Damaged

CHAPTER 34

Maggie stared down at the male torso on the stainless-steel table and couldn't help thinking how much it looked like a slab of meat.

"Body was refrigerated, possibly frozen," Dr. Tomich, the medical examiner, said into the wireless microphone clipped to the top of his scrubs. His comments were meant for his recorded notes, not necessarily for his audience. "Cuts are precise. Efficient, but not surgical."

"What does that mean?" the Escambia County sheriff asked from the corner. This morning he paced out his impatience along the wall of the autopsy suite. "I don't want to be in the way," he'd said earlier. But he didn't want to miss anything, either.

Technically the contents of the fishing cooler were under Sheriff Clayton's jurisdiction. When pieces of a body are found, the county with the heart--in this case, the whole torso--usually holds jurisdiction. Maggie had watched law enforcement agencies argue over who got to be in charge. This sheriff had put up a good fight to not be in charge. In his defense, Maggie understood that he was preoccupied with hurricane preparations. Making sure people were safe and ready for the storm certainly held more urgency than a body that had been missing and frozen for who knew how long.

"It means the person who did this knew how to dismember a body. But he or she is not necessarily a doctor or surgeon."

"How can you be so sure?"

Tomich straightened from his hunched-over examination. He reminded Maggie of Spencer Tracy: silver-gray hair, black square glasses framing sparkling blue eyes that could pierce as well as charm. The Eastern European accent--Russian, maybe Polish--threw the image off a bit. When he turned to look at Clayton again, he reminded her more of her high-school history teacher, who also had been able to quiet his students with that piercing glare.

"I'm just saying"--the sheriff would not be deterred--"where do you learn to do this to a body if not medical school?"

"Perhaps practice?" Maggie interrupted and both men furrowed their brows, almost in unison. "Serial killers oftentimes perfect their craft simply by trial and error."

"You're presuming who did this has done it before?" Tomich admonished.

"Can you tell me with any certainty that he has not done it before?"

This time he looked perplexed rather than irritated. "Let me rephrase. You are presuming foul play. As of this moment I don't know the cause of death. And I do not see any evidence of murder."

"Come on, Doc," Clayton said. "How do pieces of a person end up in a fishing cooler in the Gulf if it's not foul play?"

Maggie was interested in the answer but the sheriff interrupted himself.

"What's that smell?" He sniffed the air but still didn't venture any closer to the autopsy table.

"Menthol?"

"Vicks VapoRub," Maggie said with certainty.

"That's weird." The sheriff was still sniffing.

"Not necessarily," Maggie assured him. "Not if you want to cover up the smell of decomposition."

"Still, it indicates no evidence of foul play," the medical examiner insisted.

A man in blue scrubs came through a side door, wheeling a stainless-steel cart. At first Maggie thought he was another doctor or pathologist until he said to Tomich, "Here are the other contents, sir."

"Thank you, Matthew."

"The X-rays are on the shelf below. I'll be next door if you need me."

"Next door? Boiling my bones?"

"Yes, sir."

Tomich looked from Maggie to Clayton, enjoying their wide-eyed reaction.

"Someone found a set of buried bones. I doubt they're human but we shall see. Matthew is my faithful diener. He gets to have all the fun."

"Right. All the fun." The young man smiled as if it was a joke they shared. He certainly didn't seem to mind what sounded like a grunt assignment of boiling bones when, in fact, most dieners Maggie had met in the past were as proficient at dissection as their bosses.

Matthew left and Tomich pulled down his plastic goggles. He picked up the electric bone saw, ready to cut. Maggie watched the sheriff's face lose all color.

"Oh hey, I have to make a few phone calls," he said, pointing a thumb at the door and doing a remarkable job of keeping the panic out of his voice.

Tomich watched him leave, waited for the door to latch shut behind him. He turned back to the task at hand. Without looking at Maggie he shook his head and said, "Politicians. I should ban them from my autopsies." Suddenly he glanced up at her. "You don't mind if I proceed?"

"Not at all. Please do."

He clicked on the saw and in seconds severed the rib cage. He set the saw down. With long gloved fingers inserted in each side he opened the front of the chest, spreading the ribs and exposing the heart and lungs. Almost immediately he noticed something and started poking around inside.

"What is it?" Maggie wanted to know.

"I believe we are in luck. I shall be able to tell you exactly who our victim is." He grabbed a forceps and a scalpel and began cutting.