“You understand, Mr. McCaskey, that there was no evidence of lacerations or contusions other than what I would characterize as the natural result of an exuberant sexual encounter. We also did a very thorough toxicological examination. I’m not sure what’s left.”
“You checked for every chemical that could produce results consistent with natural organic failure?” McCaskey asked.
“Everything from formaldehyde to pancuronium bromide,” Dr. Hennepin said. “We found nothing.”
“Some of those chemicals dissipate very quickly.”
“That’s true, Mr. McCaskey. But they would have to be of very low dosage and injected relatively near to the heart in order to be potent,” the doctor said. “I did the pathology for that area of the body, looking for evidence of hypodermic trauma. There was none.”
“In the armpit?” McCaskey asked.
“Yes. I also checked the femoral artery, since that would be a rapid delivery system for chemicals.”
“Well, I’ll have a look at the body anyway,” McCaskey said. “You never know what will turn up.”
“Frankly, I’ll be interested to see a nonmedical approach to a cadaver,” the doctor admitted. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”
“I’ve sent a few people to the morgue but never had a look at them after they’ve made the trip.”
They reached the basement, and she turned on the light. The morgue was smaller than McCaskey had imagined, about the size of a bedroom. There were six stainless steel coolers on one wall in two rows of three. Cases filled with chemicals and equipment stood against the adjoining walls, and a lab table with a deep sink and a computer sat along the fourth wall beside the stairwell. Three autopsy tables filled the center of the room, each beneath a low-hanging fluorescent light.
“Do you want him out of the cooler?” the woman asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” McCaskey said. “Do you have a light we can bring over?”
“Yes,” she said.
McCaskey had been around death before. Too much, in fact. But that had been in shoot-outs or entering a drug den when someone had just ODed. However sad, however tragic, there was drama in the exit. It was the last act of a life. The exchange with Dr. Hennepin had been casual, as if they were deciding what to do with refrigerated leftovers. In fact, they were. There were no pyrotechnic or emotional fireworks, no memorable or even unmemorable gestures. Just the muted echo of their footsteps and low voices, and their curiosity, which hung in the air like buzzards.
The doctor pulled the heavy handle on cooler number four. Billionaire Wilson was not even in number one. Leftovers and one notch below the bronze. The morgue was one hell of an equalizer.
There was a rush of cool air and a smell like raw lamb meat. The body had not yet been embalmed. Dr. Hennepin slid the slab from the cooler. Then she got a workman’s light from one of the cabinets and hung it from the handle of the cooler above. It was not an elegant setup, but it did the job. She also brought over a box of latex gloves. They each donned a pair. Starting at the head, she rolled back the white sheet that covered the body. There was a large Y-shaped incision in the trunk. The area well outside the cut was purple. It shaded to surrounding flesh that was yellowish white. Instead of being sutured, the area had been covered with adhesive tape. The cut had been made through the white tape. After the autopsy was concluded, the wound was closed with a series of clasps built into the tape.
“That’s enough,” McCaskey said when she reached the waist. Since she had already looked at the femoral artery, he was not interested in any region that far from the heart. The first thing he did was look at the eyes.
“A drug might have been applied by eyedropper,” he said. “You often find broken blood vessels from the pressure of holding open the lids.”
“This is a little far from the heart,” the doctor pointed out.
“Yes, but a megadose of coenzyme Q10 could have been given that way—”
“Causing an infarction that would impact the heart quickly and directly,” the medical examiner said.
“And Q10 would not turn up on a routine toxological scan,” McCaskey added.
“How did you find out about the coenzyme?”
“I investigated a doctor who killed a patient with whom he was having an affair,” McCaskey told her. “When we had enough circumstantial evidence, he confessed and told us how he did it. In this case, though, the eyes look normal.”
They did not feel normal, however. The ocular muscles had begun to tighten, setting the eyes stiffly in their sockets. It was like working on a mannequin.
“May I borrow your microlight?” McCaskey asked.
“Yes,” she said, taking the tiny, powerful flashlight from her vest pocket. She handed it to him.
McCaskey angled the head back slightly and shone the light up the nose. The veins of the nasal passage were another area where a killer might have made an injection. The skin did not appear to have been broken.
“Do you need any of the cartilage retracted?” the doctor asked.
“No. There would be a small clot if he had been injected here.”
“And you know that because—?”
“Junkies,” McCaskey said. “There are a number of places they inject themselves so the track marks don’t show.”
“Interesting. I had heard of them using the areas between the fingers and toes,” the doctor said.
“Yes, but law enforcement can see those. That would give us reasonable cause to conduct a search.”
“Fascinating,” the medical examiner said.
McCaskey moved to the mouth. He checked the cheeks. There were no scars, nor any along the gums. Then he checked under the tongue. It was swollen with uncirculated blood. That made the veins underneath it particularly visible. One of them appeared to have a prick mark.
“Look,” McCaskey said.
He pinched the tongue between his index finger and thumb and shone the light into the cavity. Dr. Hennepin looked in.
“I see it,” she said.
The medical examiner retrieved a scalpel and a sterile test tube from the autopsy table. She also grabbed a small tape recorder. Narrating her activities for the official autopsy record, she carefully sliced a piece of skin from the area. When she was finished, she clicked off the recorder.
“I’ll get this to the laboratory at once,” she said. “It will be about two hours before I have the results.”
“Thanks. I’m going to keep looking, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” she said. “Just don’t make any incisions.”
McCaskey said he would not.
The doctor went upstairs to arrange for analysis of the tissue. That left McCaskey alone with the cadaver. The former FBI agent found no other marks on the upper half of the body. He covered Wilson with the sheet and returned him to the cooler. He closed the door.
Wilson was not doing drugs. They would have shown up on the initial lab report. So would injections of insulin or some other medication. Unless the man had nicked himself on a fish bone at the party, this probably meant that someone stuck him under the tongue.
If William Wilson had been murdered, Washington would be turned into a pop-culture Dallas with public and private investigations and endless conspiracy scenarios about who killed the Internet tycoon.
The medical examiner returned. She took McCaskey’s cell phone number as well as his office number and promised to call as soon as she heard something. He thanked her for her help and asked for her complete discretion.
“The autopsy results will be sealed,” she said, “though in my experience that’s as good as saying we have something to hide.”
“In this instance, we may,” McCaskey remarked.