“He’s more lazy and irresponsible than he used to be,” Marino replied. “That guy ain’t connecting the dots right, Doc. He’s up to something, and just so you know, he’s been trying to get on with the police department.”
“Good,” I said. “You guys can have him:”
“One of these wannabes who jacks off over uniforms, guns and flashing lights,” he said as I began to unzip the pouch.
Marino’s voice was losing its bluster. He was doing his best to be stoical.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah.” The stench slammed into us like a storm front.
“Shit!” he complained as I opened the sheets shrouding the body. “Goddamn-fucking-son-of-a-bitch!”
There were times when a body was in such horrific shape it became a surreal miasma of unnatural colors and textures and odors that could distort and disorient and drop someone to the floor. Marino fled to the counter, getting as far away from the gurney as he could, and it was all I could do not to laugh.
He looked perfectly ridiculous in surgical garb. When he wore shoe covers he tended to skate across the floor, and because the cap couldn’t get much of a purchase on his balding head, it tended to pucker up like a cupcake paper. I gave him another fifteen minutes before he snatched it off as he always did.
“He can’t help the condition he’s in;” I reminded Marino.
He was busy stuffing a Vicks inhaler up each nostril.
“Now that’s a little hypocritical,” I commented as the doors slid open again and Chuck Ruffin walked in with X rays.
“It’s not a good idea to escort someone in here and just disappear,” I let Ruffin know with far more reserve than I felt. “Especially a rookie detective.”
“I didn’t know she was a rookie;’ Ruffin replied.
“Whad’d you think she was?” Marino said. “She’s never been down here before and looks about thirteen.”
“Damn sure is flat-chested. Not the way I like ’em, let me tell you.” Ruffin’s words swaggered. “Lesbo alert! RWIRR-RWIRR-RWIRR!” He imitated a siren, flashing his hands like emergency lights.
“We don’t leave unauthorized people alone with unexamined bodies. That includes cops. Experienced or not.” I wanted to fire him on the spot.
“I know.” He tried to be cute. “O. J. and the planted leather glove again.”
Ruffin was a tall, slender young man with sleepy brown eyes and undisciplined blond hair that seemed to grow in many different directions, giving him a tousled, just-outof-bed look that women seemed to find irresistible. He could not charm me and no longer tried.
“What time did Detective Anderson show up this morning?” I asked him.
His answer was to go around flipping on light boxes. They glowed blankly along the upper walls.
“Sorry I’m late. I was on the phone. My wife’s sick,” he went on.
He had used his wife as an excuse so many times by now that she was chronically ill or a hypochondriac, had Munchausen syndrome, or was almost dead.
“I guess Rene decided not to stay . . .” he said, referring to Anderson.
“Rene?” Marino interrupted him. “Didn’t know the two of you was close.”
Ruffin began slipping films out of their big manila envelopes.
“Chuck, what time did Anderson get here?” I tried again.
“To be exact?” He thought for a moment. “I guess she got here about quarter after.”
“After eight,” I said.
“Yup.”
“And you let her in the morgue when you knew everybody would be in staff meeting?” I said as he slapped films on the light boxes. “When you knew the morgue would be deserted. Paperwork, personal effects and bodies all over the place.”
“She’d never seen all of it, so I gave her the quick tour. . : ‘ He talked on. “Plus, I was here. Trying to catch up on-counting pills.”
He referred to the endless supply of prescription drugs that came in with most of our cases. Ruffin had the tedious chore of counting pills and disposing of them down the sink.
“Wow, look at that,” he said.
X rays of different angles of the skull showed metal sutures in the left side of the jaw. They were as vivid as the stitches in a baseball.