“We could, but then there’s that thick layer of frozen ice hanging up near the top of the pool. If we pump all the water out from underneath, a ton of ice could come crashing down on your chainsaw and bust it up. You don’t want that, do you?”
“Busted or rusted,” I sighed. “Not sure which is the greater of two evils.”
“I don’t think it’s actually rusting while it’s submerged,” he said. “I think the rust starts to form only after it comes out of the water — takes moisture plus air to oxidize the steel.”
Now that he said it, it made sense. I’d seen a gruesome version of that phenomenon affect decomposing bodies. Soft tissue that decayed in moist environments, such as basements and caves, was transformed into a waxy or soapy substance called adipocere. A few years before, in fact, I’d had a case in the mountains of Cooke County in which a young woman’s body — hidden in a cave for decades — turned into a remarkable adipocere mummy. In the absence of oxygen, though, completely submerged bodies did not turn to adipocere.
“So when we do get the saw out,” Emert continued, “we’ll put it in a trash can filled with water, so it stays submerged till you can take it to a shop and get it taken apart and dried out.”
In one corner of the loading dock I noticed an empty plastic trash can lying on its side. I picked it up and handed it to Emert. “Take good care of my baby,” I said. He laughed as he put it in the trunk.
Emert patted down the clothing thoroughly with evidence tape. The tape’s sticky side would pick up hair and fibers, much like the lint roller I had at home. I’d seen evidence tape used many times, but Emert’s variety had a plastic backing I hadn’t seen before. “This is a fairly new kind,” he said. “The plastic’s water-soluble. Once I’m through, I put it in warm water to dissolve the backing. That leaves the hair and fibers in the water. Pour the water through a coffee filter, and voilà—everything’s together in one nice, neat place.”
Once Emert was satisfied that he’d gone over the clothing thoroughly, he began checking the pockets of the pants. Easing a gloved hand into each of the front pockets, he extracted a set of keys and a few coins. Then he felt the seat of the pants — left, then right — to check the rear pockets. The left hip pocket was empty, but I saw him smile when he felt the right pocket. Un-buttoning the closure carefully, he slipped a hand into the pocket and fished out a worn leather wallet. He laid it on an absorbent pad and unfolded it gently.
His eyes widened. Looking down to see what he’d seen, I made out the familiar markings of a Tennessee driver’s license through a clear plastic window in one side of the wallet. “Wow,” Emert said. “No wonder he looked familiar.”
“Who is it?” Instead of answering, Emert held the wallet up so I could take a close look. LEONARD M. NOVAK, the small print on the license read. “Novak,” I said. “Rings a bell, but only vaguely.”
“Dr. Leonard Novak is a living legend in Oak Ridge,” he said. “Or was, anyhow. He was one of the top scientists back during the Manhattan Project. He played a big part in making the atomic bomb possible. Last picture I saw of him was probably taken twenty years ago. Back when he was a fresh-faced kid of seventy-something.”
“A big fish,” I said, “in that small, frozen pond.”
“Very big,” he said.
“But nobody’d reported him missing?”
“No,” he said. “The only missing-person report we’ve had in the last six months is a runaway teenager.”
“Be hard to mistake this guy for a teenager. Was he married?”
“I don’t know,” Emert said. We both glanced at the dead man’s left hand, which had no wedding ring. “Maybe not. Maybe a widower. Must not have had anybody checking on him regularly.” With a gloved finger, he poked the corpse gently, in the thigh and in the abdomen. “You sure our bird’s thawed out enough to autopsy?”
“If he were a Butterball turkey,” I said, “I’d be preheating the oven right now.”
He gathered up the evidence bags containing the coins, the keys, the wallet, and the evidence tape, and ran them out to his car at the loading dock.
CHAPTER 4
Shall we begin?” It was a rhetorical question — even as he said the words, Dr. Garcia was already pressing the scalpel to Leonard Novak’s scalp — but it served to focus everyone’s attention on the tip of the blade. Garcia was suited up in a blue surgical gown with a mask, a plastic face shield, and two pairs of purple gloves. So was Miranda, who was serving as his assistant, or Diener: a German word that literally translates as “servant” or “slave”—not the sort of job description that would normally sit well with Miranda, who sometimes chafed beneath her title of “graduate assistant.” I was wearing scrubs, as was Emert, although as far back as the detective was hovering, he would probably have been safe in a white linen suit. “Call me if there’s something I need to see,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ll be over here hanging on to my lunch.”
Normally Garcia would have begun the autopsy by making a Y-shaped incision to open the chest cavity and abdomen. But Novak had a gash on the left side of his scalp, high on the left side of the forehead. The wound didn’t look serious — an oval contusion a couple of inches long by an inch wide, and more like an abrasion than a cut — but it was the only visible trauma to the corpse, so it was a place to start. The old man’s body, naked and thin and ashen, looked sadder and more vulnerable, somehow, than most bodies I saw.
With one swift sweep of the blade Garcia laid open the scalp, cutting from behind the left ear, up over the crown of the head, and down to the back of the right ear. Laying aside the scalpel, Garcia worked his fingers under the front flap of scalp, then gave a strong tug. With a wet, ripping sound, the scalp peeled free of the crown and forehead, and Garcia folded the flap down over the face. Behind me, I heard Emert gasp and whisper, “Christ.” I could scarcely imagine his reaction to some of the sights and smells he would encounter later in the autopsy. Garcia peeled the other half of the scalp backward, folding it down to the nape of the neck into a sort of gruesome collar, so that the entire top of the skull was now exposed.
Garcia studied the bone in the region beneath the contusion, then stepped back and motioned to Miranda and me, inviting us to look. The bone — the frontal bone, near where it joined the parietal — showed no sign of damage, not even a hint of compression. “Well, I don’t think he died of blunt-force trauma,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Garcia. “Maybe just scraped his head when he fell. There’s no scabbing, so it’s perimortem — around the time of death. Hard to tell, though, since he was in the water, whether it’s antemortem or post.”
“How could you tell?” asked Emert. “I mean, if he hadn’t been in the water?” He leaned closer, but only a few inches closer.
“If he were still alive, the wound would have bled,” said Garcia. “But not if his heart had already quit pumping when he fell.”
“Or got dumped,” said Miranda.
“Or dumped,” echoed Emert. “But if there’s water in the lungs, that’ll mean he drowned in the pool?”
“Or somewhere,” Miranda pointed out.
“Not necessarily,” said Garcia. “Water can seep into the lungs after death. Or be absorbed from the lungs after drowning. Don’t believe everything you see on television.”
Emert sighed, though I couldn’t tell whether it was because people kept complicating the scenarios or because he was having trouble with the sight of the scalped skull. His gaze, I noticed, kept straying toward the peeled bone, then flinching away.
Next Garcia took a Stryker autopsy saw from the shelf along the wall. The saw’s motor was about twice the size of a hand blender — a kitchen gadget whose name had always struck me as a marketing department’s worst nightmare. When he switched on the motor, a fan-shaped blade on the end of a shaft began to oscillate back and forth, its strokes so rapid and tiny as to be almost invisible. I never ceased to marvel at the ingenuity of the Stryker saw: if Garcia accidentally grazed his hand with the blade, his skin would simply vibrate in time with the blade: it might tickle, but it wouldn’t cut. If he pressed down hard, though — on his own finger, or on one of the corpse’s — the blade would chew through flesh and bone in seconds.