“Like I said, not much. We confirmed their identities and located their residences, but they’re refusing to talk about their involvement with Malcolm Price, or what they know about the Ink trade. They claim … hang on, I’ve got it here.” He turned a page in the notepad, and then read out loud, “‘We didn’t know that guy. We just stopped in to ask for directions.’ End quote.” He flipped the notepad shut and slid it back into his pocket. “Harrison and Chavez are checking out their apartments to see if they can find anything useful.”
“So presumably they left the good-paying jobs that they moved to Recondito for, and decided that they’d be … what? Drug runners? Cooks in a lab? The pay for that kind of work couldn’t be that great, could it?”
Patrick shrugged. “You can make a lot of money selling drugs, actually, but these two didn’t have any priors at all. And nothing in their records that would suggest they would be the type to drop everything to take up a life of crime.”
“Maybe they had debts off the books? Gambling or something like that. Needed money fast.” Izzie chewed her lower lip, thoughtfully. “Are they a couple? I mean, romantically? People do stupid stuff when they’re in love.”
“I don’t know.” Patrick blinked, then rushed to add, “About their relationship status, I mean. Not about being in love.”
“Um, okay,” she said, giving him a quizzical look.
“But you said that you kept running into the Parasol name, in that kind of ‘This is an important pile of mashed potatoes’ tone that you sometimes use. Was it something to do with Fuller’s obsession with Undersight and that mine shaft?”
“No, but that reminds me.” Izzie pulled out her phone, brought up her email app, then clicked the link to the article she’d been reading earlier. “I did find another connection to the mine shaft, I think.”
She slid the phone over to Patrick, who looked down at it and began scanning through the article.
“I’m guessing that you know all about the Eschaton Center murders,” she said.
Patrick glanced up at her from under his eyebrows, giving her a look that made clear that was a stupid question to ask. “Obviously.”
Izzie reached over and pointed at the screen of her phone.
“Did you know that they did secret stuff in a mine shaft that connected to the Center’s subbasements?”
Patrick straightened up, the smug look on his face vanishing. He swiped down through the article, eyes narrowed, reading more carefully.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered under his breath.
“I’m guessing that’s a no, then.” Izzie tried not to sound superior, but knew she wasn’t entirely successful.
Patrick met her gaze as he slid the phone back across the red-and-white checked tablecloth to her. “I’ve been hearing about that case my entire life—growing up here, it’s hard to avoid it—but I never ran into that particular detail before.” He rubbed his jaw, thinking. “Can you forward that to me?”
He picked up his phone and waggled it.
“Sure.” Izzie copied the link and then pasted it into a text message.
Patrick’s phone chimed, indicating a new message. “Thanks.”
Izzie looked up from her phone. “You’re welcome, but I haven’t sent it yet.” She turned and showed the compose message screen.
“Then what … ?” Patrick tapped the screen. “Oh, damn.” He looked up. “It’s Joyce asking where the hell we are. She’s been waiting half an hour for us to show up. We gotta go.”
As he jumped to his feet and stacked their trash on the trays, Izzie smirked. “It was your idea to get lunch at the place with the crazy long line, you know.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, dumping the trash in a bin and putting the trays on top. “But come on, those ribs? It was totally worth it.”
As they exited the place, Izzie was grateful that her stomach wasn’t still growling. But she hoped that she wouldn’t be getting a second look at her meal when they got to the morgue. She hadn’t thrown up yet at the smell of rotting corpses, but there was always a first time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The scalpels and bone saws on the autopsy table were vibrating in time with the ear-shatteringly loud beat of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” blaring from the medical examiner’s office as they stepped off the elevator into the cavernous morgue.
“See!” Patrick shouted to be heard over the din. “I told you so!”
Izzie followed as he crossed the cold tile floor to the open office door.
