“Ready for me to open up the skull, Chief?” Her question is an announcement that requires no answer. Turk is like a lot of the military women we get in heretough, eager, quick to eclipse the men, who often, truthfully, are the squeamish ones. ‘That lady Dr. Chong’s working on,” Turk says as she plugs the Stryker saw into the overhead cord reel, “she’s got a living will and even wrote her own obituary. Got all her insurance papers in order, everything. Put ’em all in a binder and left it and her wedding band on the kitchen table before she laid herself down on the blanket and shot herself in the head. Can you imagine? Really, really sad.”
“It’s very sad.” The organs are a shimmering bloc as I lift them out en masse and set them on a cutting board. “If you’re going to be in here, you really should cover up.” I direct this at Stanfield. “Did anybody show you where things are in the locker room?”
He blankly stares at the cuffs of my blood-soaked sleeves, at the blood splashed on the front of my gown. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over what I got,” he says. “If we could maybe sit down for a minute? Then I need to head on back before the weather gets any worse. Pretty soon, you’re gonna need Santa’s sleigh to get anywhere.”
Turk picks up a scalpel and makes an incision around the back of the head, ear to ear. She reflects back the scalp and pulls it forward, and the face goes slack, collapsing into tragic protest before it is inside out like a folded-down sock. The exposed dome of the skull glistens pristinely white, and I take a good look at it. No hematomas. No indentations or fractures. The whir of the electric saw sounds like a hybrid of a table saw and a dentist’s drill as I pull off my gloves and drop them in a red biohazard trash can. I motion Stanfield to follow me to the long countertop that runs the length of the wall opposite the autopsy stations. We pull out chairs.
“I gotta be honest with you, ma’am,” Stanfield begins with a slow, negative shake of his head. “We don’t got a clue where to start on this one. All I can tell you right now is this man” he indicates the body on the table”checked into The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground yesterday at three P.M.”
“Where exactly is The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground?”
“On Route Five West, no more than ten minutes from William and Mary.”
“You talked to the clerk at this motel, The Fort James Motel?”
“The lady in the office, yes ma’am, I did.” He opens a large manila envelope and scoops out a handful of Polaroid photographs. “Her name’s Bev Kiffin.” He spells it for me, slipping reading glasses out of an inner jacket pocket, hands trembling slightly as he flips through a notepad. “She said the young man come in and said he wants the sixteen-oh-seven special.”
“I’m sorry. The what?” I rest my ballpoint pen on the notes I am making.
“One hundred and sixty dollars and seventy cents Monday through Friday. That’s five nights. Sixteen-oh-seven. The usual rate’s forty-six dollars a night, which is mighty high for a place like that, you ask me. But you know tourist traps.”
“Sixteen-oh-seven? As in the date Jamestown was founded?” It seems odd to hear a reference to Jamestown. I just mentioned Jamestown to Anna last night when I was talking about Benton.
Stanfield nods deeply. “As in Jamestown. Sixteen-oh-seven. That’s the business rate, or so they call it. The amount for the business week, and let me add, ma’am, this isn’t a very nice motel, not at all, no ma’am. A fleabag is what I would call it.”
“Does it have a history of crime?”
“Oh no. No ma’am. No history of crime I’m aware of, not at all.”
“Just seedy.”
“Just seedy.” He nods deeply.
Detective Stanfield has a distinct way of speaking with emphasis, as if he is used to teaching a slow child who needs important words repeated or emphasized. He neatly arranges photographs in a lineup on the countertop and I look at them. “You took these?” I assume.