Play Dead

Chapter 19

Gary Turello's grave was labeled with a cheap metal marker. The kind with nothing more than a piece of paper slipped behind thin plastic. The family had given consent to exhume the body under the condition that they wouldn't be responsible for any fees incurred, including the cost of reburial. Elise was relieved that they'd had no desire to witness the event.

"He was seventeen," she told Gould, who stood beside her in shirtsleeves and loose tie.

"A kid," he agreed.

She'd done a little investigating and had found that Turello had been a runaway. And like many runaways who were broke and scared and homeless, he'd turned to prostitution. It had probably seemed an easy way out.

The exhumation was taking place in midafternoon of an overcast, shadowless day, hot and humid, with a heat index above ninety degrees, the air so heavy and wet it had wilted the fabric of Elise's suit. The smell of magnolia blossoms hung in the air. Bees buzzed among the tombs decorated with dying flowers while digital cameras silently recorded the event.

Laurel Grove Cemetery had been laid out in wide carriage lanes. Back in the days when early death was a part of life, relatives desired the comfort of constant communion, so the mausoleums had porches where people could sit and visit.

Savannah PD had tried to keep the exhumation from becoming media fodder, but as with all things tantalizing, people whispered secrets that could not be kept, and pretty soon news teams and press reporters were there from as far away as Atlanta.

Earlier that day, Cassandra Vince, the state medical examiner from the GBI in Decatur, had arrived. Casper had picked her up at the airport, and now the MEs stood side by side. Abe Chilton, crime scene specialist, was also there with a team.

The backhoe was loud and threatening as the bucket maneuvered into position above the grave. As everybody stepped back, Elise heard the whine of hydraulic cylinders. The bucket shifted, shuddered to a stop, then moved again in a jerky, awkward ballet until the teeth made contact with the ground and began to peel away the sod.

Georgia earth had a distinctive smell. Highly loamy and peaty, with hints of woodiness and stagnant water.

When she was little, Elise had picked up a library book called Tales of the Grave. Inside was a drawing of a cadaver clawing its way from the coffin to the surface of the ground. Not a comforting bedtime story.

"Stop!" The man in charge waved his arms, signaling to the backhoe operator.

Leaving the coffin's gray protective outer case in the ground, they broke the seal. Sticky, gummy residue trailed off the lid as it was lifted away. It took another piece of large equipment to hoist the coffin from the case.

Elise had helped Thomas pick out a casket for his grandfather. The mortician had talked about the different models as if they were cars. Elise and Thomas had looked at each other and burst out laughing. Completely inappropriate, but hysterical humor came at just such highly emotional moments. Thomas still talked about it. "Remember when we laughed our asses off at the coffin salesman?" he would sometimes say.

Abe Chilton broke away from the crowd and approached the casket, taping down evidence seals where the double lid met the body of the box. Two of his assistants documented the entire process-from the first bit of ground broken by the backhoe to the final seal-with a video camera and 35-mm film.

The casket was loaded onto a flatbed truck and secured with chains.

"Show's over," Gould said, hands in the pockets of his dress pants.

They were met by a wall of news junkies, cameras running, shutters clicking. A reporter from the Savannah Morning News jumped in front of them, took their photo, then asked for their names.

Elise didn't dislike the media the way some police did. She felt they could have a healthy, symbiotic relationship. She paused and told the reporters who they were. But when the questions turned to the body and exhumation, she put up her hands. "There'll be a press conference at police headquarters. The time will be announced later today."

In her faded yellow SAAB, Elise drove carefully, getting Gould and herself through the crowd while the air conditioner blasted away and Spanish moss dragged across the windshield.

She took 516 to the Southwest Bypass in order to avoid the lights and traffic on Abercorn. The route probably didn't save them any time, but it was less stressful and didn't require idling in congested traffic. Fifteen minutes later, she swung into the small parking lot located directly in front of the new one-story building. She and Gould headed inside the morgue.

Elise had attended two autopsies of exhumed bodies. One had been a child who'd died unexpectedly, the other a case where a woman's third husband was found to have ingested rat poison. That led to the exhumation of her previous mates and the discovery of poison in both husbands' tissue samples.

The suite was packed.

Abe Chilton was there, along with his team. Conducting the autopsy was the state medical examiner, Dr. Cassandra Vince, along with John Casper and his crew. Two assistants sat on ladders with video cameras running so they could record from a good angle when the coffin lid was cracked open. There were even a few student interns, hoping to learn something or just looking for entertainment.

Everybody wore disposable yellow gowns.

"You never know what you're going to find when you open one of these," John Casper told the crowd. "Sometimes the body will be as fresh as the day it was put in the ground. Other times-it's mummified. All depends on the mortuary and how much embalming fluid they used."

He took a deep breath. "Here we go. Meet Mr. Turello."

Casper sliced through the chain of evidence tape, then swung open the divided lid, one section at a time.

Cameras clicked and flashes went off.

He was in fairly decent shape, Elise decided. There were a few areas on the face where the skin had fallen in and the color had darkened.

Gary Turello was dressed in shiny black leather pants and a black Ramones T-shirt. On his wrists were studded leather bands, on his tattooed fingers a multitude of rings. Beside him in the coffin were a pack of filterless cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, plus a red CD player, along with several CD jewel cases. His hair had been so heavily gelled-or glued-that it was still sticking up around a somewhat shrunk face.

