He peered deep into the abdomen and took more pictures. He took out the intestines, clamping the gut and cutting proximally between the first and second segments of the small intestine and distally just before the rectum, and put it aside for later analysis. He reached in with a wide embrace and lifted out a cornucopia of digestive organs — the liver, gall bladder, pancreas, esophagus, stomach and duodenum.
Jude could see all the way to the back of the abdominal wall. He was able to identify the urinary system — the kidneys, ureters and bladder — but barely; just at that moment they were lifted out in a single block.
"Check the sheet," McNichol told Jude. "How old did I say this guy was?"
"Twenty-two to twenty-six years."
The examiner looked momentarily confused — the first time his self-assurance had slipped a notch.
"Too young. I can tell by looking at these organs — that's way too young. How could I have been so wrong?"
Laboriously, McNichol examined each organ closely, like a jeweler holding a gem up to the light. Each was cleaned of blood and fat, weighed, photographed, and cut into sections, or "breadloafed," as he called it. Each was probed and secreted fluid that was sucked up by the ever present syringe and yielded silver-dollar-sized sections that were placed in the plastic bucket, or "the coffin." From here, McNichol said, they would be sliced thin as a hair, mounted on slides, and put under the microscope for histological examination.
Finally came the pièce de resistance — the brain. McNichol cut a perfect line across the top of the scalp from ear to ear, and retracted the skin flap. He used the vibrating saw to cut through the bone, creating both a shrill sound and an acrid smell, then removed the skull cap and placed it to one side with a preoccupied gesture, like a chess player discarding a captured pawn. He was looking, Jude surmised, at the fatal wound.
McNichol picked up a serrated knife and cut through the dura, the tough outer covering of the brain, then reached down hard and sliced the blood vessels at the base. He lifted the brain out, held it high in one hand and said, "Here we are." With a gloved finger, he reached into a hole and flicked out a snub-nosed bullet, which he placed in a small bottle. He put the brain in a large jar of formalin.
More than ever Jude felt the deadline rushing at him, and again he looked at his watch. McNichol seemed to be cleaning up, replacing the skull cap and chest plate, and wiping the body with blue cloth.
"I don't mean to rush you," said Jude. "But what was that thing you said would be worth waiting for?"
"I haven't forgotten," replied McNichol.
He stood at the top of the gurney, behind the head of the body that was now cut and lined and red with blood. He leaned over and pried open the mouth, which was now drained, and directed Gloria and Jude to look inside. They did and were flummoxed.
"I don't get it," she said. "I don't see anything."
"Precisely," retorted McNichol, puffing up with pride. "You don't see anything. Not a single cavity. Every tooth strong and perfect. On a grown man. When was the last time you saw a mouth like that?"
Jude and Gloria looked at each other.
"Of course," continued the M.E., "it just compounds the problem."
"The problem?"
"Of identification. It looks like he's never been to a dentist. No prints and now no dental records. That makes him practically untraceable."
Jude asked for an office with a telephone line and found one on the second floor with a desk looking out onto the back parking lot. A secretary brought him a cup of coffee, which he drank heartily.
He plugged in the computer and typed in the slug for his story—slay—the time-honored slug for the day's most sensational killing. In a half hour he was done. He wrote seven hundred words, going heavy on the forensic material — the burned fingertips, the perfect teeth — details that made it clear he had personally witnessed the autopsy. He also took care to portray McNichol as something of a hero, recalling as he did so the advice of a long-departed editor who used to tell him: "It pays to be generous to people who can return the favor." He attached his modem to the phone line, dialed up the special number, heard the whining hiccup of a connection, and sent the story to 666 Fifth Avenue.
On the drive back to the city in the evening, Jude thought about Gloria. After he had filed, he had driven her back to her paper.
"You want to go out later, when I'm through?" she'd asked, a touch less than matter-of-factly. "I know a good health food restaurant, if you're up for that kind of thing."
He wasn't. He suspected the offer entailed more than dinner, and somehow when he thought of the long drive back and the gory scene in the autopsy room and even, for some reason, Betsy and the hurtful names she had hurled at him months ago — mixing it all up into one complicated, exhausting package — he felt drained of desire.
He'd held out his hand to shake good-bye.
She'd held hers out and smirked.
"In a hurry, huh? Big-time reporters like you come up here for one day. Then we help you, and the amazing thing is, you still manage to get something wrong."
That had hurt.
Still, he thought, the story he'd filed was not a bad one. And he hadn't gotten anything wrong, he was sure of that.
He flipped on the radio, caught the headlines on 1010, and was pleased to note that there was not much competing news. He began conjuring up front-page headlines for his story, a favorite pastime: "Mutilating Mangler on the Loose" or "Body Tells No Tales" or "Faceless Horror Upstate." He lowered both windows to let the wind whip through the car, found a rock station and turned the volume up.
That didn't feel bad. Not bad at all.
The next morning, however, when Jude went out in his shorts and T-shirt to fetch the paper from a newsstand, he had a shock. Not only was the story not on page one, he couldn't even find the damned thing! He rested the paper on a mailbox, started on page two and began flipping the pages — his anger growing with each flip. Finally, he spotted it — way back on page 42, crammed in with the bra ads. And it had been reduced to four paragraphs. Barely enough for a byline.
Jesus Christ!
All that work. Driving all the way up there, talking his way into the autopsy, beating out the Daily News.
All that — and they cut it to shreds and bury it.
He raced back upstairs, changed and went to the office. Spotting Leventhal across the newsroom, he bellowed out his name.
Leventhal motioned him into his fishbowl of an office, equipped with a full-size picture window so that he could see out into the newsroom. The trouble was, the newsroom could see in. Jude didn't care. He had righteousness on his side.
"I don't get it," he yelled. "That was a great story. Why the hell did you short it?"
Leventhal looked at him blankly, pretending confusion. Finally, comprehension dawned.
"Oh. You mean the New Paltz thing. That's what's got you raving like a maniac?"
"Damn right. That should have been front page."
"Front page!"
Leventhal searched around for a prop, and found it: today's paper, which he threw dramatically down on his desk.
"Now, that's front page."
Jude read the headline: DOUBLE TROUBLE. A subhead explained: Identical Twins Held in Murder Rap. Which One Did It?
He read the first paragraph. The story was about twin lawyers, one of whom was suspected of strangling a blonde woman on the Upper East Side. The other one was going to represent him as soon as their identities were untangled.
Jude hated to admit it, but Leventhal had a point.