Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

T he electric saw’s oscillating blade grinds through bone as I open the fractured skull as if the patient on my table is like any other. I focus intensely while willing myself to feel nothing. That will have to come later. Now is not the time. If I’m going to help him I must be strong.

Lifting out the brain, I weigh and examine it, finding the expected damage. Cerebral contusions, intracranial hemorrhage, and when I dissect the neck, I discover bleeding into soft tissue indicative of whiplash.

“The force of hitting the ground caused the neck to hyperextend rather much like when your car slams into a wall,” I explain. “And this is common in people who fall or jump from high places.”

“What actually killed him?” Bella asks as she and the others get up from their chairs, gathering their notes and other belongings.

“The longer the survival time the more his brain was going to swell, resulting in brainstem compression and respiratory arrest,” I reply. “Ultimately, that’s what caused his death, but there are multiple contributing factors. Blood loss and shock, for example. One thing adds to another.”

“Are you calling it a homicide?” Gus peers through the observation window, looking down, his hands in the pockets of his shapeless gray trousers.

“If a human is responsible, yes,” I reply. “If we’re talking about something else, then I don’t have an answer.”

“You mean if a nonhuman intelligence did it,” AARO says.

“Legally, a homicide is one human killing another,” I tell them. “A death caused by an animal is an accident. If it were proven that a nonhuman intelligence was to blame? Which I’ve never heard of, by the way. Well, I don’t know what that would be. There’s no existing medico-legal category for deaths caused by the paranormal.”

“I guess we might have to come up with a new term,” Marino decides. “We should have a long time ago.”

“Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.” I screw the top on a jar of tissue sections, the formalin tinted pink from blood.

Marino returns the bag of sectioned organs to the chest cavity as I thread a surgical needle with twine. I close the Y-incision, returning the sawn-off skull cap to the proper position, pulling the scalp over it before suturing ear to ear along the hairline. I follow my usual procedures with military precision while knowing the futility. It doesn’t stop me.

I carry on as if Sal is destined for a proper funeral home where he’ll have a proper viewing and proper burial with a proper crowd of those who loved and respected him. It’s not going to happen. There’s nothing proper about any of this. It’s made all the more disgraceful by the slights against everything he stood for. As if being terrorized and killed suggests he must have done something to cause it.

We seal the body in another clear plastic total containment pouch, and I spray it and our work area with a powerful disinfectant. Marino and I douse ourselves from head to toe, the liquid lightly spattering plastic. We take off our PPE, the room sharply pungent with the odor of hydrogen peroxide that masks everything else.

By now the second-floor observation area is dark. No one is left except Lucy silhouetted behind glass.

“What happens next?” I ask.

Stepping closer to the hardwired phone on the countertop, I look up at the shape of her.

“Nothing more for now,” she says. “You’ve done enough.”

“Meaning what?”

“DNA has verified his identity, and there’s nothing more you can help with tonight.” Her voice is firm over speakerphone. “We’ll handle it from here.”

“Sounds good to me.” Marino’s quick to agree.

“I’m not finished.” I’m well aware that the Secret Service is in charge of the investigation. Technically, I answer to Lucy right now.

“We’ve got everything covered,” she says. “You’ve got a car waiting. Go get some rest.” It sounds like an order.

“Get some rest where?” Marino asks.

“The Langley Inn.”

“Fine by me.” He’s more than happy to comply, and I’m not.

“The body is evidence,” I explain. “I have to sign off on its release and testify truthfully about its disposition.”

“We consider the remains extremely hazardous. Or they could be.” Lucy’s tone doesn’t invite discussion. “Therefore, we’ll dispose of them in the safest manner possible. That’s the protocol. No exceptions.”

“Dispose of it where?” Marino uses a twist-tie to secure a biohazard trash bag.

“Here.”

“ Where here?” He frowns up at her shadowy figure behind the observation glass.

“Below ground,” she tells him as I envision the smokestack rising from the center of the blockhouses. “A cramped claustrophobic place you’d really hate.”

“No thanks,” he says.

“I need to see what you’re talking about,” I tell her in a reasonable tone that belies what simmers deep inside.

“It’s not necessary.”

“There’s paperwork I need to fill out and sign.” I won’t give in.

“It can wait until later.”

Don’t tell me what to do about him!

