“Yes,” I replied.
“Then you’re thinking he might be queer.”
I stopped what I was doing because I’d had enough.
“Detective Roche–I turned around to face him, and my voice was hard–if you are going to be in my morgue, then you will give me room to work. You will stop rubbing against me, and you will treat my patients with respect. This man did not ask to be here dead and naked on this table.
And I don’t like the word queer.”
“Well, irregardless of what you call it, his orientation might somehow be important.” He was nonplussed, if not pleased by my irritation.
“I don’t know for a fact that this man was or was not gay,” I said. “But I do know for a fact that he did not die of AIDS.”
I grabbed a scalpel off a surgical cart and his demeanor abruptly changed. He backed off, suddenly unnerved because I was about to start cutting, so now I had that problem to cope with, too.
“Have you ever seen an autopsy?” I said to him.
“A few.” He looked like he might throw up “Why don’t you go sit down over there,” I suggested none too kindly as I wondered why Chesapeake had assigned him to this case or any case. “Or go out in the bay.”
“It’s just hot in here.”
“If you get sick, go for the nearest trash can.” It was all Danny could do not to laugh.
“I’ll just sit over here for a minute.” Roche went to the desk near the door.
I swiftly made the Y incision, the blade running from shoulders to sternum to pelvis. As blood was exposed to air, I thought I detected an odor that made me stop what I was doing.
“You know, Lipshaw’s got a really good sharpener out I wish we could get,” Danny was saying. “It hone-grinds with water so you can just stick the knives in there and leave them.”
What I was smelling was unmistakable, but I could not believe it.
“I was just looking at their new catalog,” he went on.
“Makes me crazy all the cool things we can’t afford.”
This could not be right.
“Danny, open the doors,” I said with a quiet urgency that startled him.
“What is it?” he asked in alarm.
“Let’s get plenty of air in here. Now,” I said.
He moved fast with his bad knee and opened double doors that led into the hall.
“What’s wrong?” Roche sat up straighter.
“This man has a peculiar odor.” I was unwilling to voice my suspicions right then, especially to him.
“I don’t smell anything.” He got up and looked around, as if this mysterious odor might be something he could see.
Eddings’ blood reeked of a bitter almond smell, and it did not surprise me that neither Roche nor Danny could detect it. The ability to smell cyanide is a sex-linked recessive trait that is inherited by less than thirty percent of the population. I was among the fortunate few.
“Trust me.” I was reflecting back skin from ribs, careful not to puncture the intercostal muscles. “He smells very strange.”
“And what does that mean?” Roche wanted to know.
“I won’t be able to answer that until tests are conducted,” I said. “In the meantime, we’ll thoroughly check out all of his equipment to make sure everything was functioning and that he didn’t, for example, get exhaust fumes down his hose.”
“You know much about hookahs?” Danny asked me, and he had returned to the table to help.
“I’ve never used one.”
I undermined the midline chest incision laterally. Reflecting back tissue, I formed a pocket in a side of skin, which Danny filled with water. Then I immersed my hand and inserted the scalpel blade between two ribs. I checked for a release of bubbles that might indicate a diving injury had caused air to leak into the chest cavity. But there were none.
“Let’s get the hookah and the hose out of the boat and bring them in,” I decided. “It would be good if we could get hold of a dive consultant for a second opinion. Do you know anyone around here we might be able to reach on a holiday?”