“You poseur!” Patrick pointed at Joyce Nguyen, who was sitting in a swivel chair at her desk, bobbing her head in time with the music and swaying her shoulders as she rhythmically hit the keys of her computer’s keyboard.
She looked up at the sound of his voice, a startled expression on her face. Then with a look of annoyance, she grabbed the wireless mouse, swerved it on the desk, and with a click the music stopped.
“Some goth you are.” Patrick folded his arms, shoulder resting against the door frame. “I knew it was all an act.”
Joyce leaned her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her folded hands. “First, I never said I was a ‘goth.’ I’m an adult woman, not a member of some teenage fan club. Second, it is entirely possible to enjoy more than one kind of music, you know, depending on your mood. And third, stop trying to police my engagement with media, jerk. I like what I like.” From her tone and expression it was clear that she wasn’t really mad, but playfully annoyed. “And besides, ABBA is awesome.”
“Well, I am a police officer. If I can’t police your media consumption, who can?” Patrick said with a grin. He looked over at Izzie. “And ABBA is most definitely not awesome, right Izzie?”
Izzie held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, guys, I’m Switzerland in this. Completely neutral.”
“Traitor.” Patrick feigned mock offense, then turned back to Joyce. “So, what do you have for us?”
The medical examiner grabbed the cane that was leaning against her desk, and used it to help lever herself up out of the chair and onto the thick soles of her impressive boots.
“You guys sent me some real winners this time, I’ll give you that.” Joyce’s cane thudded against the area rug that was spread under the desk, then tonked against the tile floor as she stepped through the door past Patrick and Izzie and out into the main space of the morgue beyond.
“You can thank Chavez and Harrison for this one,” Patrick answered, trailing after her. “This is their show, I’m just pitching in.”
“Harrison is an ass, but you can tell that cutie Chavez that he’s welcome to drop by anytime.” She gave him a sly look as she glanced back over her shoulder. “Maybe he’d show a little more respect for my musical choices than some philistines do.”
There was a body wrapped in a single sheet on one of the autopsy tables. Joyce continued past it to the refrigerator doors that lined the back wall.
“We’ll tackle the easy ones first.” The doors were about two-and-a-half feet square, and Joyce grabbed the handle of one, yanking it open. “Give me a hand with this,” she said.
Izzie stepped forward to help pull out the body tray carriage. It slid out easily, coasting over ball bearing rollers, but before it was halfway extended out the door the putrid smell hit her nostrils, and seeing her lunch a second time became a very real possibility. She recoiled, hand over her mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.
“Here, this might help.” Joyce pulled a small jar of Vicks VapoRub from the pocket of her lab coat. “You get used to it in time, but a bit of this under your nose might get you through.” She twisted the lid off, and held the open jar out to Izzie.
Izzie dabbed a bit above her upper lip, and her nostrils stung with the mentholated smell. But it was better than the stench of putrescence wafting off the decaying body on the tray.
“I’ll take some,” Patrick said, face screwed up in distaste. He skimmed a fingertip around the inner rim of the jar. “I thought they smelled bad yesterd
ay.”
“They were in a fairly advanced state of decomposition,” Joyce said as she screwed the cap back on and dropped the jar into her pocket. “But cutting them open releases a lot of gas and liquid that’s built up inside, so … yeah, they pretty much reek.”
“I think I preferred the ABBA.” Patrick dabbed the mentholated cream under his nostrils.
“Philistine.” Joyce shook her head sadly, then looked down at the body on the tray. “We’re still working on IDing them from dental records, but this first John Doe was the farthest along of the three. Taking into the account the environmental conditions of the basement where you found them— relatively cool and dry—the rate of decay was much slower than it would have been in a warmer, more humid setting, but based on the degree of tissue liquefaction I’d estimate that our friend here has been deceased for at least a month, possibly as much as eight weeks. The skin has already begun to rupture, and there’s been some loss of mass due to maggot feeding and decompositional fluids being purged. Hair and nails are loose and easily dislodged.”
