Apparently oblivious that he had just contaminated much of what he had to work with, Hastings bumbled ahead. Rib snips cut through the chest cage, and Sam heard the snap of bones giving. The ribs and flesh folded back like wings, and the soggy lungs and dull red heart came into view.
Sam could see the damage, a familiar destruction. There were two—perhaps three—penetrating wounds that had gone through the chest wall, through the third intercostal space, perforating the lingula of the upper lobe of the left lung, the pericardial sac, and on into the heart at the left ventricular wall. The wounds seemed directed left to right, front to back, and angulated slightly downward, administered certainly by someone taller than Danny—and Danny had stood six feet two. The track was at least four inches deep, but the width of the weapon would be impossible to determine now, given the extent of decomposition. One thing was clear; it had been a weapon, a knife, a dagger even—but never a tooth. The wounds were separate things
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that he could concentrate on without personal involvement. Sam glanced at Hastings, who seemed confused.
"Bear, you say?" Hastings focused obtusely on Moutscher, who nodded. "Looks like a bear, sure as hell." Hastings nodded. Sam turned to Moutscher to protest, and then looked back into the open body cavity. Before he could prevent it, Hastings had lifted the heart out and was cutting through the pericardial sac into—NO!—into the heart, exposing the valves with their leaflets. The damn old fool had destroyed the tracks of two more wounds!
"You didn't even put a probe in, you idiot! Will you open your eyes and look before you cut any more? You've just fucked up all three wounds." Hastings looked to Moutscher for assistance, stricken. "He knows what he's doing, Clinton. You open your mouth one more time and I personally will take you out." "He doesn't know what he's doing." "You going to shut up?"
It was too late to save it. He was dealing with incompetents; there was no way to put it back together. He felt vaguely sorry for the old man and knew that Hastings was too late aware of what he had done. He sighed and waved him on, this parody of a postmortem. "Go ahead." The room was choked with death stink, clouds of it bursting from the decaying organs. He ignored them, his right hand skimming incessantly over his yellow pad, recording only his own observations, denying most of what Hastings perceived. Even as he wrote, he knew that his view had no credence, would never have credence—but it was all he had left. He saw Hastings's hand emerge holding Danny's stomach, saw the scalpel flick it open. Hastings sniffed. The old man might have been good in his day; he seemed to slip in and out of proper procedure. Sharp now. Fading away again.
"Stomach contents." Hastings's voice was reedy, high as an adolescent boy's. "Undigested eggs, vegetable matter, probably potato. Animal protein, perhaps ham or bacon.
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Subject succumbed within fifteen minutes, half hour of eating."
Good, doctor. Really important. Now that you've obliterated the vital wounds. Sam wrote it down anyway.
One by one the organs that had kept Danny alive were lifted out: liver, lungs, heart, spleen, kidneys, bladder. Each was sliced and examined. All normal. Danny, if you hadn't died, you would have lived to be one hundred.
Sam could feel a presence in the room. The two of them were together, laughing at the travesty. He could almost feel Danny nudge him and say,
"Pard, they don't know any better." He chuckled, and the other living men in the chamber looked up startled. Then they looked at each other and shrugged knowingly. He let it go.
Hastings piled the lacerated organs back in the body cavity willy-nilly. Later, somebody would stitch up the gaping T with thick black thread. No fine surgeon's hand needed now.
Sam felt as if he watched from a distance, curious. When he spoke, his voice echoed from the vantage point where he observed. Good. He was handling it.
Even when the drape was tugged off the corpse's face, it was still O.K. The face wasn't Danny's.
"Looks like bear all right," Hastings mouthed from a long way off. "See where the claws ripped down. Bear."
Moutscher's face nodded. It was hard to hear his voice; he shrunk in his distant perspective.
"It didn't bleed." Sam's own voice seemed too loud.
"Postmortem. She must have mauled at the body some. Won't bleed after you're dead."
Hastings's scalpel scored the skin at the back of the neck, and then he loosened the scalp from its moorings and peeled it back until the face was hidden again by the inverted scalp. The saw burred along the skull and the hot smell of burning bone rose into the air. Sam watched the skull cap lift off with wonderful detachment.
"You want a stool?" Moutscher's voice was almost too faint to understand.
