the accident?”
“Paramedics,” Kordell said.
“Highly trained, reliable men,” Tescanet said, mopping his doughy face
with a handkerchief. He had to be doing rapid mental arithmetic right
now, calculating the difference between the financial settlement that
might be necessitated by a morgue screwup and the far more major
judgment that might be won against the city for the incompetence of its
paramedics. “They would never, regardless of circumstances, never
mistakenly pronounce a man dead when he wasn’t.”
“One-there was no heartbeat whatsoever,” Kordell said, counting the
proofs of death on fingers so long and supple that they would have
served him equally well if he had been a concert pianist instead of a
pathologist.
“The paramedics had a perfectly flat line on the small EKG unit in their
van. Twno respiration. Threesteadily falling body temperature.”
“Unquestionably dead,” Tescanet murmured.
Lieutenant Verdad now regarded the attorney and the chief medical
examiner with the same flat expression and hawkish eyes that he had
turned on Rachael. He probably didn’t think Tescanet and Kordellr the
paramedicswere covering up malpractice or malfeasance. But his nature
and experience ensured his willingness to suspect anyone of anything at
any time, given even the poorest reason for suspicion.
Scowling at Tescanet’s interruption, Everett Kordell continued,
“Fourhere was absolutely no perceptible electrical activity in the
brain. We have an EEG machine here in the morgue. We frequently use it
in accident cases as a final test. That’s a safety procedure I’ve
instituted since taking this position. Dr. Leben was attached to the
EEG the moment he was brought in, and we could find no perceptible brain
waves. I was present.
I saw the graph. Brain death. If there is any single, universally
accepted standard for declaring a man dead, it’s when the attending
physician encounters a condition of full and irreversible cardiac arrest
coupled with brain death. The pupils of Dr. Leben’s eyes wouldn’t
dilate in bright light. And no respiration. With all due respect, Mrs.
Leben, your husband was as dead as any man I’ve ever seen, and I will
stake my reputation on that.”
Rachael had no doubt that Eric had been dead. She had seen his
sightless, unblinking eyes as he lay on the blood-spattered pavement.
She had seen, too well, the deep concavity running from behind his ear
all the way to the curve of his brow, the crushed and splintered bone.
However, she was thankful that Benny had unwittingly confused things and
had given the detectives yet another false trail to pursue.
She said, “I’m sure he was dead. I’ve no doubt of it.
I saw him at the scene of the accident, and I know there could have been
no mistaken diagnosis.”
Kordell and Tescanet looked immeasurably relieved.
With a shrug, Verdad said, “Then we discard the hypothesis.”
But Rachael knew that, once the possibility of misdiagnosis had been
planted in the cops’ minds, they would expend time and energy in the
exploration of it, which was all that mattered. Delay. That was the
name of the game. Delay, stall, confuse the issue. She needed time to
confirm her own worst suspicions, time to decide what must be done to
protect herself from various sources of danger.
Lieutenant Verdad led Rachael past the three draped bodies and stopped
with her at an empty gurney that was bedecked with rumpled shrouds. On
it lay a thick paper tag trailing two strands of plastic-coated wire.
The tag was crumpled.
“That’s all we’ve got to go on, I’m afraid. The cart that the corpse
once occupied and the ID tag that was once tied to its foot.” Only
inches from Rachael, the detective looked hard at her, his intense dark
eyes as flat and unreadable as his face. “Now, why do you suppose a
body snatcher, whatever his motivation, would take the time to untie the
tag from the dead man’s toeT’ “I don’t have the slightest idea,” she
said.
“The thief would be worried about getting caught.
He’d be in a hurry. Untying the tag would take precious seconds.”
“It’s crazy,” she said shakily.
“Yes, crazy,” Verdad said.
“But then the whole thing’s crazy.”
“Yes.”
She stared down at the wrinkled and vaguely stained shroud, thinking of