Until Judgment Day (3 page)

M
ACKAY RODE THE ELEVATOR
to the basement of County General Hospital and unconsciously wrinkled her nose as the doors swished open into the hallway of the morgue, anticipating the unmistakable stench of formaldehyde and death.

At the far end of a spotless tile-floored hall, double doors opened to a loading dock where coroner wagons backed up to discharge their lifeless cargo. An adjacent door accessed the cold storage vault where an assistant called a diener cleaned, weighed, measured, photographed, X-rayed, and stored bodies before autopsy. The door on the opposite side of the hall opened into an atmospherically self-contained isolation unit called the VIP Suite. There, bodies harboring contagious diseases or those in advanced stages of decomposition were examined while powerful extraction fans sucked up noxious or offensive gasses, forced them into a high-temperature incinerator, and neutralized them.

Mackay sucked in a deep breath, then hurried down the corridor past several doors that opened into various autopsy suites. Each suite was, she knew, equipped with an autopsy station that comprised slanted stainless steel tables, scales, sinks, and sluices enclosed in booths so the pathologist could dictate notes.

One of the doors stood open. Inside, lying on its back on the table, she saw a sheet-draped body that she assumed had once been Reverend John Thompson. She diverted her eyes and knocked on Nelson's office door.

“C'mon in, Kate.”

Not much bigger than a walk-in closet, the room contained a desk, a bookcase full of dog-eared medical references, and wall shelves stuffed with diplomas, awards, newspaper clippings, and forensic journals. One shelf held specimen jars filled with human brains and tissue samples preserved in formaldehyde.

Nelson sat at his desk wearing freshly laundered surgical scrubs.

“You X-ray the body yet?” Mackay asked.

“Yep, the diener just finished.”

“And?”

“Bullet's lodged in the brain, probably a small caliber. The slug from a larger weapon would've exited and taken the back of the head with it unless it was loaded with wadcutters or dum-dums.”

“Loaded with what?”

“Wadcutters are flat-nosed target ammo with low muzzle velocity. Dum-dums are soft bullets designed to flatten and fragment on impact, causing extreme internal damage. We'll know for sure after I open the head.”

Nelson glanced at his watch, a stainless Oyster Perpetual Rolex that, along with a new BMW, were the only luxuries he indulged. “Where's Dave?”

“Checking in with his detectives. He'll be here soon.”

“We'll wait.”

She smiled. “I'm sure he'll appreciate that.”

Several years before, Granz was almost killed by a serial killer the press had dubbed the Gingerbread Man. That experience triggered a fresh appreciation for the tenuousness of life that, for him, a trip to the morgue invariably threatened.

“How's he feeling?” Nelson asked.

“He swears he's fine.”

“Maybe, but he's got to have an MRI, Kate. Is he having headaches?”

“He says he's not.”

“Even so, onset of noticeable symptoms from a serious head injury often takes weeks or months. By then it could be too late. I don't mean to scare you unnecessarily, but you need to be damn sure he has that MRI.”

“You know Dave when he makes up his mind.”

“Try, Katie. Try hard. His life could depend on it.”

•   •   •

When Granz arrived, Nelson slid on latex gloves, pushed a black plastic brick-shaped block under the corpse's head to hold it up for examination, switched on two intense white overhead lights and a camera, pulled down a microphone, and started dictating.

“The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished Caucasian male, late fifties to early sixties, seventy-six inches in length, weighing about two hundred forty-five pounds. Rigor mortis is absent. Hair is medium-length gray. Nose and ears are unremarkable.”

He lifted the upper and lower lips. “Teeth normal.”

He rolled the body from side to side to examine the back of the torso, then lifted each arm and leg to check underlying tissues. He looked into the ears, nose, mouth and eyes, then visually inspected the other body openings.

“Chest is symmetrical, abdomen flat,” he dictated in a soft monotone. “External genitalia normal, upper and lower extremities show no deformities. Hands and nails clean and evidence no injury. No visible scars or tattoos.”

Then, Nelson directed his attention to the head. “A single contact gunshot wound displaying black soot outside the skin, lacerated skin that has been seared by the weapon's discharge gasses, and lack of powder stippling. Entry wound is in the center of the forehead, five centimeters below the hairline.

“Projectile perforated the medial anterior cortex on a front-to-back”—he consulted the X ray hanging on the lighted film reader—“slightly downward track. The opening measures approximately six-point-five millimeters. There is no exit wound.

“Pull up your face masks,” Nelson instructed. “There'll be some aerosolization—airborne particulate material is unavoidable with a cranial saw.”

Granz and Mackay, both wearing surgical scrubs, placed their masks over their faces.

Nelson combed the corpse's gray hair forward, then covered his own nose and mouth and switched on the Stryker saw, a special vibrating instrument that cuts bone but not soft tissue.

It bogged down slightly as the blade bit into the occipital bone, and threw off a faint mist of powdered bone and smoke as the saw cut toward the front, around the periphery of the skull below the hairline.

“Now for the fun part.” He set aside the saw. “Gotta be careful when I lift this off so the dura—the cover of the brain—stays with the calavarium.”

He tugged gently. As the top lifted free the skull grated together, like two halves of a split coconut being twisted, and made a slight sucking sound. He set the skull aside, then severed the spinal cord attachment and tentorium, lifted the brain out, and set it on the table.

