“I wasn’t trying to—”
“You wanna weigh all them organs by yourself, type the report, and spend another forty minutes cleanin’ up afterward?”
“I think I can handle—”
“How many hours you wanna be here tonight anyway, Dr. S?”
“It’s not about—”
“No way. Discussion over. I’m stayin’. Or… or you can find yourself another assistant.”
Nat stood across the table, arms crossed, glaring defiantly back at Ben. The two considered each other in silence, neither flinching, for perhaps twenty seconds. Apparently, Ben realized, his assistant was quite serious. He considered his short list of options: send Nat home and risk losing him as an assistant, or allow him to stay, thereby rendering himself at least partially responsible for the possible long-term effects the experience could have on the boy’s psychological well-being.
“How do you know?” Ben asked. He was buying time while he tried to make up his mind.
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know the assailant chucked his wiener, as you like to put it, into the woods?”
“Oh. Cops found it at the scene. Fifty yards away from the body. Police canine actually tracked it down. It’s in a Ziploc bag taped to his right ankle.”
“I… see,” Ben said.
The two men stood there for a while longer, neither speaking, as they surveyed the mutilated body.
“Well, what’s it gonna be?” Nat challenged, impatient for a decision.
“I don’t know,” Ben sighed, tapping his fingers on the table. “I’m trying to decide whether I want to be responsible for further corrupting your already quite tenuous psychological stability.”
“Too late, Dr. S! I hang out in a Coroner’s Office. My psychological stability is already all blown to hell. Now gimme that scalpel. I’m gonna slice-an’-dice this turkey like a Thanksgiving dinner.”
Ben looked at him incredulously, shaking his head. “That’s so inappropriate I don’t even know where to begin.”
“How ‘bout you begin by pluggin’ in that Stryker saw for me, will ya?”
”Riiigghht.”
“Okay. I’ll do it myself.” Nat bent over and plugged the instrument’s umbilical cord into the outlet on the floor. “You want the chest opened, right? The usual?”
Ben said nothing.
“Great.” Nat nodded, as if he’d been given the green light to proceed. “Now step back, boss. I don’t wanna get shrapnel on your pretty white apron there. You jus’ leave this part to me.”
He picked up the bone saw and went to work.
6
It was nearly 2 A.M. by the time Ben pulled the Honda back into his driveway and set the parking brake. The rain had tapered to a thin drizzle, and the town seemed to have finally resigned itself to sleep. The interior lights of most of the houses Ben passed on the way home had been extinguished, and a fitful state of quietude had settled upon the neighborhood like a fine layer of fresh snow. Ben’s own house sat mostly in darkness, except for the exterior motion-sensor light near the front door, which snapped dutifully on as he approached the dwelling. He turned his key in the door lock, hearing the reassuring click of the dead bolt sliding back within its housing. Placing his hand upon the cold brass knob to which the evening’s precipitation still clung, he opened the door and stepped inside.
The front foyer sat mostly in shadows, and he snapped on a small lamp that rested atop a wooden cabinet to his right. The Stevensons’ massive harlequin Great Dane, Alex (“Alexander the Great,” as Joel lovingly referred to him with reverent, exaggerated bows), ever present at the front door to greet new arrivals, nuzzled Ben’s hand for affection, tail whipping ardently back and forth. True to his typical style, Alex stepped heavily and obliviously onto Ben’s left foot as the dog leaned into him, and Ben was forced backward against the front door. At 180 pounds, the domesticated Goliath didn’t find it necessary to wait to be petted—he simply stood next to the closest person and leaned. The affection lavished upon him was merely an act of self-defense.
Ben ruffled the side of the big dog’s head as Alex buried his face in Ben’s leg. Ben placed his keys on the wall rack and took off his coat, listening to the subtle sounds of the house. The kitchen refrigerator hummed softly, warm air blew steadily from the wall vent to his left, and the grandfather clock in the living room down the hall ticked quietly to itself, keeping its own perpetual rhythm. But it was more than these simple, mechanical sounds that he heard. On a deeper level, the house seemed to breathe of its own accord, shifting slightly as it continued to settle, growing more comfortable and more secure upon the foundation on which it rested. Both practically and figuratively, it held within it the very core of the family that lived here, providing warmth, refuge, and an irrefutable sense of home. In doing so, it seemed infinitely stronger than the material from which it had been constructed. No matter what transpired during the course of the day, coming home to this place filled him with gladness, and helped to put the day’s events in better context. Alexander the Great wagged his tail contentedly from side to side in complete agreement.
Ben trod quietly down the hall and across the living room, Alex padding not so softly behind him. He crossed the family room and ascended the stairs. At the top of the staircase he paused for a moment, then turned right and walked down the short hallway leading to the bedrooms of his two sons. He stood outside their rooms in the darkness for the span of about thirty seconds, simply listening, needing to be close to them for a moment. Then he turned and headed back down the hallway in the opposite direction toward the bedroom he shared with Susan. Having successfully escorted his owner to the appropriate sleeping quarters, Alex turned and descended the stairs to his own bed beside the living room’s front-facing bay window. Ben pushed open the bedroom door and entered quietly, trying not to wake his wife.
For Susan, sleep was often restless and difficult to initiate. She’d suffered from some degree of insomnia for as long as Ben had known her, and had experimented with a multitude of unsuccessful remedies throughout those years. Contrary to the experience of many women, however, she’d managed to sleep well during both of her pregnancies. Even during her third trimester, sleep had come easily to Susan, and she was often breathing slowly and softly within ten minutes after turning out the light. Ironically, it was Ben who seemed to have difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep during that time. He would lie in bed and watch the shadows cast from the swaying branches of the oak tree in their front yard play deftly across their vaulted ceiling. He would listen to the steady respirations of his wife lying blissfully in bed next to him, and he would consider the day’s events: the slow but perpetual ascent of gasoline prices that summer; the upcoming gubernatorial election; the positive gram stain of Mr. Flescher’s cerebrospinal fluid last Thursday. The hours of potential sleep would slip away from him like water over a steep ledge, leaving him befuddled and sluggish the following day, a dull heaviness clinging to his head like a massive barnacle. He would blunder through the day in this hebetudinous state until the sun finally descended once more beyond the horizon. Dinner that evening would be absently eaten and barely tasted, and although he tried to be interested in conversations with his wife, he always seemed to fall behind, finding himself at a break in the dialogue and wondering whether she had just asked him a question or whether it was simply his turn to speak. Excusing himself apologetically, he would head off to bed early in search of the nocturnal respite that had eluded him the previous night. Sometimes sleep would come, mercifully falling upon him like a summer storm. When it did, his dreams would be strange and wild, and he would often awaken in the night, sweating lightly and wondering whether he had cried out and, stupidly, whether he and Susan were alone in the room.