"Yeah. Says he'll meet us at the motel, which ain't being real friendly, moaning and groaning it's Christmas Eve and they don't want any more attention because it's already hurt their business. Something like ten cancellations because of people hearing about it on the news. Yeah, like bullshit, is what I say. Most the people who stay in that dump probably don't know shit about what's happened around here or care."
Dr. Terry walks in, his scuffed black doctor's bag in hand, a fresh surgical gown untied in back and billowing as he heads to the counter. He is our youngest and newest odontologist and is almost seven feet tall. Legend has it that he could have had a career with the NBA but wanted to continue his education. The truth, and he'll tell you if you ask, is he was a mediocre guard at Virginia Commonwealth University, that the only good shooting he has ever done is with guns, the only good rebounding is with women and he only went into dentistry because he couldn't get into medical school. Terry desperately wanted to be a forensic pathologist. What he's doing as basically a volunteer is as close as he Will ever get.
"Thank you, thank you," I tell him as he begins arranging his paperwork on a clipboard. "You are a good man to come help us out this morning, Sam."
He grins, then jerks his head at Marino and says in his most exaggerated New Jersey accent, "How'ya doin', Marino?"
"You ever seen the Grinch steal Christmas? 'Cause if you haven't, just hang out with me for a while. I'm in a mood to take back little kids' toys and pat their mamas on the ass on my way up the chimney."
"Don't you be trying to go up no chimneys. You'll get stuck for sure."
"Hell, you could look out the top of a chimney and still have your feet in the fireplace. You still growing?"
"Not as much as you are, man. What you weighing in these days?" Terry thumbs through the dental charts Marino brought in. "Well, this won't take long. He's got a rotated right maxillary second premolar, the distal surface lingual. Annnndddd… lots of restorations. Saying this guy"_he holds up the charts_"and your guy are one and the same."
"How about them Rams beating Louisville?" Marino calls out above the drumming of running water.
"Were you there?"
"Nope, and you wasn't either, Terry, which is why they won."
"Probably true."
I pluck a surgical knife off the cart as the phone rings.
"Sam, you mind getting that?" I ask.
He trots to the corner, snaps up the phone and announces, "Morgue." I cut through the costochondral cartilage junctions, removing a triangle of sternum and parasternal ribs. "Hold on," Terry says to whoever has him on the line. "Dr. Scar-petta? Can you talk to Benton Wesley?"
The room becomes a vacuum that sucks out all light and sound. I freeze, staring, stunned, the steel surgical knife poised in my bloody, gloved right hand.
"What the fuck?" Marino blurts out. He strides over to
Terry and snatches the phone from him. "Who the hell is
this?" he yells into the mouthpiece. "Shit." He tosses the receiver back into the cradle on the wall. Obviously, the person hung up. Terry looks stricken. He has no idea what just hap- pened. He hasn't known me long. There is no reason for him to know about Benton unless someone else told him, and apparently no one has.
"What exactly did the person say to you?" Marino asks Terry.
"I hope I didn't do something wrong."
"No, no." I find my voice. "You didn't," I reassure him.
"Some man," he replies. "All he said is he wanted to speak to you and he said his name was Benton Wesley."
Marino picks up the phone again and swears and fumes because there is no Caller ID. We have never had occasion to need Caller ID in the morgue. He hits several buttons and listens. He writes down a number and dials it. "Yeah. Who's this?" he demands over the line to whoever has picked up. "Where? Okay. You see someone else using this phone just a minute ago? The one you're talking on. Uh huh. Yeah, well, I don't believe you, asshole." He slams down the receiver.
"You think it's the same one who just called?" Terry asks him in confusion. "What'd you do, hit star sixty-nine?"
"A pay phone. At the Texaco on Midlothian Turnpike. Supposedly. I don't know if it's the same person who called. What was his voice like?" Marino pins Terry with a stare.
"He sort of sounded young. I think. I don't know. Who's Benton Wesley?"
"He's dead." I reach for the scalpel, pushing the point down on a cutting board, snapping in a new blade and dropping the old in a bright red biohazard plastic container. "He was a friend, a close friend."
"Some squirrel playing a sick joke. How would anybody know the number down here?" Marino is upset. He is furious. He wants to find the caller and pound him. And he is considering that his malevolent son may be behind this. I can read it in Marino's eyes. He is thinking about Rocky.
"Under state government listings in the phone book." I begin cutting blood vessels, severing the carotids very low at the
apex, moving down to the iliac arteries and veins of the pelvis. "Don't tell me it says morgue in the goddamn phone book." Marino starts up his old routine again. He is blaming me.
"I think it's listed under funeral information." I cut through the thin flat muscle of the diaphragm, loosening the bloc of organs, freeing it from the vertebral column. Lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, and spleen shimmer different hues of red as I lay the bloc on the cutting board and wash off blood with a gentle hosing of cold water. I notice petechial hemorrhages, dark areas of bleeding no bigger than pin pricks scattered over the heart and lungs. I associate this with persons who had difficulty breathing at or about the time of death.
Terry carries his black bag over to my station and sets it on the surgical cart. He gets out a dental mirror and goes inside the dead man's mouth. We work in silence, the weight of what has just occurred pressing down hard. I reach for a bigger knife and cut sections of organs, slicing through the heart. Tue coronary arteries are open and clear, the left ventricle one centimeter wide, the valves normal. Other than a few fatty streaks in the aorta, the heart and vessels are healthy. The only thing wrong with it is the obvious: It quit. For some reason, this man's heart stopped. I find no explanation anywhere I look.
"Like I said, this one's easy," Terry says as he makes notes on a chart. His voice is nervous. He wishes he had never answered the phone.
"He's our guy?" I ask him.
"Sure is."
The carotid arteries lie like rails in the neck. Between them are the tongue and neck muscles, which I flip down and peel away so I can examine them closely on the cutting board. There are no hemorrhages in deep tissue. The tiny, fragile U-shaped hyoid bone is intact. He wasn't strangled. When I reflect back his scalp, I find no contusions or fractures hiding underneath. I plug a Stryker saw into the overhead cord reel and realize I need more than one hand. Terry helps me steady the head as I push the whining, vibrating semicircular blade through the Skull. Hot, bony dust drifts on the air, and the skullcap lifts off with a soft sucking sound, revealing the convoluted horizon of the brain. On gross examination, there is nothing wrong with it. Slices gleam like creamy agate with gray ruffled edges as I rinse them on the cutting board. I will save the brain and heart for further special studies, fixing them in formalin and sending them to the Medical College of Virginia.
My diagnosis this morning is one of exclusion. Having found no obvious, pathological cause of death, I am left with one that is based on whispers. Tiny hemorrhages on heart and lungs and burns and abrasions from bondage suggest Mitch Barbosa died from stress-induced arrhythmia. I also postulate that at some point he was holding his breath or his airway was obstructed_or for some reason his breathing was compromised to the extent that he partially asphyxiated. Perhaps the gag, which would have gotten wet from saliva, is to blame. Whatever the truth, I am getting a picture that is simple and ghastly and calls for demonstration. Terry and Marino are handy.