Abe Chilton and his crime team moved in to collect and bag what they could.

"It seems a shame to disturb him," Elise said quietly.

A soft murmur of agreement followed her comment.

"Is that what I think it is?" Gould pointed.

Wedged between the body and the satin lining of the casket was a small glass tube. Using a pair of tweezers, one of the crime techs lifted the object out and held it high.

"A one-hit pipe." He checked out the end. "Complete with one hit."

A titter moved through the crowd.

"The funeral must have been open casket," Elise said dryly.

"A little something for the road."

The young technician bagged the glass pipe and marijuana while another person listed the items on a piece of paper.

Next came the CDs.

"We'll dust everything for prints," Chilton said.

"Does anybody else notice anything unusual about the CDs?" Casper asked.

The technician read off the band names as he bagged them. "INXS. Joy Division. Gin Blossoms. Better Than Ezra. Ministry."

"What are you getting at?" Elise asked.

"They're all groups in which a band member committed suicide," Casper told her.

"Whoa. You're right," commented the technician.

Elise glanced at Gould. She could see her own question in his eyes. Had the CDs been left as a joke by a friend? Or had Turello's killer attended the funeral?

There were too many people in the room. It wouldn't be wise to discuss the case in front of them.

We have to talk about this, Elise wanted to tell him.

He lifted his eyebrows. Later.

Casper and the technician were still chattering.

"But hey, didn't they think Michael Hutchence maybe died of autoerotic asphyxiation?" the technician asked.

"I think his case was finally ruled a suicide," Casper told him.

"Are you sure?" The tech tapped a finger to his chin, then pointed to Casper, his head tilted. "Maybe you're thinking of that guy from Max Under the Stars. What was his name?"

"Jerome somebody."

"Yeah. He hung himself too."

"Then there are all the ones who died of drug overdoses. Some of those had to be suicides."

"And think of all the guys who just disappeared."

Casper nodded. "Suicide."

"Creativity spawns instability. Or is it the other way around?"

"Boys, boys, boys," Dr. Vince said with humor in her voice. "Would it be terribly rude of me to suggest we quit discussing rock trivia and get back to the autopsy?"

Casper 's face turned red. "Yeah. Sure. Sorry." He sheepishly scanned the room.

When all possible evidence was collected, attendants jockeyed for position in order to lift the body from the wooden box to the stainless steel exam table.

In a normal autopsy, every item of clothing was tagged and cataloged, but this wasn't a normal autopsy. John Casper and two assistants began removing the clothing. First the laced red tennis shoes.

The room was silent except for the ticking of a large, industrial wall clock and the downdraft fan.

The human body is so frighteningly fragile, Elise thought.

Beginning at the hem, the state ME cut the pants. The scissors were sharp, and it wasn't difficult to get through the leather.

The material fell away.

"No underwear?" Casper said. "What the hell's wrong with that mortuary?"

The T-shirt followed, revealing the Y autopsy stapled incision across the sunken chest.

Elise recognized the body for what it was: a vessel that had harbored the spirit of Gary Turello.

The autopsy couldn't be as extensive as the original, but every one followed a rigid blueprint, which the ME adhered to as closely as possible.

They took a series of X rays, which were sent to a technician. Then Dr. Vince began her external exam.

"As far as physical evidence," she said, "it would be almost impossible to find anything on an embalmed body like this. Certainly nothing that would stand up in court."

Organs that had already been removed and replaced once before were lifted free of the body cavity and weighed, with samples taken. The liver, the organ that would be most important if they were to find any toxins, had shriveled to less than half its original size.

Two hours later, they were done.

"When can we expect results?" Elise asked.

"It depends on a lot of things," Dr. Vince told her. "We'll start by running some of the cheaper, more rapid tests, like the radioimmunoassay and enzyme-mediated immunoassay. If those don't show anything, then we'll have to pull out the big, expensive guns, like mass spectrometry and gas chromatography. That would take quite a bit longer."

"How much longer?"

"A week. Maybe two. Sorry, but we have to adhere to a certain protocol."

Elise and Gould thanked her and left the autopsy suite.

"I know how anxious you are about this," Gould said when they were alone in the adjoining supply room, "but I'm actually impressed with how quickly we got that guy out of the ground and to the morgue."

Elise untied her gown and tossed it in the biohazard container. "If Turello is a victim, then our killer goes back a lot farther than we think. And it will also give us a whole new thread of clues to follow. And what about those CDs? What significance do they have?"

"You're getting ahead of yourself. We have no idea if this guy is connected to the recent crimes."

"But what if he is? What if the CDs were left by the killer?"

"Justification for the killing, maybe. Someone could reason that a prostitute is killing himself. Committing slow suicide. And our killer just helped him along."

"Or it could be a death obsession."

She looked through the glass, to the body still on the table. Two workers from a Savannah funeral home were there, signing paperwork.

"The family is going to have a memorial service," she said. "Then he's to be reburied."

Gould wadded up his gown and tossed it in the bin. "That'sjustsadashell."

"I don't know," Elise said. "Years ago, it wasn't unusual for Gullahs to bury their loved ones twice."

"A second burial? I don't get it."

"The body decomposed so quickly in the heat that they would bury the deceased, then dig him up a year or two later at a more convenient time when all of the family and friends could gather."

"Ah," Gould said with exaggerated satisfaction. "Just another quaint local custom."