"Now, if you wouldn't mind lending a hand—"
McNichol gestured with his head toward the glove dispenser. Jude was surprised — surely asking a bystander to assist in an autopsy was a breach of medical protocol. But Gloria was already at the counter, dusting her hands with talcum powder and rolling the thin gloves up the fingers like an expert, and so Jude joined her, trying to act casual.
They helped McNichol place the bag upon the L-shaped table. He unzipped it and removed white sheets that were inside. Then they helped to shed the corpse of its plastic cocoon and laid it gently to rest upon the cold metal surface. Jude was horrified and thought he might be sick. The body was white-bluish in color. The man's face had been shredded, so that it was a mass of caked blood and bone and reddish muscle. The eyes were missing, as if they had been stabbed or poked out; even the ears were ripped off. Only the dark cavity of the mouth was recognizable. Inside it, the tongue was swollen and seemed to be floating on a sea of reddish fluid.
"My God!" exclaimed Gloria.
McNichol was silent, busying himself with the micro-details of the routine of the external examination. He made frequent notes with a ballpoint pen on the autopsy sheet and kept a running commentary: "Caucasian male, approx. twenty-two to twenty-six years. Weight one hundred seventy-five pounds. Height five-ten." He inspected every inch of the body, turning it this way and that, looking for marks, scars and wounds. Then he measured the circumference of the head and chest, and the length and circumference of the arm and leg.
He took skin samples. He scraped under the fingernails, swabbed the wounds, weighed specimens and put them into tiny bottles. Finally, he stepped back and took a broader view.
"Well," he said contemplatively, "I certainly can't inspect the eyeballs."
For the first time, he seemed to take in the entire corpse, and the grotesque nature of its wounds.
"I've seen this kind of thing once or twice before," he said in a portentous tone. "But this one's a bit different."
"How do you mean?" asked Jude, thankful that his voice sounded normal.
"Well, customarily disfigurement is a sign of rage. The victim is hated by the murderer — passionately hated. So much so that the murderer attacks him and mutilates him and sometimes carries on mutilating him even after he's dead. It's almost as if he's trying to eradicate him, to wipe him off the face of the earth. Then there's another scenario, closely linked to that. In this case, the murderer is suddenly struck by remorse and attacks the dead body — almost as if he is trying to erase his crime, as it were — to blot out all traces of what he has done. Either way, there's passion involved, a lot of emotion. Which usually points to an intimate relationship between victim and perpetrator. And that makes the police's job a lot easier. A husband, a lover, a stalker. The odds are overwhelming that it'll be solved within forty-eight hours, and the perpetrator will be led into the station house in handcuffs, break down and confess to the horrible deed in tears."
He fell quiet.
"And this one?" prompted Jude.
"This was clearly done to thwart identification."
"How do you know?"
"For one thing, it was done methodically."
McNichol touched the skull at the dome of the forehead, where there was only bone. "Incisions were made here and the skin was pulled away like bacon strips. Look how neatly it was done. Painstakingly, patiently. The killer — assuming for the moment that it was the killer who also did this — took his sweet time. And then there are the hands."
McNichol raised the dead man's arms and twisted them roughly so that they fell back palms up. Jude leaned over, losing his squeamishness now that he was engrossed. The tips of the fingers and thumbs were blistery and black.
"Burned off," McNichol continued. "No chance of any prints here, except maybe a partial print of this one." He grasped the ring finger of the left hand and held it up. "Looks like our fellow had a whole bag of tricks. Not to mention the strangest of all."
McNichol waited. He wanted to be asked, and Jude accommodated him.
"And what's that?"
"Take a look at this." McNichol moved to the bottom of the gurney, lifted the corpse's right foot and twisted it slightly, so that the cadaver's swollen genitals were thrust up and the pink inside of his right thigh was clearly visible. In the center was a deep cut, almost perfectly circular, the size of a silver dollar.
"God knows what that's all about. But again, it was done methodically and precisely." The examiner replaced the foot, moved to the thigh and traced the rim of the wound with his forefinger. "He stuck a knife in at an angle and spun it in a circle, like extracting an oyster."
Jude wished he would dispense with the culinary metaphors.
"Maybe there was a birthmark there, or a scar, or some identifying feature," Gloria ventured.
"Maybe. But it's not a visible place. And it's hard to imagine anyone keeping a record of it. So why go to all the trouble of removing it?"
Jude felt the deadline nipping at his heels.
"What's the cause of death?" he asked.
"Ah," said McNichol, as if the bright kid in the class had finally asked the pertinent question. "Shot to the back of the skull. Professionally done. Probably a .32-caliber, but we don't know that yet for sure. His wrists have bruises, I'd say he was tied up and on his knees when the bullet was fired from above. He was killed first and disfigured afterward."
Maybe it was a Mafia killing after all, thought Jude. But then he recalled from the wire copy that the body had been found in the woods, dumped in a thicket. When the Mob wanted to keep a killing secret, the body didn't end up where it could be found, and certainly not on an M.E.'s examining table.
Over in the corner was a clear plastic bag with what looked to be clothes inside. Jude thought he saw a red shirt, all bundled up. McNichol followed his glance.
"His clothes," he explained. "We'll examine them in detail later."
Jude looked at his watch. "Anything else worth seeing?"
"One other thing, but you'll have to wait."
For a half hour McNichol worked on the body with a long-handled scalpel and a #22 Becton Dickerson blade, keeping up a running commentary as if he were describing a motoring vacation through an exotic piece of countryside.
"The primary incision goes from the front of the armpit along the anterior axillary line just under the nipples, to the sternum. That is the xiphoid process. Then we move south with a slight detour around the umbilicus to the top of the pubic symphysis, which is right here."
The M.E. glanced up at Gloria.
"Incidentally, I should add that this procedure is not recommended for an open casket."
He went back to work.
"Now, as you see, we have allowed exposure to both the thoracic and abdominal cavities."
Jude held his breath and looked. It was not so bad. McNichol cut back the skin flaps and abdominal musculature. Then he picked up an oscillating saw and cut the clavicles and ribs along an angle, creating a wedge-shaped piece. He lifted the chest plate off intact, like a headwaiter raising the domed cover of a main course.
Jude looked again. This time the sight was revolting. The heart, which looked like a strapped-down slab of red meat, the pathetically deflated lungs, the thymus gland — all so compact and neatly packaged, swimming in a bouillabaisse of mucus and fluid. He inconspicuously rested one hand on the side of the table to steady himself.
McNichol, meanwhile, was working quickly. He used a syringe to suck up the serous fluid between the thoracic organs and the chest wall and squirted it into a plastic container to save it. He took photographs of the heart and lungs and measured and recorded the ratio of the width of the heart compared to the width of the chest. Then he tied off the carotid arteries, clamped the trachea and esophagus, cut through the diaphragm and the pleural sac, and removed the heart and the lungs together.