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Sam was not aware that he had answered, but felt the solidness of a wooden stool beneath him, and thought it remarkable that it was there just as his knees declined to bear his weight. There was a continuous buzzing in his head. He assumed Hastings was still sawing away at the skull, but when he looked, the freckled, blue-veined hands were empty.
"Brain's liquid," Hastings muttered.
"Let it go then." Moutscher's voice, coming back down the tunnel where it had been.
Sam meant to say no, but his own voice eluded him.
"You O.K.?"
"Who?"
The voice, much louder now. "You O.K.? Clinton?" His head snapped up and the room spun.
"Get out of here for a while." Moutscher again. He made the door, walking uphill along the floor that had suddenly tilted up at him, and he was grateful that the heavy metal door pushed outward. The air was better—not good air, but better, full of dust and floor wax and no death. The alley exit was a long way down, and his stomach betrayed him even as his head cleared. He vomited up the scotch, oblivious to the stares of a Sunday morning cleaning crew unloading their van. It came up for a long time, seeming to strip some of his stomach lining with it. But when he was done retching, he felt better. Not good. It was unlikely he would ever feel good again, but the red foam behind his eyes had dissipated and he could think. Moutscher looked up, surprised, when Sam walked back into the tile room and reclaimed his perch on the stool.
"Everything fits, Clinton. The right humerus has got a spiral break, pulled completely out of the socket. It's a bear kind of injury. I'm satisfied."
"I'm not."
"Then it was a Sasquatch. You try to convince somebody f that. Our prosecutor will laugh you out of his office. You don't need that. You've had enough. Give it up. Go home. Let it go." 239
Danny's hands still rested in their plastic casings. Sam; turned away from Moutscher and loosened the bindings from the left hand. Danny's wedding ring shone under the lights, its tracing of entwined hearts grotesque against the loosened flesh. Moutscher assumed it was the ring he! wanted.
"Take it. You might as well take that and the watch while ; you're here."
"I want nail scrapings."
"Shit. Go ahead. Take it all. I'll give you your other stuff! back too, but I can't see that any of it will be any use. I'm ] clearing it accidental."
Sam said nothing, bending to his work, sliding an orange] stick beneath the long, ridged nails, loosened now on their,; beds. The other men watched him, looked at each other, j and shook their heads.
It was over. When he walked away from Moutscher, he j carried his gleanings from the mountainside, the envelopes and tubes and vials from the autopsy—all of it jammed into a cardboard box that said "Friskies" on the side. The sum total of what was left of four years with Danny. Danny ; wasn't the body that awaited delivery to the double rear ' doors of Phelps's Funeral Home in Natchitat. Danny was in the Friskies box.
Sam got a motel room, but only after producing every ! piece of identification he had; the clerk studied the neat cards with their official seals, looked at Sam suspiciously, and finally agreed to take his fifteen bucks.
The physical evidence that Moutscher had believed in so little that he had given it away was still cold, straight from the morgue's refrigeration. It was not as perishable as ice cream—but close, its useful life wholly dependent on time and temperature. Sam set the white box full of vials and bags in the square refrigerator that other motel guests utilized for beer and headed out to find a Fred Meyer store. He was startled to find that he had no more cash, but his MasterCharge bought him styrofoam pellets and cotton batting, brown paper, and strapping tape.
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Back in his room he arranged his bits and pieces as tenderly as a mother sending cookies to her son in college, finally satisfied that nothing would break or roll or crush in the journey ahead.
He had, of course, no proper forms for lab requests, but he knew the language. The motel stationery featured the Holiday Inn logo, and he crossed it out, and printed "Natchitat County Sheriff's Office" below it. Beneath that, his listed exhibits: twenty-seven samples; twenty-seven questions. Not professional in appearance, but correct. The answers would come back to him neatly typed on thin yellow and pink and green sheets. With great good luck, they might neutralize the damage done by Hastings and Moutscher. He figured he had four hours safe time before all of it disintegrated. Not a prayer of getting it to D.C. and the FBI Lab, or to Rockville, Maryland, and the ATF Lab, but they were not his first choice anyway. They would leave his treasures to wait their turn. He wanted the Western Washington Crime Lab to ferret out what lay hidden among the white pellets.
