Gridiron

'Usual autopsy signs of asphyxia,' remarked Bragg, 'but there are no marks of any kind on the neck,' she observed, turning Yojo's head one way and then the other. 'Hard to see how he was strangled.'

'What about a plastic bag over the head?' suggested Curtis.

'Don't rush me, Frank,' she scolded and picked up her scalpel. Autopsy procedure had changed very little in the twenty years Frank Curtis had worked in homicide. Having examined the exterior of the body for any abnormality or trauma the main incisions remained the same. A Y-shaped incision, with each arm of the Y extending from the armpit beneath the breast to the botton of the sternum in the midline; and from this point of juncture to the lower abdomen and the genital area. Janet Bragg worked quickly, ligating the great vessels to the head, neck and arms and humming a little tune to herself as she prepared to remove the organs for later dissection.

The hum became the words of a song by Madonna.

'Holida-ay! It would be all right! Holida-ay!'

'I like a woman who's happy in her work,' said Curtis.

'You get used to anything.'

She collected the chest organs, placed them in a plastic bucket and repeated the procedure with the abdominal organs, for which there was a separate bucket. Groups of organs were always removed together so that any disturbances in their functional relationships might be determined. Then she picked up her electric saw and began to remove the vault of Hideki Yojo's skull.

Curtis looked around for Nathan Coleman and found him seated at a bench and looking through a microscope at a length of his own hair.

'Look, Nat, it's just like eating a boiled egg,' he remarked cruelly. 'Or are you one of these weirdos who insists on bashing the top in and peeling off the pieces of shell?'

Coleman tried to ignore the sound of the saw.

'I never eat eggs,' he said quietly. 'I can't stand the smell of them.'

'What a sensitive soul you are.'

'Holy shit,' breathed Bragg. What she saw when she removed the dome had left her feeling astonished for the first time in years.

'What is it?'

'I never did,' she said, grinning excitedly. 'I never did see such a thing.'

'Don't make us beg for it, Janet.'

'Wait just a moment.' She picked up a curved curette and worked it around the inside of Yojo's head before allowing the contents of his skull to fall into her hands.

'What have you got?'

Nathan Coleman stood up and joined Curtis at the side of the autopsy table.

'I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.'

She laid an object about the size of a tennis ball on to a surgical plate and stood back, shaking her head. The thing was dark, brown and crispy looking, almost as if it had been dipped in hot fat.

'What the fuck is that?' breathed Curtis. 'Some kind of tumour?'

'That's no tumour. What you are looking at, gentlemen, is all that's left of this man's brain.'

'You're shitting me!'

'Take a look inside his skull, Frank. There's nothing else hiding in there.'

'Jesus, Janet,' exclaimed Coleman, 'that thing looks like a goddamned hamburger.'

'A little overdone for my taste,' said Curtis.

Bragg picked up the brain and placed it on the scales. It weighed less than five ounces.

'So what happened to it?' said Curtis.

'I've only ever read about this,' Bragg admitted, 'but I'd say it's more than likely he suffered a massive epileptic fit. There is an extremely rare condition known as status epilepticus. Most epileptic fits last a few minutes, but occasionally they're prolonged more than, say, thirty minutes, or several occur so rapidly that there is no recovery between successive attacks. The brain overworks itself to the extent that it fries itself in the skull.'

'An epileptic fit did this? But what about the ejaculate?'

'A strong electrical excitation of the brain will cause it to experience a quite bewildering series of sensations and emotions, Frank. Erection and orgasm could follow as a corollary of the hypothalamus and nearby septal areas of the brain becoming excited.' Bragg nodded. 'That's what must have happend. Only I never saw one myself, until now.'

Curtis took out his ballpoint pen and poked the cooked brain as if it had been a dead beatle.

' Status epilepticus,' he said thoughtfully. 'How about that? But what might have caused a fit on this sort of scale? Aren't you curious? You said yourself it's kind of unusual.'

She shrugged.

'It could have been anything. Intercranial tumour, neoplasm, abscess, thrombosis of the superficial veins. He was a computer worker, right?

Well, maybe it was brought on by staring at the monitor screen. That would have done it. Investigate his background. Could be he had some kind of medical condition that he kept quiet about. With the brain in the condition it's in now, I've done all I can. You might as well section shoe leather for all that piece of shit is going to tell us.'

-###-

'Natural causes,' said Mitch. 'They just heard from the coroner's office. An epileptic fit. A fairly massive one as it happened. Hideki had a predisposition to epilepsy. He was photosensitive and his seizure was triggered by his computer screen. It seems he actually knew that he should never have gone near a television monitor.' Mitch shrugged. 'But then, what else could you do if computers were your life?'

He had met Ray Richardson on the stairs at the office. Richardson was carrying a large briefcase and a laptop computer and was on his way to LAX. His Gulfstream was waiting to fly him to Tulane, where he was to present the directors of the local university's law school with his design for their new smart faculty building.

'I can understand that,' said Richardson. 'I guess if some doctor told me I should stay away from new buildings I'd ignore him too.'

Mitch nodded thoughtfully, uncertain if he would have thought quite the same way about it.

'Walk down to the car with me, will you, Mitch?'

'Sure.'

Mitch assumed that Richardson's troubled expression related to the tragedy of Yojo's death. But he was only partly correct.

'I want you to speak to our lawyers, Mitch. Tell them what happened to Yojo. You'd better call our insurers too. Just in case some sonofabitch on a contingency decides to try and make a case. Until that building is signed off it's our ass they'll come looking for, not the Yu Corporation.'

'Ray, it was natural causes. There's no way we could be held liable for that.'

'No harm in explaining all the circumstances to an attorney,"

Richardson insisted. 'Yojo was working late, wasn't he? Maybe someone will say that someone else should have stopped him. You see what I'm doing? I'm just trying to think like some fucking asshole of a lawyer here, Mitch. The kind of shit they might try and hit us with. The sort of argument that might make us liable. God, I really hate those bastards.'

'I wouldn't tell that to Tulane Law School,' Mitch advised him.

'Shit, it'd be worth it, though.' He laughed. 'So, make the calls will you, please, Mitch?'

Mitch shrugged. He knew better than to try and argue with

Richardson. But Richardson noted his expression and nodded.

'Look, I know you think I'm being paranoid about this, but I know what I'm talking about. Right now I've got two lawsuits against me. My ex-maid is suing me because of the nervous shock she claims she suffered when I fired her ass for bad time-keeping. A fucking dinner guest at my house is suing me because he claims a fishbone got stuck in his frigging throat. And before you know it Allen Grabel will be trying to cut himself a slice.'

'Grabel? You've heard from him?'

'No, no, I'm talking theoretically. But who's to say he won't try and hit me with constructive dismissal? The guy hates my guts. You should have heard what he said when he left. He told me he wanted to see me dead. I had half a mind to report him to the police. The guy wants to hurt me, Mitch. I'm surprised that I haven't heard from an attorney already.'