“I'll put it in a jar of formalin for a couple of weeks to firm up the tissue before dissection,” he explained, “but first I'll remove the bullet.”

With long-nosed, soft-plastic forceps Nelson carefully probed the wound, pulled out the bullet, and dropped it in a clear plastic evidence bag, which he handed to Granz, who sealed and initialed it.

“The slug's not badly deformed. DOJ shouldn't have any trouble IDing the weapon that fired it.”

He rolled the body onto its right side and slid another body-block under the back, forcing the chest to protrude and the arms and neck to fall back. Then he pulled a black-handled Buck knife from a leather case, sharpened it on a sheet of extrafine sandpaper, and drew the razor-sharp blade down an eight-by-ten sheet of paper. The paper sliced cleanly into two pieces, which he tossed in a trash basket.

“Better than a scalpel.”

He sliced V-shaped incisions from each shoulder to the abdomen, and a horizontal cut from hipbone to hipbone, then pulled the chest flap over the face, and peeled the skin off the rib cage. With a small battery-powered Stryker saw, he removed the rib cage to expose the inner organs.

He nudged the innards with his hand, but before lifting out the lungs and organ block, he glanced at Granz. “I see nothing unusual. Cause of death was the bullet to the brain. Why don't you two take off.”

“Gladly.” Granz removed his scrubs and helped Mackay with hers. “Wanta stop at Starbucks for coffee on the way home, Babe?”

“Sure,” she told him. “I could use it.”

“Me too.” Granz turned to Nelson. “Give us an hour, then if you find anything unexpected, call me at home.”

“Will do.” Nelson started to lift the organ block out of the body, but stopped.

“Kate?” Morgan called at their backs.

She turned. “Yeah?”

“Remember what I told you.”

“
W
HAT
'
D
D
OCTOR
D
EATH
mean by ‘Remember what I told you'?”

A newspaper had once run an article that hung the nickname on Morgan Nelson, and it had stuck, at least with the cops.

Granz bit a corner off his lemon tart, set it back on the saucer, and washed it down with a cautious sip of steaming espresso.

“Please don't call him that,” Mackay said.

“Sorry. What'd he mean?”

They sat at a window table in the mall Starbucks, watching last-minute shoppers hustling back to their cars loaded down with bags of food and Christmas presents.

“He reminded me to be sure you keep your promise,” Mackay said.

“I always keep my promises.” He took another sip of coffee. “What promise?”

“That you'd go in for an MRI.”

“I said I'd think about it after the holidays if I didn't feel a hundred percent. I feel two hundred percent.”

“Have you been having headaches lately?” she asked.

“No worse than usual.”

“I didn't know you usually had them.”

“Don't twist my words, Babe. Everyone has headaches.”

Mackay rolled her eyes. “Not everyone got knocked unconscious and landed in the hospital less than a month ago.”

“They're nothing,” he assured her.

“How often are you having headaches?”

“Not too often.”

“That's helpful. How bad are they?”

“Not too bad.”

“Don't be evasive.”

He grinned. “Sorry.”

“So—how bad are they?”

“I'll bet at law school you got an A-plus in ruthless cross-examination, but I already have a mother.”

“I'm not trying to be your mother.” She set her coffee down and picked up one of his hands. “I'm your wife. I love you and I worry about you.”

“I love you, too, but there's no need to worry.”

“Promise?”

He held up his right hand. “Scout's honor.”

“Don't be insincere. How bad are they?” she persisted.

“I told you, if I don't feel better after the holidays I'll think about an MRI
.”

“You'd better, because I'm going to bring it up again on January second.”

“Figures,” Granz conceded with a lopsided grin. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Like what?”

“Reverend Thompson's murder.”

“Sure.”

Granz finished his espresso. “What do you think?”

“I think Emma and I would be devastated if anything happened to you.”

He kissed the back of her hand. “I meant what do you think about the murder.”

“I know what you meant.” She slipped her hand from his and thought for a moment. “His desk drawers weren't dumped, the room hadn't been ransacked, and the raffle proceeds were inside the community hall. His wallet was in his pants pocket with almost a hundred dollars in it when his body arrived at the morgue. It wasn't a robbery.”

“That's my take on it. What else?”

“I suppose he could've gotten in an argument with someone, it heated up, ended in a shooting. But there were no offensive or defensive injuries on his body.”

Granz contemplated. “That bothers me, too.”

“An execution?”

“I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

“Even as old as he was, Thompson was still a big man, an ex-jock.”

“Ex-jocks can't get executed?”

“Sure, but if it were an execution pure and simple, why would the shooter get close enough to chance having to fight off a man that size?”

“You tell me.”

“He wouldn't. He'd stand out of arm's reach, shoot Thompson, and walk away. No muss, no fuss, no risk.”

“Maybe the murderer was bigger than Thompson, or a martial arts expert, someone confident in his ability to defend himself.”

“Even then, why risk it?”

Granz shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

“I think Thompson either expected his killer or knew him well enough to let him in while remaining seated,” Mackay speculated. “Someone he didn't perceive as a threat until it was too late.”

“And someone who wanted to see the fear in Thompson's eyes up close and personal when he pulled the trigger.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Instinct. I think we'd better rummage around in his past—see what skeletons he's got in his closet.”