‘At least your case wasn’t in the water for long,’ Laurie said, looking
down at the corpse. ‘It’s not decomposed at all.’
‘Just a refreshing dip,’ Jack quipped.
‘What a shotgun wound!’ Laurie marveled, gazing at the fearsome wound.
Then looking at the multiple gashes, she added, ‘These look like they
were done by a propeller.’
Jack straightened up. ‘Laurie, what’s on your mind? You didn’t come down
here just to help us, did you?’
‘No,’ Laurie admitted. Her voice wavered behind her mask. ‘I guess I
wanted a little moral support.’
‘About what?’ Jack questioned.
‘Calvin just reamed me out,’ Laurie said. ‘Apparently the night tech,
Mike Passano, complained that I had been in last night accusing him of
being involved in the theft of Franconi’s body. Can you imagine? Anyway,
Calvin was really angry, and you know how I hate confrontation. I ended
up crying, which made me furious at myself.’
Jack blew out through pursed lips. He tried to think of something to say
other than ‘I told you so,’ but nothing came to mind.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said limply.
‘Thanks,’ Laurie said.
‘So you shed a few tears,’ Jack said. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘But I hate it,’ Laurie complained. ‘It’s so unprofessional.’
‘Ah, I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Jack said. ‘Sometimes I wish I could
shed tears. Maybe if we could do some kind of partial trade, we’d both
be better off.’
‘Anytime!’ Laurie said with conviction. This was the closest Jack had
come to an admission of what Laurie had long suspected: his bottled-up
grief was the major stumbling block for his own happiness.
‘So, at least now you’ll drop your minicrusade,’ Jack said.
‘Heavens, no!’ Laurie said. ‘If anything, it makes me more committed
because it suggests just what I feared. Calvin and Bingham are going to
try to sweep the episode under the carpet. It’s not right.’
‘Oh, Laurie!’ Jack moaned. ‘Please! This little run-in with Calvin will
only be the beginning. You’re going to bring yourself nothing but
grief.’
‘It’s the principle,’ Laurie said. ‘So don’t lecture me. I came to you
for support.’
Jack sighed, fogging up his plastic face mask for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he
said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing in particular,’ Laurie said. ‘Just be there for me.’
Fifteen minutes later, Laurie left the autopsy room. Jack had showed her
all the external findings on his case, including the two puncture
wounds. She’d listened with half an ear, obviously preoccupied with the
Franconi business. Jack had had to restrain himself to keep from telling
her again how he felt.
‘Enough of this external stuff,’ Jack said to Vinnie. ‘Let’s move on to
the internal part of the autopsy.’
‘It’s about time,’ Vinnie complained. It was now after eight and bodies
were coming in along with their assigned techs and medical examiners.
Despite the early start, he and Jack were not significantly ahead of the
others.
Jack ignored the friendly banter evoked by his hapless corpse. With all
the obvious trauma, Jack had to vary the traditional autopsy technique
and that took concentration. In contrast to Vinnie, Jack was oblivious
to the passage of time. But again his meticulousness paid off. Although
the liver had essentially been obliterated by the shotgun blasts, Jack
discovered something extraordinary that might have been missed by
someone doing a more haphazard, cursory job. He found the tiny remains
of surgical sutures in the vena cava and in the ragged end of the
hepatic artery. Sutures in such an area were uncommon. The hepatic
artery brought blood to the liver, whereas the vena cava was the largest
vein in the abdomen. Jack didn’t find any sutures in the portal vein,
because that vessel was almost entirely obliterated.
‘Chet, get over here,’ Jack called. Chet McGovern was Jack’s office
mate. He was busy at a neighboring table.
Chet put down his scalpel and stepped over to Jack’s table. Vinnie moved
to the head to give him space.
‘What’cha got?’ Chet asked. ‘Something interesting?’ He peered into the
hole where Jack was working.
‘I sure do,’ Jack said. ‘I got a bunch of shotgun pellets, but I also
have some vascular sutures.’