Robin Cook - Marker

With all his preparations complete, Marvin came back to the side of the table opposite Laurie and stood expectantly, waiting for the internal part of the autopsy to begin.

"All right! Let's do it!" Laurie said, reaching out with her hand as Marvin handed her a scalpel.

Although Laurie had done thousands of postmortems, each time she started another, it gave her a tingle of excitement. Starting the actual autopsy was akin to opening a sacred book, the mysteries of which she was about to discover. With her index finger pressing down on the top of the scalpel, Laurie expertly made the usual Y-shaped incision, starting from the points of the shoulders, meeting mid-sternum, and then continuing down to the pubis. With Marvin's help, she quickly reflected skin and muscle before removing the breastbone with bone cutters.

"Looks like a broken rib," Marvin commented, pointing to a defect on the right side of the chest.

"No hemorrhage, so it was postmortem, probably from the resuscitation attempt. Some people go overboard with the chest compressions."

"Ouch!" Marvin said sympathetically.

Expecting blood clots or other emboli, Laurie was eager to examine the great veins leading to the heart, the heart itself, and the pulmonary arteries, where fatal clots would usually be found. But she resisted the temptation. She knew that it was best to follow a normal protocol, lest something be forgotten. Carefully, she examined all the internal organs in situ, then used the syringes Marvin had laid out to take fluid samples for toxicological testing. A fatal reaction to a drug, toxin, or even an anesthetic agent had to be considered. Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the deceased had undergone anesthesia.

Laurie and Marvin worked together in silence, making certain that each sample was put into the correctly labeled specimen container. Once the fluid samples had been obtained, she began to remove the internal organs. Diligently, she maintained the normal sequence, and it wasn't until a bit later that she finally turned her attention to the heart.

"Here comes the money!" Marvin quipped.

Laurie smiled. The heart was indeed where she expected to find the pathology. With a few deft strokes, the heart came out. She peered into the cut end of the vena cava, but there was no clot. She was disappointed, since she had already noted that the pulmonary arteries had been clear when she'd removed the lungs.

Laurie weighed the heart, then with a long bladed knife, began an internal examination. To her chagrin, there was nothing amiss. There was no clot, and even the coronary arteries appeared entirely normal.

Laurie and Marvin's eyes met across the opened corpse.

"Damn!" Marvin exhaled.

"I'm surprised," Laurie said. She took a deep breath. "Well, you see to the gut and I'll take my micro samples, then we'll check the brain."

"You got it," Marvin said. He took the stomach and the intestines over to the sink to wash them out.

Laurie took multiple tissue samples for microscopic study, particularly from the heart and the lungs.

Marvin returned the cleaned gut to Laurie, who went through it carefully, taking samples as she proceeded. Meanwhile, Marvin started on the head by reflecting the scalp. By the time Laurie was finished with the stomach and intestines, Marvin was ready for her to inspect the skull. She gave him a thumbs-up when she was through, and he hefted the power-vibrating saw to cut through the bone just above the ears.

While Marvin was busy with the skull, Laurie took a scissors and opened the sutured wound on the lower leg. All looked fine within the surgical site. She then opened the long veins of the legs, tracing them from the ankles all the way up into the abdomen. There were no clots.

"The brain looks normal to me," Marvin commented.

Laurie nodded. There was no swelling and no hemorrhage, and the color was normal. She felt it with her practiced finger. It felt normal as well.

A few minutes later, Laurie had the brain out, and she dropped it into a pan that Marvin held. She checked the cut ends of the carotid arteries. Like everything else, they were normal. She weighed the brain. Its weight was within the normal limits.

"We're not finding anything," she said.

"I'm sorry," Marvin said.

Laurie smiled. On top of his other good qualities, he was empathetic. "You don't need to apologize. It's not your fault."

"It would have been nice to find something. What are you thinking now? It doesn't look like he should have died."

"I haven't the slightest idea. I'll hope the microscopic can shed some light, but I'm not optimistic. Everything looks and feels so normal. Why don't you start winding things up while I section the brain. I can't think of anything else to do."

"You got it," Marvin said cheerfully.

As Laurie anticipated, the interior of the brain looked like its exterior. She took the appropriate samples, then joined Marvin to suture up the body. With both of them working, it took only a few minutes.

"I'd like to get my next case up as soon as possible," Laurie said. "I hope you don't mind." She was afraid that once she sat down, her fatigue would return with a vengeance. At the moment, she was feeling better than expected.

"Not at all," Marvin said. He was already straightening up.

Laurie looked around the pit. She'd been so engrossed that she hadn't seen all the activity. At that point, all eight tables were in use, with at least two and sometimes more people clustered about each. She glanced toward Jack's table. He was bent over the head of another woman's body. Apparently, he'd finished with Sara Cromwell, and Lou had left. Beyond Jack's table, Calvin was still at work with Fontworth on the same body they were working on before. Bingham had apparently left to give his news conference.

"How long will the turnaround take?" Laurie asked Marvin as he carried the specimen bottles away.

"Not long at all."

Laurie wandered toward Jack with mixed feelings. She was not prepared for more of his levity, but after the earlier tease about Cromwell, she was curious about what he'd discovered. Laurie stopped at the foot of the table. Jack was concentrating intently on making a mold of a lesion on the woman's forehead, just within the hairline. Laurie stood for a moment, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. Vinnie had looked up immediately and had at least given a restrained wave.

"What did you find on your first case?" Laurie asked finally. It seemed unlikely that he hadn't seen her, but it had to have been the case. She didn't want to think otherwise.

Another few minutes went by without Jack responding. She glanced back at Vinnie, who spread his hands out, palms up, and shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that there was no accounting for Jack's behavior. Laurie stood for another beat, uncertain of what to do before moving on. Although she was aware that Jack could become so engrossed as to be oblivious of his surroundings, it was demeaning for her to stand there.

Things were not much better at Fontworth's table. Even though Bingham had left, Calvin was riding poor Fontworth with equivalent venom as the case dragged on interminably. After a quick glance at the other five tables, Laurie gave up on socializing and returned to lend Marvin a hand.

"I can get one of the other techs to help," Marvin said. He'd brought in a gurney and positioned it next to the table.

"I don't mind," Laurie said. There had been a time not too long ago that between cases, the examiners would go upstairs either to the ID room or the lunchroom for a quick coffee and impromptu discussions. But with the more elaborate protection apparatus they were required to wear, it was too much effort.

Once Sean McGillin's remains had been placed in the walk-in cooler, Marvin led Laurie to the appropriate compartment for the next case, a man named David Ellroy. The moment Marvin pulled out the drawer to reveal the body of thin, undernourished, middle-aged African-American, Laurie remembered that it was a presumed overdose. Her trained eye immediately took in the scars and tracks on the man's arms and legs from his intravenous habit. Although Laurie was accustomed to overdose cases, they still had the power to evoke an emotional reaction. With less than the usual control over her thoughts, her mind yanked her back to a crisp, clear, flag-snapping October day in I975 when she'd rushed home from her high school, the Langley School for Girls. She lived with her parents in a large, prewar flat on Park Avenue. It was the Friday before the long Columbus Day weekend, and she was excited because her brother, Shelly, her only sibling, had come home the night before from Yale, where he was a freshman.