“Were you able to determine anything about cause of death?” Patrick asked.
“This one’s skin and soft tissues were far enough gone that it was difficult to get a complete picture, but there is some evidence of an entry wound at the back of the skull.” She shoved the tray back into the cooler, shouldered the door shut, and then yanked open the next door. She nodded to Izzie, who helped pull the tray out.
“Urk.” Izzie gagged at the smell. The mentholated rub was helping, but some of the stench was still getting through.
“This woman was a little fresher,” Joyce went on, “maybe a week or two post-mortem, and she had the same indicators at the back of the skull. Something had been inserted there. I thought at first it was a stab wound, perhaps with something like an ice pick. Otherwise no signs of trauma, though her body does show indications of malnourishment, and her digestive tract was completely empty, as if she hadn’t eaten in some time before she died.”
She nudged the tray with her hip, sliding it back into the cooler, then opened the next door down.
“This one was the freshest. Maybe as little as seventy-two hours post-mortem. Malnourished, though with traces of his last meal still in his system. And in addition to the entry wound on the back of the head, I found this.” She reached into another pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a small clear plastic evidence bag. There was a small plastic and metal object inside, which looked almost like a dart with only two wings.
“What is it?” Patrick asked.
“It’s a ventriculoperitoneal shunt. It’s like a cerebral catheter, typically used to drain excess fluid from the cranium in patients suffering from hydrocephalus. This one was entering the subject’s brain near the pineal gland, behind the third ventricle.” She tilted her head, looking down at the cadaver on the tray. “Pretty inexpertly inserted. Could not have been very pleasant for him.”
“So he had some kind of meningitis, maybe? Or head trauma?” Izzie asked, thinking of potential causes for hydrocephalus.
Joyce shook her head. “Nope. But I thought I’d run an MRI on the brain once I removed it from the cranium, see what I could find out. Know what I found?”
She looked from Izzie to Patrick and back again, like a comedian waiting for a punch line to land with her audience.
“No,” Patrick finally said, a trace of annoyance in his voice. “What?”
Joyce turned and tonked across the tile floors to an autopsy table, atop which rested a folder. She picked it up, and pulled a print from inside. “Take a look.”
Patrick took the print from her hand and held it for Izzie to see. It was a color photograph looking down at the top of the dead man’s head with the cap of the skull removed. It was gruesome, just bits and pieces still adhering to the inside of the cranium.
“So what?” Patrick glanced up from the photo at the medical examiner. “Empty skull after you removed the brain. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
Joyce shook her head, a macabre smile on her face. “I hadn’t removed anything. That’s what I found when I cracked the skull open.”
Izzie looked back at the photo. “But … had it already decomposed?”
“No chance,” Joyce answered. “Not this soon after death. And there is some brain tissue in there.” She pulled another print from the folder, this one obviously a printout of an MRI scan. “Just not very much.”
On the MRI printout, they could see the general outline of a brain inside the skull, but with huge shadows swallowing the majority of it, leaving only a husk.
“Were they …” Patrick struggled to find the right term. “I don’t know, were they extracting the brain through that shunt thingee?”
“Fluid, maybe,” Joyce answered, “but you couldn’t get much gray matter itself through a tube that small.”
“It’s like the others, isn’t it?” Izzie said. “The vacuoles. Like Fuller’s victims, and that dead drug dealer.”
Joyce nodded, like a teacher proud that a prized student had answered a hard question correctly. “That’s my best guess. But clearly, the degradation is far more advanced here, with only the medulla remaining largely unaffected. The medulla could have kept the body alive long past the point where it was able to do anything but the most basic of autonomic functions. Total brain death, in layman’s terms, followed by the ultimate death of the body itself.”
“So what were they draining out of their heads,” Izzie asked, “assuming that those entry wounds in the other two bodies was caused by the same kind of shunt?”
