Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

An icy boulder rolled down Russ’s gullet and lodged there. “Okay,” he said. He nodded at Lyle. “Let’s go.”

Harlene goggled at him. “You some sort of masochist, or what?”

“Harlene-” Lyle warned.

Russ shook his head. He looked into Harlene’s round eyes and felt a surge of gratitude for all the people who cared for him. None of whom, of course, had the least bit of tact. “I need to do this,” he told her. “Whatever it takes to find her killer, I need to do it.”

“Damn fool,” she said under her breath.

“But I do think we ought to bring Mark,” he said to Lyle.

“Me?” Mark snapped to attention like a Labrador sighting a duck. He had never attended a briefing at the ME’s office.

“You. I gotta be realistic. I may not absorb everything, so an extra pair of ears will be helpful. Plus”-Russ shrugged-“you’re detective material. We got to get you out there, exposed to this stuff.”

“I’ll go get our coats,” Mark said, and bolted down the hall toward the squad room.

Lyle looked at him assessingly. “I guess you’re not completely lost to reason.”

Russ ran one hand through his hair. God, he felt old, old, old. “Don’t count on it,” he said.

Mark Durkee had met the Washington County medical examiner before. He wasn’t sure what made him uneasy in the man’s presence-the fact he spent his days elbow-deep in dead bodies, or the mad-scientist look he had perfected, thanks to an assault two summers before, which had left him with a white scar that twisted out of his short gray hair to bisect one eyebrow. He also had a permanent limp he treated with a silver-topped cane. Thumping his way down the mortuary hall toward them, his white coat flapping behind him, Dr. Dvorak looked like a figure straight out of one of the Stephen King novels Mark had devoured in his teens.

Dvorak raised his eyebrows when he saw the chief. Or rather, he raised the one that was still mobile, giving his face a satanically lopsided look. “Good lord. Are you completely lacking in good sense?” he said. “Are you sure you want to be part of this?”

The chief nodded.

“Idiot. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to.” Dvorak pivoted on his cane and limped back up the way he had come. The chief and the dep followed, so Mark went along, too, wondering as they moved slowly up the institutional, lino-and-fluorescent hall if they were going through the battered metal doors at its end. He wasn’t sure what was behind there, past the public rooms of the mortuary, and he desperately didn’t want to find out. Which, he knew, didn’t make any sense for a career cop. He had seen dead bodies before. Three. But the sight was endurable in the crime scene, with the blood and the violence attending. Maybe because the bodies didn’t seem like dead people there. They were evidence.

But laid out on a steel slab, with blue lips and black thread suturing up their cold skin… He shivered.

“Durkee?”

Mark snapped to. MacAuley was standing by one of the doorways, waiting for him. “You okay?” the deputy chief asked.

“Yes, sir,” Mark said, and he was, because he saw through the door that there was nothing in the room except the same sort of 1960s government-issue office furniture they had in the MKPD.

There were only two chairs facing Dr. Dvorak’s obsessively neat desk, so Mark took up a stance next to the door while the chief and MacAuley made themselves as comfortable as they could.

Dvorak sat. He picked up a manila file folder and squared it on the green baize blotter in front of him. “First thing,” he said. “I am not going to show you any pictures.”

The chief nodded.

“Second thing,” the pathologist said. “As is my custom in the case of a homicide, I moved directly from the recorded autopsy to the preliminary report. Therefore, I won’t be ready to release the body until tomorrow at the earliest.”

He meant, Mark realized, that he had to finish putting the pieces that had been Mrs. Van Alstyne back together.

The ME splayed his fingers across his scarred forehead. His nails were very clean and very blunt. “I have to tell you,” he said, “this has been the most disturbing autopsy I’ve done since I started in this position.” He lowered his hand and looked at the chief. “The bulk of my work is as a pathologist. If I have more than two suspicious deaths a year, it’s a banner event. That’s what I wanted when I came here. Peaceful work in a quiet county. I never really stopped to think that sooner or later I’d be autopsing,” his voice broke sharply, “someone I know.” He looked at the chief. His pale eyes were wet.

The chief reached across Dvorak’s immaculate desk and squeezed the doctor’s forearm. “Thank you, Emil.”

The ME cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the folder in front of him. He flipped it open. “The subject was a healthy, well-nourished, and physically fit Caucasian, reported age fifty-one.” He traced the edge of the paper. “She had wonderful skin elasticity. She easily could have been a decade younger.”

The chief nodded. “Yeah. She…”

They all waited for a few seconds, but nothing else came out.

Dr. Dvorak cleared his throat again. “Since we know the identity of the victim, why don’t I just skip over to the forensically critical parts.”

“Why don’t you,” MacAuley said.

“The victim was not sexually assaulted in any way,” the doctor began, and the chief, who had been sitting at attention, sagged in his chair. The ME went on. “The fatal assault seems to have been swift and unexpected. There were, as you noted at the crime scene, Deputy Chief MacAuley, no defensive wounds. Nor was there any bruising which might indicate a struggle or the confinement of the victim. Death was the result of a well-placed knife thrust to the throat, severing the esophagus, the airway, and the larynx simultaneously. Then the knife was withdrawn at a slight angle, severing the jugular vein. I suspect the assailant struck from behind, in what might be deemed the classic ‘sneak attack’ position, pulling the victim’s head back to expose the neck and striking before the victim has organized a response. There would have been an almost instant loss of consciousness as the blood pressure to the brain crashed. Clinical death followed within minutes.” He spread one hand over the papers in the folder and paused for a long moment. “It may be a commonplace, Russ, but from a medical viewpoint, I can assure you that she felt, at the most, a moment of surprise. She did not suffer.”

The chief nodded. “Thank you,” he said. His voice was hoarse.

“You said a well-placed knife thrust,” MacAuley said. “Was the perp someone who knew what he was doing? Who had training?”

Dr. Dvorak pressed his already thin lips into an invisible line. “Someone who knew what he or she was doing, yes, I would say that. As to how that experience was gained…” He shrugged. “Military training, some forms of martial arts or self-defense, an experienced hunter. That’s your call.”

“He or she?” Mark said. The chief and the dep turned to look at him. He felt himself flushing, but he pressed on. “I mean, can you tell if we’re looking for a man or a woman?”

The doctor shook his head. “No. As I said, I believe Mrs. Van Alstyne-the victim was surprised from behind. Since she was a somewhat petite woman, the angle of the blow would easily be within the reach of any assailant between the heights of, say, five and six feet.”

Mark nodded. Let the dep chase after his bad-guy-coming-after-the-chief scenario. He knew that most murders were committed by someone close to the victim. Someone involved in the victim’s life. He had his own scenario.