Authors: Michael A. Black
Welcome to the Morgue
After checking out a dark blue Ford from the motor pool, Leal drove to a nearby fast-food chicken joint. Leal caught a glance
of the teenaged girl behind the counter eyeing him and Hart as they sat at one of the Formica-topped tables in the small restaurant.
Maybe she’s wondering if we’re lovers, he thought, smiling to himself. He dipped a few of his fries into the smear of catsup
and watched Hart eating her salad. She’d folded her jacket over the chair next to her, but sat with her right side to the
wall so no one could see her weapon. Her muscular arms extended from her sleeves, rippling as she ate her salad.
Jesus, why would a woman want to have muscles like that? he wondered. Maybe she is a lesbian, like Ryan said. In reality it
shouldn’t really make any difference, but he knew it would. If it were true, he’d have to be extra careful not to say something,
anything that might be misconstrued as being antigay, or taken the wrong way.
Hart placed a bit of lettuce into her mouth with a daintiness that belied her powerful build.
She’s feminine in a lot of ways, though, Leal thought. She looked up at him and seemed to notice his stare. He felt himself
blush.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, why?”
“I was just wondering why were you looking at me like that just now?” she said, smiling. “Do I have something stuck between
my teeth?”
“No, I was just wondering if you’d want to carpool tomorrow. That way I could drive the unmarked back and then we could start
using the county’s gas instead of our own.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said. “Want me to pick you up?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” he said, thinking that he didn’t want her to see how pathetic his rust-bucket car looked from the
inside. She took another bite of salad, then looked at him again, her plastic fork poised between them.
“Is that all?” she asked. “You look like you wanted to say something else.”
“I was just admiring your rings,” he said, pointing at twin topaz rings that she wore on each hand.
“Thanks, the necklace belonged to my grandmother,” she said, holding up a matching blue stone set in ornate silver. “I wear
the rings when I’m out in public so people won’t notice my palms so much.” She turned her hand over and displayed a thick
crust of yellowish ridges. “Calluses from the weights. I’ve been wearing gloves more lately trying to get rid of them.”
“Why did you get so heavy into weight lifting?” Leal asked. He tried to soften the bluntness his voice had betrayed by asking
a quick follow-up question. “I mean, you trying to get ready for the police Olympics, or something?”
“Actually, I’m a bodybuilder, not a weight lifter. I still have to pump a lot of weights, but the aim is to develop and shape
the muscles rather than lift more poundage.”
“I see,” Leal said, biting into his chicken sandwich, and wishing that he’d kept his mouth shut.
“My ex and I used to compete in couples’ competitions,” she said. “He was really into it, too. Unfortunately, he was also
into ’roids real heavy.”
“Those as bad as I’ve heard?”
Hart raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Worse, actually,” she said. “Bodybuilding’s all about looking good, not being healthy.
The dieting, the training, it can all get to be too much sometimes. Add chemicals that destroy your liver into the mix and
you can end up with some serious problems.”
Leal found himself wondering if she was injecting anything to achieve her build. But that seemed a stretch for someone so
health conscious.
“Is that how you met? In the couples’ competitions?”
“No, actually we met at Western Illinois University,” she said. “Both law enforcement majors. I was into track and field in
those days. A little gymnastics until I got too big.” She smiled. “We got married right after graduation. I got on County,
and he became a personal trainer. He kept flunking the urine tests until he went off the juice. Then he finally got called
by Chicago.” She ate more of her salad, then said, “That’s when I found out that cops make lousy husbands.”
Leal smirked.
Hart looked at him quickly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, it’s true.
I was so busy playing supercop, spending all my time at stakeouts and bars that I let my marriage go down the tubes.”
“That’s too bad,” Hart said. “Kids?”
“Yeah. Two girls.”
“Wow, how old?”
“Six and eight. They live with their mother. She remarried and moved to California. A suburb of LA. Thousand Oaks. Beautiful
place, but far, far away.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
He blew out another slow breath and realized he was telling her much more than he had intended. But what the hell, we’re partners,
he thought. “I get them for two weeks around Christmas, and for a month in the summers. That’s when I usually take my vacations.”