“That’s for me to decide.” My heated emotions roll into a slow boil. “We’ll get our stuff, and see you in a few minutes.” I hang up the landline.

Marino and I return to the locker room, and I wash my face. I can’t wait to get out of these clothes and take a shower. Soon, I promise myself.

“I’ve got just what the doctor ordered after a shit day like this.” Marino is cleaning up in the sink next to mine, scrubbing his forearms and hands.

“What might that be?” I grab towels for each of us.

“How about we blow this joint like the old days and go have a drink?” he says.

“The hotel bar won’t be open at this hour.” That’s not the only reason I can’t.

“I keep a stash of Maker’s Mark for emergencies. You know me, Doc. Always prepared.”

“As much as I’d like to, I can’t. I need to be here right now,” I reply as we tuck our rain jackets into our jump-out bags.

“No you don’t. You don’t need to do this at all.” Marino doesn’t hide how stung he feels. “Why the hell do you want to witness something like that? You don’t trust what they’re going to do with his body?”

“I trust them fine. But I’m staying. After that, Benton’s waiting…”

“Have it your way. As for me?” Marino shrugs, his tone resentful on the way to cold. “I’m blowing this damn place, grabbing something to eat, throwing back a few bourbons.”

“You’ve earned it,” I reply, and no matter what I say it doesn’t help.

Leaving the locker room, we find Lucy inside the receiving area waiting by a stairway door that has a biometric lock.

“I’m staying, but no need for Marino,” I tell her.

“Yeah, no need.” He stalks off, his bad mood closing in like overcast.

“I meant that I’ll take care of it.” My voice follows him as he opens the door leading outside.

“What’s eating him?” Lucy watches him leave, the lenses of her glasses almost clear. “Never mind. Why am I asking after everything he just heard about your relationship with Sal?”

“Nothing about today has been easy for any of us,” I answer diplomatically.

“I know.” Her eyes linger on mine as if she’s about to say something else.

But she doesn’t, and I’m reminded we’re on camera. She scans open the lock of the heavy metal door, and we descend four flights of steep metal-edged steps, our boots loud and echoing in the uneven light. On the lowest level, she opens another steel door. We enter a concrete space no bigger than a single-bay garage, the dank air stale and tasting of dust.

Neon lights flicker overhead, one of the tubular bulbs burned out, a lot of gauzy cobwebs everywhere. I look around at a sink, a freestanding double-glass-doored cabinet filled with old bottles of embalming fluid and other chemicals. A large rusting drain is in the middle of the brick floor, an old black rubber hose sloppily coiled next to a fifty-five-gallon metal drum of formaldehyde.

I associate the small dissection table with veterinary necropsies. The zinc top can be tilted on the wooden base, the gears rusty.

“What exactly went on down here?” I ask.

“It’s where the pathologists and others conducted certain examinations,” Lucy says.

“That much I can deduce.”

“For the most part, we’re talking about long before my time.”

“I can deduce that, too,” I reply as she artfully dodges the question.

The vintage embalming machine resembles a large white enameled blender, and lining a shelf are glass jars, flasks and antique tins of Morticians Powder that helps with odors. On a hospital cart are a jumble of forceps, scissors, retractors, catheters, hypodermic trocars, a bone handsaw that I suspect haven’t been used in many years.

“Related to animals that have gone into space?” I ask. “Is that the purpose?”

“For handling biological materials or purported ones and such.” She continues being evasive.

“It certainly looks like they were dissecting and embalming something down here.” I prod for answers she’s not going to give. “While other things have been kept frozen in drawers?”

She opens another door to a rush of heated air and the muffled roar of an inferno. Tron is waiting for us inside the crematorium room, flames showing orange around the edges of the oven’s iron door, square with an arched top like a medieval castle portcullis. Propped nearby against a brick wall are long-handled clean-out brushes and other tools.

Sal’s pouched body awaits on top of a gurney that’s at least as old as the blockhouses, the metal patinaed, the wheels hard rubber with white rims. I place my bags on a pitted zinc countertop. Above it on a shelf are cardboard urns similar to what my anatomical division uses when we cremate donated bodies after medical schools finish with them.

“You sure about this?” Tron asks me.

“I’m sure.”

She hands me a clipboard, and I sign an evidence form verifying that the body is Salvatore Dante Giordano.

“What’s the temp?” I ask.

“Nineteen hundred degrees,” Tron says.

