“Yeah, well, it sure would be nice if we knew that,” Marino blasts sarcasm into the wallphone. “Death don’t take no holiday,” he adds a moment later. “You tell whoever I’m coming and they will let me in.” Then, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. “Pis the season. And Stanfield? Keep your mouth shut, okay? You got that? I read about this in the goddamn paper one more time… Oh really, well, maybe you didn’t see the Richmond paper yet. I’ll make sure and tear out this morning’s article for you. All this Jamestown shit, hate crime shit. One more peep and I’m gonna get tear-ass. You never seen me tear-ass and you don’t want to.”
Marino pulls on fresh gloves as he returns to the gurney, his gown flapping around his legs. “Well, it just gets more squirrelly. Doc. Assuming this guy here’s our disappeared jogger, it appears we’re dealing with a garden-variety truck driver. No record. No trouble. Lived in a condo with a girlfriend who’s ID’ed him by photo. That’s who Stanfield talked to late last night, apparently, but she ain’t answering the phone so far this morning.” He gets a lost look on his face, not certain how much he has already told me.
“Let’s get him on the table,” I say.
I parallel-park the gurney next to the autopsy table. Marino
gets the feet, I grab an arm, and we pull. The body bangs
against steel and blood trickles from the nose. I turn on water and it drums into the steel sink, the dead man’s X rays glowing from light boxes on the wall, revealing perfectly pristine bones, and the skull from different angles, and the zipper of the warm-up jacket snaking down each side of gracefully bowed ribs. The buzzer sounds out in the bay as I run a scalpel from shoulder to shoulder, then down to the pelvis, making a small detour around the navel. I observe Dr. Sam Terry’s image on closed-circuit TV and hit a button with my elbow to open the bay door. He is one of our odontologists, or forensic dentists, whose bad luck it is to be on call Christmas Eve.
“I’m thinking we need to drop by and pay her a visit while we’re in the area,” Marino goes on. “I got her address, the girlfriend. The condo where they live.” He glances down at the body. “Lived, I guess.”
“And you think Stanfield can keep his mouth shut?” I reflect back tissue with staccato cuts of the scalpel, awkwardly gripping forceps in the gloved fingertips of my plaster-bound left hand.
“Yeah. Says he’ll meet us at the motel, which ain’t being real friendly, moaning and groaning it’s Christmas Eve and they don’t want any more attention because it’s already hurt their business. Something like ten cancellations because of people hearing about it on the news. Yeah, like bullshit, is what I say. Most the people who stay in that dump probably don’t know shit about what’s happened around here or care.”
Dr. Terry walks in, his scuffed black doctor’s bag in hand, a fresh surgical gown untied in back and billowing as he heads to the counter. He is our youngest and newest odontologist and is almost seven feet tall. Legend has it that he could have had a career with the NBA but wanted to continue his education. The truth, and he’ll tell you if you ask, is he was a mediocre guard at Virginia Commonwealth University, that the only good shooting he has ever done is with guns, the only good rebounding is with women and he only went into dentistry because he couldn’t get into medical school. Terry desperately wanted to be a forensic pathologist. What he’s doing as basically a volunteer is as close as he Will ever get.
“Thank you, thank you,” I tell him as he begins arranging his paperwork on a clipboard. “You are a good man to come help us out this morning, Sam.”
He grins, then jerks his head at Marino and says in his most exaggerated New Jersey accent, “How’ya doin’, Marino?”
“You ever seen the Grinch steal Christmas? ‘Cause if you haven’t, just hang out with me for a while. I’m in a mood to take back little kids’ toys and pat their mamas on the ass on my way up the chimney.”