“It must be hard not to see them more.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said, thinking that at least they didn’t have to sit through the panic of seeing him in the emergency room
with his chest half-open. “But they’ve got a stable family life, and they’re both doing good in school. Great schools out
there.” His voice trailed off. “How about you? Kids?”
She shook her head. “I guess it’s probably better that we didn’t have any.”
The ubiquitous odor of the dead and decaying bodies hung in the air so pervasively as Leal and Hart walked through the main
refrigerated depository, that Leal was once again reminded of his initial trip to the morgue. It had been many years ago,
but the memories never seemed to quite go away. His partner had taken him for a meal first, too. A late breakfast. Then he’d
laughed as Leal subsequently covered the sidewalk with remnants of his scrambled eggs.
Leal glanced at Hart to see her reaction at the room full of black body bags, stacked on carts and shelves around the room.
She seemed to be concentrating on just staring straight ahead, but he could see that her bare arms were already getting goose
pimples from the cool temperature. Her nipples were starting to stand out, too.
I should have told her to keep her jacket on, thought Leal.
“Keep breathing through your nose,” he said. “You’ll get used to it quicker.”
“You’re supposed to get used to this?” she said.
Leroy, the attendant who was leading them to Dr. Sprinklien, turned and grinned, showing his gold capped front tooth.
“We got a bunch of bodies from a fire,” he said. “Them extra crispies don’t smell real bad as a rule.”
Leal chuckled. Morgue humor. He forgot how much he missed it.
The refrigerated room opened into a hallway, and another set of doors. Leroy pushed through them and they were all suddenly
in a large autopsy room with several steel tables butting up against sinks and small desk areas. Numerous dead bodies lay
naked on top of steel carts, lined up in haphazard order. Dr. Sprinklien looked up from over one of them, the body of a huge
black man. The body’s midsection had been sliced open, exposing layers of yellowish, waxy fat between the skin and organs.
The doctor’s half-glasses sat upon his rather longish nose. A blue cap covered his hair and a surgical mask hung around his
throat. He looked to be in his late sixties or early seventies, and his face seemed slack and droopy.
“Ah, guests,” he said as he finished snapping on a new pair of latex gloves. “To what do I owe this distinct pleasure, Officers?”
Leal introduced himself and Hart and said they were working on the Miriam Walker case. He noticed that Sprin-klien took an
unusually long time eyeing Hart. Maybe the doc’s got the hots for her, he thought.
“We wanted to know if you had a few minutes to go over your file, Doctor?” Leal asked.
“Ah, most certainly,” Sprinklien said. His speech had a distinctly foreign accent, although Leal couldn’t quite place it.
“Just give me a few minutes to complete some notes on this fellow.” His gloved hand patted the distended stomach, causing
it to jiggle lugubriously. Leal noticed that the dead man’s flaccid penis was uncircumcised and looked like a dead anteater.
He glanced over at Hart.
So far she hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t thrown up, either. Maybe she was tougher than he thought.
Leroy pushed though the double doors, carrying a small baby by the feet. He swung the dead child up and dropped it on an adjacent
steel table.
“Got your next one, Doc,” he said.
“Thank you, Leroy,” Sprinklien said. He was bending over the steel counter, writing on a plastic clipboard and talking alternately
into a small pocket-sized tape recorder. After a few minutes he turned to them. Leal noticed that Hart hadn’t taken her eyes
off the baby’s corpse.
“A child abuse case,” Sprinklien said, nodding at the small body. “Those are always difficult. Now, which of my cases did
you say you were interested in?”
“The Miriam Walker case,” Leal said. “Lady judge, found in the water stuffed in a trunk in early July.”
“You have the file, I take it?”
“Yes, sir,” Leal said, handing it to him.
Sprinklien adjusted the glasses on his nose and opened the manila folder. As he read he motioned to Leroy to set up the baby
for an autopsy. Leroy, who was also in green scrubs, adjusted a mask over his face and moved the cart with the child over
toward one of the sinks. Hart seemed to recoil visibly.
“Oh, yes, I do remember this one,” Sprinklien said. “She was quite a mess. We estimated that she’d been in the water a few
months.”