“That’s good.” I begin filling out a provisional death certificate.

… Date of death April 15… Time of death approx. 8 a.m.…

“Don’t know when it was used last but it fired up just fine…,” she’s saying.

… Place of death Oz…

“I’m told there’s plenty of propane in the tank. Thank God…”

… Born in Rome, Italy…

“If the fire went out that would be bad…”

… Residence Old Town Alexandria, VA…

“I wonder if that’s ever happened…,” Lucy adds as I continue filling in the blanks.

… Parents Mario and Gloria Giordano…

I write that Sal died from blunt force trauma due to a vertical descent from a flying object, identity unknown. I have little doubt that he’s an assassination, a hit perpetrated by another human being or perhaps more than one. I return the clipboard to Tron, and we put on heat-resistant gloves.

“Maybe we turn him facedown,” I suggest, and we do it.

But it makes me feel no better, quite the opposite, not that this could be anything but awful. He won’t lie flat due to the awkward angles of his rigorous limbs. His familiar wavy gray hair and dusky red back show through plastic, and I experience an unexpected shock of panic that just as quickly passes.

We turn the body face up again, and it’s as stiff as a mannikin, thudding against metal, the barely open eyes cloudy and staring blindly. His body is clenched rigidly like a fist, almost pugilistic, as if he’s offended and resisting mightily. Or maybe he would find all this Far Side funny. It’s anything but that to me.

“The damn see-through pouches.” I find myself perseverating. “They should make them plain black. Or white. Or red, orange, yellow, I don’t give a damn. Anything but transparent.”

“I agree,” Tron says. “It seems disrespectful.”

“Because it is,” Lucy replies. “No matter what we do it’s a fucking indignity.”

Tron rolls the body closer to the oven, the wheels creaking and chattering over the brick flooring.

“Death is an ugly fucker.” Lucy grabs a long, hooked tool leaning against the wall.

“Yes, it sure as hell is. Death and every fucking thing leading up to it. And then what it leaves you with.” I’m dismayed by my flare of temper.

I grip the handles of the steel tray, helping Tron lift the body as Lucy stands back from the iron door, using the hooked tool to pull it open. We’re slammed with a wall of searing heat, the blast of the fire deafening. The tray makes a dreadful grating sound as it slides into the raging maw, the plastic pouch instantly melting and smoking.

“Should take a couple hours.” Lucy clanks the heavy door shut.

The air is instantly cooler, my heart beating hard, and my vision seems to black out. I’m lightheaded.

“Are you okay?” Lucy’s voice as I feel her hand on my arm.

“Yes.” Taking a deep breath, I step back from the oven.

“Do you need to sit down before I get you out of here?” she asks.

“I’m fine.” I take off the heavy Kevlar gloves while silently lecturing myself to control my emotions. “When I leave tomorrow I’ll bring the ashes with me. I’ll hold them safely at the office until we know what to do.”

“We’ll have them ready for you in the morning,” Tron promises.

Feel nothing.

Picking up my bags, I shoulder the straps as Lucy and I return to the stairwell, my thoughts racing and colliding, my attention fragmented. I don’t want to envision what’s happening inside the oven, and I’ve seen it before.

Feel nothing!

“I expect that his sister will want the ashes sent to Italy,” Lucy is saying as we begin climbing the four flights of stairs.

“The Giordano family has a mausoleum in Campo Verano,” I reply. “I saw it long ago, huge with Baroque marble sculptures near where the poet Shelley is buried. It’s hard to imagine Sal wanting anything so grand. And most of all, he didn’t get along with his parents worth a damn.”

“Why not? He was a Nobel laureate. They must have been proud.”

“They wanted him to take over the family business of managing their wealth,” I explain. “He wasn’t supposed to work for a living. What should I expect next?” I then ask her. “The evidence, for example.”

“We’ll get it to your labs and ours ASAP, and a forensic team will go over his truck,” she replies. “It was delivered a little while ago.”

“Delivered where?” I envision the vintage blue Chevy dangling and spinning from the long orange tether, trees thrashing under our feet.

“On the other side of the fence.” She’s saying that it’s at NASA Langley. “In hangar eleven-twelve near the gantry if you want to take a look in the morning before heading back to Alexandria.”

“Yes, I’ll want to see,” I reply as we continue to climb, my bags bumping against my thighs.