He debated how to send it and settled for Greyhound. The dog-bus would get it to Seattle as quick as a plane would by the time you considered all the messing around at the airport.
He ducked into a phone booth at the bus station, took a deep breath, and hoped his voice was going to come out official and uncrazy. He dialed the Crime Lab, charged the call to Natchitat County, and asked for the director.
"The director doesn't come in on Sunday," a woman's voice replied. Sunday. How the hell did it get to be Sunday? "This is Detective Sam Clinton of Natchitat County. Our office is sending a package of evidence via Greyhound. It should arrive at the Eighth and Stewart Station in Seattle at—let's see—at 4:02 P.M. I'll need a police courier to pick it up. It's very important. Can you do that?" "Well—" She sounded annoyed.
"Very important. Perishable material. Must be refrigerated by 5 P.M." 241
"All right. I'll send someone."
"Tell the director I'll phone him tomorrow morning."
"O.K."
"You've got that?"
The phone was dead. He had no more change, not even enough to dial the operator.
He thought of his motel room, and he thought of driving home, and neither seemed possible. He thought of Moutscher home watching football on his television, drinking beer and surrounded by his family. He could not think of Joanne and the mountain and whoever had worn the plaid shirt. He understood now why street people crawled under their cardboard blankets and shut out the world. Without his magic plastic card, he would do the same. With it, he could walk into the Cascadian and find Nirvana in a glass.
He stared at the antique apple crate labels displayed behind the bar as he downed the first double and realized with dread that it had lost its power. It took three before he felt the warmth. After six doubles, he found the lounge as comforting and soft as a mother's breast. After eight, he didn't have to think about anything at all.
Sam dreamed of Moutscher's voice shouting in his ear. He smelled disinfectant and urine, and a harsh fabric scratched his face. Something tugged at his shoulder and shook him like a rag doll baby. He opened his eyes a slit and saw Moutscher's florid face bending over him and yelling so loud that spittle spattered on Sam's cheek. Go away Moutscher.
Moutscher would not go away, and Sam painfully separated his eyelids from one another and saw where he was. In jail. Not his own, but jail; it was unfamiliar-familiar. He looked beyond the Chelan County captain and saw that the yellow-painted metal squares in the door didn't match up, that the cell door wasn't closed.
"If you weren't a cop, you'd be in here for a month, you damned fool." Moutscher's words fell into place and made
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a sentence. "It's Monday morning; you've slept it off. We don't owe you anything else. Now get your ass off that bunk and take it home."
". . . It's Monday?"
"Eleven in the morning. You drank up the bar at the hotel, you tried to deck the bartender, and you vomited all over our patrol unit. Clinton, you are a fuck-up and I don't care to spend the whole day babysitting you."
"Go to hell."
He hated Moutscher, and it felt amazingly good, this strong, cleansing rage. If Moutscher wasn't the enemy, he would do for the moment. Sam got up, folded the army-green blanket neatly, hitched up his pants and headed for the opening in the cell door. By the time he was in the corridor, he remembered where his truck was, waiting for him parked beneath the maple trees.
"I called Fewell and told him where you were. He wants to see you—pronto."
Moutscher had little tiny piggy eyes; Sam wondered that he hadn't noticed that before. And hairs growing out of his nostrils. And a gut that hung over his silver belt buckle.
Sam turned to leave, turned back, and severed all good will.
"And you sir, my good captain, have a brain as tiny as your pecker."
24
It was dusk on their second Sunday together when Duane looked at the forest and then at the slope of the land and knew he had made a mistake. The route down below Bowan Mountain had appeared the easiest of all those he'd considered. If he had not been so sure of it, he would never have let them linger so long in the meadow. But he had been weak, and it had been too easy to feel secure knowing that they 243
were only a few miles from the highway that could carry them swiftly to the Canadian border, to the beginning of their new life.
While his arm hampered him from other movement, he had worked over the Forest Service map for hours and found it rudimentary; the Pacific Crest Trail would lead them in two—or at the most, three—days to Slate Peak, and then into the Pasayten Wilderness where no motorized rig could venture. Their food would last a week or even two without supplement from his hunting and fishing. He could build them shelter before the heavy snows came.