‘The rare occasion I might use a round blade is on animals,’ I said.
‘Of the two- or four-legged variety?’
‘I’ve taken bullets out of dogs, birds, cats and, on one fine occasion, a python shot in a drug raid,’ I replied.
Canter was looking at another bone. ‘And I thought I was the one who had all the fun.’
‘Do you find it unusual that someone would use a meat saw in four dismemberments, and then suddenly switch to an electric autopsy saw?’ I asked.
‘If your theory’s correct about the cases in Ireland, then you’re talking nine cases with a meat saw,’ he said. ‘How about holding this right here so I can get a picture.’
I held the section of left femur in the tips of my fingers, and he pressed a button on the camera.
‘To answer your question,’ he said. ‘I would find it extremely unusual. You’re talking two different profiles. The meat saw is manual, physical, usually ten teeth per inch. It will go through tissue and takes a lot of bone with each stroke, the saw marks rougher-looking, more indicative of someone skilled and powerful. And it’s also important to remember that in each of those earlier cases the perpetrator cut through joints, versus the shafts, which is also very rare.’
‘It’s not the same person.’ I again voiced my growing belief.
Canter took the bone from my hand and looked at me. ‘That’s my vote.’
When I returned to the lobby of the M.E.’s office, Marino was still on the phone down the hall. I waited a little while, then stepped outside because I needed air. I needed sunshine and sights that weren’t savage. Some twenty minutes passed before he finally walked out and joined me by the car.
‘I didn’t know you was here,’ he said. ‘If someone had told me, I would’ve got off the phone.’
‘It’s all right. What a gorgeous day.’
He unlocked the car.
‘How’d it go?’ he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.
I briefly summarized as we sat in the parking lot, not going anywhere.
‘You want to go back to the Peabody?’ he asked, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb.
I knew exactly what he wanted to do.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Graceland might be just what the doctor ordered.’
He shoved the car in gear and could not suppress a big grin.
‘We want the Fowler Expressway,’ I said, for I had studied a map.
‘I wish you could get me his autopsy report,’ he started on that again. ‘I want to see for myself what happened to him. Then I’ll know and it won’t eat at me anymore.’
‘What do you want to know?’ I looked at him.
‘If it was like they said. Did he die on the toilet? That’s always bothered the hell out of me. You know how many cases like that I’ve seen?’ He glanced at me. ‘Don’t matter if you’re some drone or the president of the United States. You end up dead with a ring around your butt. Hope to hell that don’t happen to me.’
‘Elvis was found on the floor of his bathroom. He was nude, and yes, it is believed that he slid off his black porcelain toilet.’
‘Who found him?’ Marino was entranced in an uneasy way.
‘A girlfriend who was staying in the adjoining room. Or that’s the story,’ I said.
‘You mean he walks in there, feels fine, sits down and boom? No warning signs or nothing?’
‘All I know is he’d been playing racquetball in the early morning, and seemed fine,’ I said.
‘You’re kidding.’ Marino’s curiosity was insatiable. ‘Now, I never heard that part. I didn’t know he played racquetball.’
We drove through an industrialized area, with trains and trucks, then past campers for sale. Graceland stood in the midst of cheap motels and stores, and it did not seem so grand given its surroundings. The white mansion with its columns was completely out of place, like a joke or a set for a bad movie.
‘Holy shit,’ Marino said, as he pulled into the parking lot. ‘Will you look at that. Holy smoke.’
He went on as if it were Buckingham Palace as he parked beside a bus.