Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘Indeed.’

‘With that sales pitch, how can I refuse? I’ll have a slice. And some still water, please.’

‘Coming right up.’

It took Nancy less than five minutes to bring the man his order. She hadn’t lied. The meatball sandwich was nothing less than spectacular. The pecan pie, truly fabulous. The coffee wasn’t bad either.

The man ate like he had zero worries in life. When he was done, he paid his bill in cash and left Nancy a twenty-dollar tip. This time the smile she gave him wasn’t her regular, rehearsed one.

As the man walked past the cash register, a clipping on the local bulletin board by the entrance door caught his eye. He paused and studied it for a long moment.

‘No way,’ he finally whispered to himself, adrenaline already refilling his veins. He almost threw his head back and let go of a loud, animated laugh, but he wasn’t about to call any attention to himself.

The man took a quick peek over his right shoulder to see if anyone was looking. No one was. Nancy had gone back into the kitchen, the young couple at the counter had left minutes ago and the only truck driver left, the one in booth three, was too busy devouring his order of ribs.

‘Hello, beautiful,’ the man said, his eyes back on the clipping. In one quick movement, he ripped it from the board. As he placed the piece of paper in his pocket, he felt a strange kind of warmth envelop his entire body.

He now knew exactly who his next victim would be.

Dr. Morgan’s comment made everyone inside Autopsy Theater One look back at him with concern in their eyes.

‘And what does that mean exactly, Doc?’ Agent Fisher asked.

‘Let me show you.’

The doctor nodded at Hunter and Garcia, requesting their help to once again flip the body over.

‘When I first saw the body, just a few hours ago,’ Dr. Morgan began, ‘something struck me as odd straight away — the severe discoloration of the skin.’ He indicated as he spoke. ‘I know you have all seen more than your share of dead bodies and probably witnessed just as many autopsy examinations, so I’m sure I don’t need to explain to anyone what post-mortem lividity is.’

The short silence that followed confirmed Dr. Morgan’s assumption.

‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Mr. Davis here showed none. No lividity whatsoever.’

‘How is that possible?’ Agent Williams asked.

Hunter’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Because there was no blood,’ he said.

Garcia and both FBI agents looked at him.

‘No blood where?’ Agent Williams asked.

‘In his body,’ Hunter replied.

Dr. Morgan nodded. ‘That’s correct. The victim’s body was practically drained of all its blood. His veins were dry. His brain resembled a lump of stale bread. I managed to obtain a small amount of blood from his heart, liver and kidneys, but I had to practically squeeze it out of them.’

The doctor used both hands to mimic a squeezing motion.

It made Agent Fisher cringe.

‘The victim had no blood in his veins when he got here?’ Agent Williams asked. He was starting to wonder if he was dreaming or not.

‘That’s correct,’ Dr. Morgan reconfirmed.

‘Wait a second,’ Agent Fisher said, taking a step back from the examination table. ‘Have I just been thrown into the Twilight Zone here? This isn’t a vampire story, right?’ She addressed the doctor. ‘You’re not going to tell me that he’s got fang marks on his neck now, are you?’ Reflexively her gaze traveled to Timothy Davis’s neck.

‘No,’ Dr. Morgan replied. ‘There are no fang marks on his neck. All we have is this small puncture and bruise to his left thigh and an even smaller one on the inside of his left arm.’ He called everyone’s attention to it.

Directly over the median-cubital vein on Timothy Davis’s left arm, a small bruise could be seen.

‘Was he a junkie?’ Agent Fisher asked.

‘I found no indications of it,’ the doctor replied with a shake of the head. ‘This bruise,’ he said, referring to the one on the victim’s left arm, ‘is consistent with blood donation.’

‘Wow, hold up,’ Agent Fisher said, both hands up in the air. ‘Are you trying to tell me that the killer managed to extract all of the victim’s blood through a minuscule pinprick on his arm?’

‘No, that’s not what I’m telling you,’ Dr. Morgan came back. ‘What I said is that this tiny injury and bruising directly over the victim’s median-cubital vein here is consistent with the kind of bruising one gets after donating blood, but I don’t think this was the killer’s extraction point.’

‘Hold on a second,’ Agent Williams said. ‘When you say “all of the victim’s blood”, how much blood are we talking about here?’

‘Judging by the victim’s size,’ Hunter commented, ‘somewhere between five and six liters.’

‘I’d say that that’s a pretty good assessment,’ Dr. Morgan agreed before addressing Agent Williams. ‘You see, the estimated volume of blood in a human body is approximately seven to nine percent of its weight. In life, our victim would’ve weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds, give or take.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Agent Fisher interrupted the discussion. ‘But I don’t think that the volume of blood extracted, or how much the victim weighed when alive, is of any real relevance to us. What I want to understand is — how is this possible? You said so yourself, Doc — the blood could not have been extracted through his veins.’ She faced the body on the table one more time. ‘There are no cuts to his body. His throat hasn’t been slit open. His wrists haven’t been touched. How did the killer drain him of all his blood?’

‘Well, there are two problems with your statement, Special Agent Fisher,’ Dr. Morgan countered, his tone of voice tenacious.

She half-glared at him.

‘One,’ the doctor began. ‘The volume of blood extracted is of extreme relevance to us because that was the cause of death, not asphyxiation. Once a body loses over forty percent of its blood volume,’ he explained, ‘which in medical terms is known as a class four hemorrhage, it’s pretty much game over. The strain on the body’s circulatory system becomes too great to survive. The heart will no longer be able to maintain blood pressure and circulation. Major organs will fail and the victim will slip into a comatose state, preceding death. That condition is known as hypovolemic shock.’

‘No suffering,’ Hunter said.

‘Indeed,’ Dr. Morgan agreed. ‘The worst the victim would’ve felt would’ve been a discomfort in his chest as the loss of blood triggered his heart to work overtime to try to get oxygen to tissues. With that, his blood pressure would’ve dropped very quickly, taking him into the comatose state I mentioned.’

Dr. Morgan filled his lungs with air before re-addressing Agent Fisher.

‘And the second problem with your statement is — I didn’t say that the blood could not have been extracted through his veins. What I said was that I don’t believe that this pinprick wound to the victim’s left arm was the killer’s extraction point, which leads us to the only other injury the body has sustained.’ He indicated the puncture-like wound on Timothy Davis’s left thigh.

‘What?’ Agent Fisher looked even more puzzled, but this time she wasn’t alone. Garcia also looked a little lost.

‘Your confusion is completely understandable,’ Dr. Morgan said in a tone that carried no arrogance, no deprecation. ‘I was quite lost myself, but I had to deal with the facts — the victim’s body showed only two injuries — the pinprick to his arm and the puncture to his leg, nothing else. I just couldn’t see a way where whoever did this, whoever drained the victim of his entire volume of blood, could’ve done it by inserting a sixteen-gauge needle into his arm. That left me with one option — the wound to his leg.’