him down one flight of stairs to Autopsy Room C. He quickly entered and found the autopsy already in progress. The Y-cut had been made. Dr. Welsh was acting as the prosector, or lead physician. He was looking down and sawing the breastbones with a Stryker vacuum saw.

The vacuum saw was the right tool, Wendell thought as he approached. It sucked up the bone particles and tissue before they could accidentally fly around, possibly into the eyes of the assisting autopsy doctor, known as the diener. There was one other man in the room; he had new, angry-looking hair plugs, and his disposable smock was belted over torn blue jeans. They were all wearing plastic goggles and plain plastic nose masks instead of the correct full-face, filtered HEPA masks that Wendell had suggested.

"We should have maximum containment," Wendell said.

"How ya doing, Dr. Kinney," Welsh said. "We don't have a Level Three facility here. Grab a spot at the table. Don't worry, we're going slow and being very careful."

Dr. Welsh now started to remove the heart. They all watched as he put his rubber-gloved, scalpeled right hand into the open chest. Holding the heart with his chain-mail glove, which protected his left hand from an accidental knife cut, he began the procedure, severing the left subclavian artery at the aortic arch.

Wendell Kinney watched as Dr. Welsh carefully and methodically separated Michael Brazil's heart from the remaining ten coronary veins and arteries.

Nino DeSilva was already on the third floor when the autopsy began. It was Sunday night, which was not normally a working night at the morgue. Only emergency autopsies took place on weekends. This bio-hazard constituted such an emergency, but there were very few people on duty. DeSilva had divided his four-man squad: He kept Luke Peterson with him; Calvin Watts was already outside the autopsy room with Tommy Sparks. The hall was empty, so DeSilva quickly moved out of the stairwell and subdued the one nurse on duty in the nurses' room. Silently, he choked her out. Once she was unconscious, he gagged and tied her, using plastic riot cuffs, then DeSilva and Peterson moved down to the second floor.

Sergeant Watts had found a medical gurney, and they parked it outside the door of Autopsy Room C. All of the Torn Victor commandos were wearing HEPA masks, and now removed MP5 submachine pistols from their backpacks.

Nino DeSilva kicked the door open and moved into the autopsy room. The four men inside turned as one at the intrusion.

"What the hell…" Dr. Welsh sputtered through his surgical mask.

"Everything goes back in the body bag. Everything!" Nino demanded.

Dr. Welsh stood dumbfounded along with the others. "We're performing an autopsy here. What do you think you're after? This man is dead."

Wendell Kinney knew exactly what they were after.

Nino DeSilva walked toward Dr. Welsh and slammed the butt of his MP5 into Welsh's mouth. The doctor went down like cut lumber. Blood started to seep out from under his plastic nose mask.

For some reason that Gary Iverson would never understand, he was considering trying to grab the gun out of the hand of the man nearest him. Gary had never been in a fight in his life. He was the last one to try to be a hero, but the armed man standing directly in front of him was paying no attention. Gary saw the gun dangling from his right hand. It looked tantalizingly easy.

Without knowing why, or even debating the odds, he made a grab for the weapon. The commando sensed the motion behind him, and with lightning reflexes, he spun, grabbed Gary Iverson's arm, and hurled him across the room toward the autopsy table and the cut-open body of Michael Brazil. Gary threw his hands out in front of him to block his crash, but one of Michael's freshly sawn ribs went through the rubber glove on his right hand, puncturing him. He screamed in pain and scrambled away from the table. Four machine pistols were now trained on him. He was seconds from death. "I'm sorry, I'm sorryPlease," he whimpered. "I'm sorry, don't shoot me."

"Bag this body!" Nino yelled at the Torn Victor commandos.

They took Michael's heart, which was already safely inside a plastic container, and set it in the body bag. Then two of them put on heavy rubber gloves and slid Hollywood Mike into a double-zip bio-containment bag they had with them. They closed it up, carried him out of Autopsy Room C, and flopped the bag down on the rolling gurney.

Nino DeSilva pulled the phone out of the wall and turned to face them. "One of us is going to hold a position outside this door for five minutes. Anybody sticks his head out before then is gonna eat it." Then he backed out of the room and was gone.

Gary stood there, blood dripping from the puncture wound in his hand. Dr. Welsh was conscious, but still bleeding beneath his mask. They watched the clock on the wall, like obedient schoolchildren waiting for recess. Nobody said anything.

When three slow minutes had passed, Dr. Welsh grew impatient. He got off the autopsy room floor and exited the room. One by one, they all followed. Wendell Kinney was the last to leave the room. He looked around and saw Dr. Welsh's autopsy scalpel still lying on the table. Wendell reached over and got an organ bag, then carefully retrieved the bloodied instrument, dropped it in the bag, and sealed it. Then he slipped the bag into his pocket, and he too exited the room.

The hall outside was empty except for a lab assistant tied up behind the counter. Dr. Welsh cut the plastic cuffs and released her, then dialed the police.

Gary Iverson made his way up one level to where Buddy was waiting.

"Is it over?" Buddy asked. "Does he still look okay? 'Cause I wanna do this right. The rabbi says the body has to be buried within twenty-four hours."

"Let's get the fuck outta here," Gary hissed, entering the elevator.

"Did they find out what killed him? Do they know yet why he died?"

"Let's go," Gary said, and pulled Buddy into the elevator, stabbing at the button for the ground level.

As they rode down, Buddy saw the blood seeping from Gary's palm and dripping off the end of his fingers. "What the hell happened to your hand?" he asked.

Augie, the ceramic raccoon, lay on the floor in at least fifty pieces. Stacy kneeled and started to gather him up. "Shit," she said. "How did this happen?"

Cris Cunningham was standing behind her. "Maybe the earthquake," he volunteered. "We had a four point one, day before yesterday."

She hadn't even heard about an earthquake. She had been in Badwater and missed it. She suddenly felt tears coming to her eyes as she looked at poor broken Augie. Carefully, she started putting the pieces of him on the table in the dining room.

Cris looked at the shattered ceramic raccoon, and at the silent tears coming down Stacy's cheeks. "Get all the little ones," he said. "I can fix him if you've got glue."

She looked up. "That's okay," she answered, and then unexpectedly changed her mind. "I've got nail glue."

"Get it. I did all of the dish and vase repairs at my house, growing up. I have a knack for this."

She left to go into the bathroom to look for the nail glue, and as Cris picked up the remaining pieces, he took a look around the living room. There was evidence of a man's presence in the apartment: a football leaning against the TV; a rowing machine in the corner with a Stanford boxing sweatshirt draped over the seat; a punching bag visible through the bedroom door. He looked at the bookshelf. Several of the books were by Dr. Maximilian Richardson. Cris wondered if that was her father, or brother, or if Stacy was married. He saw a bar set up in the living room and moved over to look, studying the bottles: Kahlua, Drambuie, Grand Marnier… all liqueurs. It was a damn candy counter. Then he saw a bottle of sherry, and poured himself a glass.