“She disappeared in April,” Leal said. “You listed the cause of death as a broken neck?”
“Yes,” Sprinklien said, his voice trailing along absently.
“Compression fracture of the third cervical vertebra…collapsed trachea…no water in the lungs…postmortem
fractures to both legs…apparently to fit her into the specific container, what did you say it was? A trunk?”
“Right.”
Sprinklien grunted. He was a short man, and moved with a sidle, like some old-time comedian. “No sign of any other bruises,
impossible to tell if she’d been sexually molested, and no semen was found.” He pursed his lips and gave the file back to
Leal. “Now, unless you have some specific questions, we are a little behind today, and I do have plans for dinner tonight.”
Dinner? Leal thought. Great appetizers around here. He shot a quick look at Hart, who was still silent.
“Is there anything specific you could tell me about the way Miriam Walker died, Doctor?” Leal said. “We’re trying to play
catch-up on this one and we’re under a lot of pressure.”
Sprinklien went over to the body of the baby. Leroy had already split the torso open down the front, and was using a saw to
open the skull. The doctor murmured an approval and stepped back over to the black man’s corpse. Then his face wrinkled and
he stepped over to another body, that of an older white female.
“This one’s not as heavy to move,” he said, wrapping his gloved fingers around the skull and lifting the head upward. “A compression
fracture of the C-three, that’s right here.” His fingers touched an area just below the hairline. “I would venture to say
that the damage most probably occurred as a result of the head being forced forward at the same time as the front of the neck
was being compressed. That would account for the trauma to the trachea.”
“Sort of like a sleeper hold in wrestling?” Leal asked.
Sprinklien waddled over to the table with the baby on it. Leroy had the top of the skull off now and had started a gentle
flow of water over the steel surface to wash away residual fluids and tissues.
“Hulk Hogan once demonstrated a sleeper hold on a talk-show host,” Sprinklien said. “This was in the old glory days of professional
wrestling, before Goldberg, the Rock, and McMahon. I would say that type of hold may very well have been used to break the
victim’s neck.”
“I didn’t know you were a WWE fan, Doc,” Leroy said.
“Oh, yes,” Sprinklien said. “Never miss it, if I can help it. Great athletes, especially the women.” He grabbed the mask and
began to pull it up over his face, but stopped. “Officer, I would very much like to continue our conversation, but I doubt
that I could add anything more than what is already in the file. Unless you have specifics you wish me to speculate on?”
“Just one, Doctor,” Leal said. “How difficult is it to break someone’s neck like that?”
Sprinklien canted his head slightly and frowned. The tip of his tongue rolled over his lips, and he said, “I suspect it would
take a fairly powerful individual. A masculine assailant, most likely.” He paused and smiled at Hart. “Unless, of course it
was a female with remarkable physique, like your partner’s here. Young lady, have you ever thought of donating your body to
science?”
Leal cracked a smile, and glanced at Hart in time to see her blush. She compressed her lips, but said nothing.
Sprinklien laughed as he pulled his mask up all the way. Leroy stepped away from the baby on the cart, the front of his scrubs
wet with water and blood.
“Don’t mind us, ma’am,” he said. “We got our own way of dealing with things here.”
Hart looked away.
Welcome to the morgue, Leal thought as he thanked the doctor and began heading for the door.
The putrid smell seemed to linger on them even after they got outside into the sunshine. Leal unlocked his door, reached in
and hit the unlocking button, and slipped off his sports jacket. Hart leaned over and spit, then got in the car.
Well, at least she held it together, he thought.
“You okay?” he asked. “I know this place is the pits. Sort of the ultimate in dehumanization.”
Hart exhaled slowly before she answered him.
“I hope I never get that callous,” she said, buckling her seat belt. “Slinging a baby around like so much meat. It was awful.
Especially after all it suffered through in life.
Why didn’t the doctor tell him to stop?”
“I guess they don’t see them as humans anymore. No respect for the dead.” He tried a lame smile, but Hart just kept staring
straight ahead. “A lot of it has to do with defense mechanisms. Keeping your sanity through black humor. But, believe me,
if you start feeling sorry for all the victims you come across, all the tragic things you see on this job, you end up going
nuts.”