I give Alison a smug smile of my own and saunter off to my own car. Thirty seconds later, I leave her behind in a cloud of parking lot dust. Bitch.
Izzy and I start suiting up again as soon as we get to the morgue: gown, gloves, booties, and face shields. The ambulance crew has already unloaded Halverson’s body, switching it from their stretcher to one of ours. Hurley is there already, too, and after donning gloves and a gown himself, he stands against the wall, watching.
As soon as I am suited up, I push the stretcher that holds Halverson’s body onto a giant scale built into the floor. The scale is calibrated and computerized so that it will take the total weight of the stretcher and the body combined, subtract the known weight of the stretcher, and then display the remainder, which is the body weight. After noting the result, which is a rather pathetic 135 pounds, Izzy and I wheel Halverson into an X-ray room where we shoot several films of his head and upper torso through the body bag. We then wheel the stretcher into the main autopsy room, positioning it beside one of the tables. Hurley is waiting for us there, and as I wheel the stretcher past him I can’t resist saying, “Excuse me, Stevie.”
I unzip the body bag and Izzy runs a small vacuum device along the inside of it to collect any trace evidence that might have come along with the body. We then unwrap the sheet and Izzy vacuums it as well, while I use needles and syringes to collect blood, urine, and vitreous samples from the body the way Izzy taught me.
Izzy carefully examines the front of Halverson’s body using a fiber optic light and special goggles that make it easier to detect hairs, threads, and other near-microscopic bits of evidence. Then we turn Halverson up on one side and do the same thing on his back. There is a wallet in his back pants pocket, which Izzy removes and hands to Hurley. Inside the wallet is a driver’s license with the name Mike Halverson on it and a picture that bears a vague resemblance to the man on the table—more evidence but still not conclusive enough for establishing an identification.
We carefully remove Halverson’s blood-soaked clothing, laying the individual pieces out flat so they can dry. Once the body is naked, we position it on a pad of rollers and move it from the stretcher onto the autopsy table. After photographing and swabbing both of the hands, we use ink and a card to record all ten fingerprints.
Using the light again to scan Halverson’s skin, we hose the body off and Izzy makes the usual Y-incision in the man’s torso. I am aware of Hurley standing off to the side, watching us and scowling as he chews at the inside of his cheek. I sense something is bothering him but figure it will be a waste of my time to ask him what it is. Hurley is definitely one of those close-to-the-vest, reticent types, a trait I find frustrating but, oddly enough, wildly attractive.
I soon forget about Hurley as I become engrossed in what Izzy and I are doing. We dissect the neck and chest cavity first, finding nothing of interest other than some minor lung scarring that is most likely the result of past bouts with pneumonia. We are about to start on the abdominal cavity when a woman with red, frizzy hair, pop-bottle-bottom glasses, and a face full of freckles appears in the doorway.
“Hey, Izzy,” she says.
“Hey, Cass. What’s up?”
Cass? I stare at the woman, then look over at Izzy, my eyes questioning. He smiles back at me over the top of his mask.
“Dom called,” the woman says, “He wants to know if you’ll have time for supper before you leave for Chicago tonight, or if he should fix you something to go.”
I gape at the woman in the doorway, unable to believe it is the same one I saw yesterday. Not only does she look completely different, her voice doesn’t sound the same. This woman speaks with a pronounced Southern accent.
“Tell him I’ll be home for dinner,” Izzy says. “Thanks, Cass.”
“You’re welcome.”
As soon as the woman is gone, I say, “No way is that the same woman I saw yesterday.”
“It is.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it.”
Izzy chuckles. “Cass belongs to a local theater group—the same one Dom’s in, in fact. That’s how I met her. As part of her actor’s training, she likes to try on a different persona each day. So she makes up characters, gets into the proper clothing, wig, and makeup, and then adopts whatever personality she thinks the character should have. The only thing that doesn’t change is her name. No matter what character she is, her name is always Cass. Even when she’s a man for a day.”
“She does men, too?”
“Yep, and quite convincingly, I might add.”
Hurley, who is standing off to the side listening to our exchange, says, “It sounds like one of those multiple-personality things to me.”
Izzy shakes his head. “Trust me, Cass is as sane as you and I and maybe saner than Mattie here.” He pauses and looks over at Hurley. “You have heard about the nipple incident, haven’t you?”
“Hey!” I grumble.
“Hey is right,” Izzy echoes. “Look at this.” He has just cut through the fibrous layer of tissue covering the abdominal cavity, thereby exposing the organs. “What do you see, Mattie?”
My eyes are immediately drawn to the liver, which is grossly misshapen, its surface covered with rounded bumps that look like fluid-filled blisters. “Bad liver,” I say. “Cysts?”
“That’s exactly what they are.” Izzy severs the necessary connections and hands me the organ so I can weigh it. While I do, he pushes aside the man’s intestines to expose a kidney. “Aha,” he says with an unmistakable grin, even though it is hidden behind his mask. “More of the same.”
I look at the kidney, and something clicks in my brain. My mind instantly makes the connection but then discards it almost as quickly. Surely it can’t be. But I remember my discussion with Arnie about Karen Owenby and her polycystic kidney disease. Her congenital polycystic kidney disease. What are the odds of these two people having the same rare inherited disease?
And then I remember how Mike Halverson seemed vaguely familiar to me when I first saw him. Now I know why. It isn’t because I’d met him before, it’s because I’d met a relative of his: Karen Owenby.
“We can’t know for sure,” Izzy cautions, sensing my excitement. “Not until we do a DNA test or find some other evidence to link the two.”
Hurley, who doesn’t catch the significance of the liver and kidney at all, looks at us with a puzzled expression. “What are you two talking about?” he asks. “Link who two?”
“Karen Owenby and Mr. Halverson here,” Izzy says. “They both have the same rare congenital disorder. There’s a possibility they may be related.”
“There’s a physical resemblance,” I tell them. “I noticed it when I first met Halverson. He seemed familiar to me yet I couldn’t place him. Now I realize that the reason he seemed familiar was because he looks so much like Karen.”
“Okay,” Hurley says. “So we’re talking possibilities here, right? What kind of possibilities? Likely? Remote? What?”
“Hard to say with any certainty,” Izzy offers. “A rare congenital disorder like this could occur in two random, non-related people who just happen to live in a town the size of Sorenson, but I’d have to say that the odds are overwhelmingly against it. Statistically speaking, you’d stand a better chance of winning the lottery. And while I can’t vouch for the physical resemblance that Mattie noted, I’m inclined to trust her judgment on the matter. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the two are brother and sister, given the closeness in their ages.”