Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

I went up to the second floor to talk to Alice. She was grumpy; the post hadn’t been started be cause of some delay; everything was going to hell in a wheelbarrow these days; did I know that a flu epidemic was expected this winter?

I said I did, and then asked, “Who’s doing the post on Karen Randall?”

Alice gave a disapproving frown. “They sent someone over from the Mem. His name, I believe, is Hendricks.”

I was surprised. I had expected someone big to do this case.

“He inside?” I asked, nodding toward the end of the hall.

“Umm,” Alice said.

I walked down toward the two swinging doors, past the freezers on the right which stored the bodies, and past the neatly labeled sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. The doors were wood, without windows, marked IN and OUT. I pushed through into the autopsy room. Two men were talking in a far corner.

The room was large, painted a dull, institutional green. The ceiling was low, the floor was concrete, and the pipes overhead were exposed; they don’t spend much on interior decoration here. In a neat row were five stainless-steel tables, each six feet long. They were tilted slightly and made with a lip. Water flowed constantly down the table in a thin sheet and emptied into a sink at the lower end. The water was kept running all during the autopsy, to carry away blood and bits of organic matter. The huge exhaust fan, three feet across and built into one frosted-glass window, was also kept on. So was the small chemical unit that blew scented ersatz air-freshener into the room, giving it a phony pine-woods odor.

Off to one side was a changing room where pathologists could remove their street clothes and put on surgical greens and an apron. There were four large sinks in a row, the farthest with a sign that said THIS SINK FOR WASHING HANDS ONLY. The others were used to clean instruments and specimens. Along one wall was a row of simple cabinets containing gloves, bottles for specimens, preservatives, reagents, and a camera. Unusual specimens were often photographed in place before removal.

As I entered the room, the two men looked over at me. They had been discussing a case, a body on the far table. I recognized one of the men, a resident named Gaffen. I knew him slightly. He was very clever and rather mean. The other man I did not know at all; I assumed he was Hendricks.

“Hello, John,” Gaffen said. “What brings you here?”

“Post on Karen Randall.”

“They’ll start in a minute. Want to change?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll just watch.”

Actually I would have liked to change, but it seemed like a bad idea. The only way I could be certain of preserving my observer’s role would be to remain in street clothes. The last thing I wanted to do was to be considered an active participant in the autopsy, and therefore possibly influencing the findings.

I said to Hendricks, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m John Berry.”

“Jack Hendricks.” He smiled, but did not offer to shake hands. He was wearing gloves, and had been touching the autopsy body before them.

“I’ve just been showing Hendricks a few physical findings,” Gaffen said, nodding to the body. He stepped back so I could see. It was a young Negro girl. She had been an attractive girl before somebody put three round holes in her chest and stomach.

“Hendricks here has been spending all his time at the Mem,” Gaffen said. “He hasn’t seen much of this sort of thing. For instance, we were just discussing what these little marks might represent.”

Gaffen pointed to several flesh tears on the body. They were on the arms and lower legs.

Hendricks said, “I thought perhaps they were scratches from barbed wire.”

Gaffen smiled sadly. “Barbed wire,” he repeated.

I said nothing. I knew what they were, but I also knew that an inexperienced man would never be able to guess.

“When was she brought in?” I said.

Gaffen glanced at Hendricks, then said, “Five A.M. But the time of death seems to be around midnight.” To Hendricks he said, “Does that suggest anything?”

Hendricks shook his head and bit his lip. Gaffen was giving him the business. I would have objected but this was standard procedure. Browbeating often passes for teaching in medicine. Hendricks knew it. I knew it. Gaffen knew it.

“Where,” Gaffen said, “do you suppose she was for those five hours after death?”

“I don’t know,” Hendricks said miserably.

“Guess.”

“Lying in bed.”

“Impossible. Look at the lividity. [13] The seeping of blood to the lowest portions of the body after death. It often helps establish the position of the body. She wasn’t lying flat anywhere. She was half seated, half rolled over on her side.”

Hendricks looked at the body again, then shook his head again.

“They found her in the gutter,” Gaffen said. “On Charleston Street, two blocks from the Combat Zone. In the gutter.”

“Oh.”

“So,” Gaffen said, “what would you call those marks now?”

Hendricks shook his head. I knew this could go on forever; Gaffen could play it for all it was worth. I cleared my throat and said, “Actually, Hendricks, they’re rat bites. Very characteristic: an initial puncture, and then a wedge-shaped tear.”

“Rat bites,” he said in a low voice.

“Live and learn,” Gaffen said. He checked his watch. “I have a CPC now. Good to see you again, John.” He stripped off his gloves and washed his hands, then came back to Hendricks.

Hendricks was still looking at the bullet holes and the bites.

“She was in the gutter for five hours?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t the police find her?”

“Yes, eventually.”

“Who did it to her?”

Gaffen snorted. “You tell me. She has a history of a primary luetic oral lesion, treated at this hospital, and five episodes of hot tubes, treated at this hospital.”

“Hot tubes?”

“P.I.D.” [14] Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, usually infection of the fallopian tubes by Neisseria gonococcus, the agent of gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is considered to be the most common infectious disease of mankind. Twenty percent of prostitutes are thought to be infected.

“When they found her,” Gaffen said, “she had forty dollars in cash in her bra.”

He looked at Hendricks, shook his head, and left the room. When we were alone, Hendricks said to me, “I still don’t get it. Does that mean she was a prostitute?”

“Yes,” I said. “She was shot to death and lay in the gutter for five hours, being chewed by sewer rats.”

“Oh.”

“It happens,” I said. “A lot.”

The swinging door opened, and a man wheeled in a white-shrouded body. He looked at us and said, “Randall?”

“Yes,” Hendricks said.

“Which table you want?”

“The middle.”

“All right.” He moved the cart close, then swung the body over onto the stainless-steel table, shifting the head first, then the feet. It was already quite stiff. He removed the shroud quickly, folded it, and set it on the cart.

“You gotta sign,” he said to Hendricks, holding out a form.

Hendricks signed.

“I’m not very good at this,” Hendricks said to me. “This legal stuff. I’ve only done one before, and that was an industrial thing. Man hit on the head at work and killed. But nothing like this…”

I said, “How did you get chosen for this one?”

He said, “Just lucky, I guess. I heard that Weston was going to do it, but apparently not.”

“Leland Weston?”

“Yes.”

Weston was the chief pathologist of the City Hospital, a great old man and probably the best pathologist in Boston, bar none.