“I’m not sure,” Joyce answered, her voice tinged with excitement.
“Maybe he could have told us?” Patrick turned and nodded towards the sheet-draped body on the autopsy table.
“Perhaps,” Joyce said, nudging the tray back into the cooler and closing the door. She started towards the autopsy table. “But honestly, as it is, your friend here raises way more questions than he answers.”
“You read Chavez’s report on the incident, I’m sure.” Patrick’s face was closed, his expression guarded.
“Yeah.” Joyce glanced back over her shoulder. “He’s a cutie, but that was a load of bullshit.”
“Bullshit?” Izzie echoed, trying to keep her own expression neutral. She didn’t want to betray any of the suspicions she had about Malcolm Price’s last moments.
“Yep.” Joyce flipped the sheet back, exposing the head, shoulders, and abdomen of Malcolm Price. The head was almost completely severed from the body, the neck just a tattered hunk of skin, crushed bone, and ripped flesh. “Chavez says in his report that this guy bit an officer in the neck, took three shots to the chest, and then dove headfirst through a plate glass window, landing on the pavement twenty-five feet below.” She glanced down at the dead man on the table. “All of that checks out with the physical condition of the remains. Traces of human tissue stuck in his front teeth, glass particles embedded in his epidermis, gunshot residue on the clothing indicating close range firing … the broken bones, lacerations, and hemorrhaging are consistent with an impact on a hard surface after a fall from that height. I have no doubt that those aspects of Chavez’s incident report are accurate.”
“So … ?” Patrick asked, suggestively.
Joyce turned to fix him with a stare. “He claims that the subject got back up after the fall and attacked Agent Lefevre here, he took additional shotgun blasts at close range, and then Officer Carlson and Agent Lefevre took turns trying to knock his head off with a battering ram. Am I getting that right?”
Patrick and Izzie glanced at each other, but didn’t rush to answer.
“That is bullshit, plain and simple.” Joyce slammed the tip of her cane against the floor tiles to punctuate her point. “Chavez’s explanation in his report was that the subject was unaware of the extent of his injuries and could not feel the full extent of the pain, due to some unknown narcotic working in his system. But even if he was completely numb to pain, like entirely numb
to it, there’s no way that the broken bones of his legs would be able to support his weight to stand. To say nothing of the damage sustained by his internal organs in the impact. He was dead within seconds of hitting the pavement. Plain and simple.”
She leaned heavily on her cane with one hand, the other planted on her hip.
“So what’s the real story? Tempers flare after this guy attacks one of your own, so the guys on the tactical team shoot and batter his body once he’s already dead on the ground? Just to get a few good kicks in before the body bag is zipped shut?”
She glared at them, waiting for a reply.
“Well?”
Izzie and Patrick looked to one another. “Do we tell her?” he said.
“Tell me what?” Joyce said, growing impatient.
“She might be able to help,” Izzie said, chewing her lower lip with uncertainty.
“Seriously, guys, this is getting annoying. What really happened last night?”
“What Chavez said,” Patrick finally answered, turning back to face Joyce. “The basic events, anyway. But his explanation is all wrong.”
Joyce blinked in bewilderment.
“Malcolm Price did jump out of the window and hit the pavement after being shot three times,” Izzie said. “And I’m convinced that he died on impact, you’re right about that much. But he really did get up and come after me just a few seconds later.”
The medical examiner blinked a few more times, and then shook her head as if trying to shake something loose.
“Wait, I don’t get it,” Joyce said. “You claim that he died on impact and then attacked you. How does that work, exactly?”
“Well …” Izzie glanced over at Patrick, who shrugged. She continued, “we’re not exactly sure.”
“The ongoing Ink investigation has some …” Patrick searched for the right way of expressing it. “Some strange aspects to it. Chavez’s explanation was the most … how did you put it? The most ‘pragmatic’ way to frame it.”
“Wait.” Joyce gave the two of them a hard look. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
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