The morgue assistant was a big man who was always sweating. He plugged an autopsy saw into the overhead cord reel, and started on the skull.
This West could do without. The sound was worse than the dentist’s drill, the bony smell, not to mention the idea, awful. West would not be murdered or turn up dead suspiciously in any form or fashion. She would not have this done to her naked body with people like Brewster looking on while clerks passed around her pictures and made comments.
“Contact wounds, entrances here behind the right ear.” Dr. Odom pointed a bloody gloved finger, mostly for her benefit.
“Large caliber. This is execution style.”
“Exactly like the others,” Brewster remarked.
“What about cartridge cases?” Dr. Odom asked.
“Forty-fives, Winchester, probably Silvertips,” West replied, thinking about Brazil’s article again and all that he had revealed.
“Five each time. Perp doesn’t bother picking them up, doesn’t care. We need to get the FBI on this.”
“Fucking press,” Brewster said.
West had never been to Quantico. Her dream had always been to attend the FBI’s National Academy, which was rather much the Oxford University of police training. But she’d been busy. Then she kept getting promoted. Finally, the only thing she was eligible for was executive training up there, for God’s sake. That meant a bunch of big-bellied chiefs, assistant chiefs, and sheriffs, out on the firing range trying to make the transition from. 38 specials to semiautomatic pistols. She’d heard the stories. All these guys blasting away, dumping brass into their hands, and taking the time to stuff it neatly in their pockets. Hammer offered to send West last year. Forget it.
West didn’t need to learn a thing from the FBI.
“I’d like to know what their profilers would have to say,” West said.
“Forget it,” Brewster said, chewing a toothpick and swiping Vicks up his nose.
Dr. Odom picked up a big sponge, and squeezed water over organs. He grabbed a tan rubber hose, and suctioned blood out of the chest cavity.
“He smells like he was drinking,” said Brewster, who could no longer smell anything except childhood memories of colds.
“Maybe on the plane,” Odom agreed.
“What about those guys at Quantico?” He eyed Brewster, as if West had never brought up the subject.
“Busy as jumping beans,” Brewster replied.
“Like I said, forget it.
They got what? Ten, eleven profilers and are about a thousand cases behind? Think the government’s going to fund shit? Shit no. Too damn bad, too.
“Cause those profilers are damn good.”
Brewster had applied to the FBI early on, but forget that, too. They weren’t hiring, or maybe it had to do with the polygraph test he wasn’t about to take. He sniffed more Vicks. God, he hated death. It was ugly and it stunk. It was a tattletale. Like this fellow’s dick, for example. The guy looked like a balloon with this little knot, so all his air didn’t get out.
West was angry, her face hard, as she stared at the fleshy nude body opened up from neck to navel, and blaze orange paint no amount of scrubbing would wash away. She thought of his wife and family. No human should ever have to come to such a grim place and be put through something like this, and she felt fresh anger toward Brazil.
She was waiting for him when he trotted out of the Knight-Ridder building, his notepad in hand as he headed to his car and a story.
West, in uniform, climbed out of her unmarked Ford, and she strode toward Brazil like she might tackle him. She wished she could have bottled that dead smell and sprayed it in Brazil’s face, and rubbed his nose in the reality West had to live with every day. Brazil was in a hurry and had a lot on his mind. A Honda was on fire in the Mental Health parking lot, according to the scanner. Possibly, it was nothing, but what if someone was in it? Brazil stopped. He was startled as West jabbed a finger into his breastbone.
“Hey!” He grabbed her wrist.
“So how’s the Black Widow reporter today?” West coldly said.