Robin Cook - Marker

When Laurie was finished with her reading, she took out the sheets for the autopsy notes from the two folders and turned around to face the first of the two corpses. As she did so, Marvin came back in with the second one.

"Good Lord," Laurie murmured as she looked down at the first boy's remains. Teenagers weren't as difficult emotionally for Laurie as younger children, but they were still tough.

Being run over by a train was at the upper end of traumatic experiences. The boy's arm had been severed at the shoulder and it lay alongside the torso. The head and the face had been reduced to a pulp. There was no way things could have been cleaned up for the parents' benefit.

Laurie began the external examination by detailing the all-too-visual trauma. It was obvious that the body had tumbled along beneath the train until it had been brought to a stop.

"There's the second one," Marvin said as he wheeled the empty gurney over to the side of the room.

Laurie waved over her shoulder without turning around. She found something unexpected on the boy's penis, which made her move down and look at the soles of his feet. Marvin joined her on the opposite side of the table.

"I noticed that," Marvin said, following Laurie's line of sight. "What do you make of it?" In addition to the abrasions, there was a bit of charring.

"Where are the shoes?" Laurie asked.

"In a plastic bag in the walk-in."

"Bring them in," Laurie said. She was preoccupied and immediately stepped over to the second child.

By the time Marvin was back with the clothing from both cases, Laurie felt she had solved the mystery by the external exam alone. Marvin brought over the sneakers that the kids had been wearing. Like the bodies themselves, they were a sorry sight. Laurie picked them up and looked at the soles. "Seems pretty clear to me what happened."

"Oh?" Marvin questioned. "Fill me in."

At that moment, the door to the hall banged open, surprising both Laurie and Marvin. It was Sal D'Ambrosio, one of the other mortuary techs. He was more animated than his usual indifferent self. "We got a headless, handless male corpse that just arrived, along with some cops. What should I do?"

"Did you x-ray it, weigh it, and photograph it like you're supposed to do?" Laurie questioned. In sharp contrast with Marvin, who needed little direction, Sal's apathy often grated on Laurie's nerves. There was a protocol to be followed with every body arriving at the OCME.

"All right already," Sal said, sensing Laurie's impatience. "I thought with the cops here, it might be a different story." He ducked back out and the door closed.

Laurie paused for a minute. Hearing that a headless, handless body had arrived created a sense of déjà vu that took her back seven years, when a similar corpse had been brought in after floating around in the East River. With some effort, identification had been made. The man's name turned out to have been Franconi, and Mr. Franconi posthumously had taken her and Jack on a wild adventure to Equatorial Guinea in West Africa.

"Hey!" Marvin interrupted Laurie's brief reverie. "Come on! You got me curious here. What's with these two kids?"

Laurie again started to explain, but the door to the hall reopened. A gowned, hooded, and masked figure walked in, much to Laurie and Marvin's surprise.

"I'm sorry, but no one is allowed in here," Laurie called out, holding up her hand like a traffic cop. For a moment, she thought the intruder might have been a particularly adventuresome journalist who'd somehow managed to infiltrate OCME security. "It's dangerous, and full protective gear is mandatory."

"Oh, come on, Laur!" the man said while stopping in his tracks. "Jack told me on the weekends things weren't so hard-nosed around here and that this is the way he dresses unless it's an infectious case."

"Lou?" Laurie questioned.

"Yeah, it's me. You're not going to make me get into one of those suits, are you? They drive me crazy."

"If Calvin comes in, you'll be banned for life."

"Realistically, what are the chances of him coming in?"

"Nil, I suppose."

"Well, there you go," Lou said. He walked over to Laurie and glanced down at the two boys, then quickly looked back up at Laurie. "Yuck! What a sight! How you do this for a living?"

"It does have its downside," Laurie agreed. "What brings you in here so early on a Saturday?"

"The headless horseman I came in with. It's caused another stir over at the Manhattan General. I tell you, that place is going to be the bane of me."

"I think you'd better fill me in."

"I got called at the crack of dawn this morning. Seems that the guy who takes care of the bodies over at the General came in to work as usual and then found a body that wasn't supposed to be there." Lou laughed. "I mean, there's some humor here, finding an extra body in a morgue. I've heard about bodies being misplaced or missing, but finding an extra one is a bit out of the ordinary."

"Why were you called? Why wasn't it just taken care of by the local precinct?"

"My captain got word of it subsequent to his sister-in-law's murder over there yesterday morning. He practically has an open line to the hospital. So he calls me right off the bat and tells me to get my ass over there. The problem is that there haven't been any breaks in his in-laws' case, so he's got the thumbscrews to me. Also, there are some similarities. This new corpse has what look like two bullet holes, just like his sister-in-law."

"No ID?"

"Nope, not a clue. And there's no one missing at the hospital, like patients or staff."

"And what about the head and the hands?"

"Gone. They're nowhere to be found."

"So your captain thinks this new corpse relates somehow to his wife's sister's case."

"He didn't say so in so many words, but that was obviously what was on his mind. It is weird. The corpse was as clean as a whistle when the guy found it in the back of their old anatomy cooler. No blood, no gore, no nothing, as if the guy just got out of the shower. The whole thing is kind of eerie if you ask me, and I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my career."

"How were the head and the hands cut off?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was it clean, or were they hacked off?"

"Clean. Very clean."

"Like maybe the way a doctor might do it?"

"I suppose. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes."

"Sounds like an intriguing case."

"Will you do it right away? The captain said he wants to hear from me ASAP."

"I'll be happy to do the case, but not until I finish with these two boys."

Lou glanced around Laurie and took another look at the remains. "What's the story here?"

"Two kids run over by an A train."

Lou grimaced. "Is this what attracted the media types up in the lobby?"

"I'm afraid so. Just the idea of being hit by a train is gruesome enough, but to make it even more appealing to the tabloids is the question whether it's a double suicide or a double homicide."

"Yeah," Marvin said, speaking up for the first time. "I was just about to hear the answer the moment you came in."

"Really?" Lou questioned. He overcame his hesitancy and stepped nearer. "These guys look like they went through a meat grinder. What was it, suicide or homicide?"

"Neither," Laurie said. "It was accidental."

With obvious surprise, both Lou and Marvin looked up at Laurie.

"How can you be so sure?" Lou questioned.

"I'm confident that when I do the posts, I'll find evidence the children were dead when the train struck them. Look at the slight charring on the feet." Laurie picked up a foot from each child in turn and pointed to the darkened, scorched areas.

"What am I looking at?" Lou questioned.

"Burns," Laurie said. Then she pointed to the children's penises. "Just like those on the tip of their glandes."