Chromosome 6

The body was in sad shape although bobbing around in the water had washed it clean. The good news was that it had obviously been in the water for only a short time. The trauma went far beyond the multiple shotgun blasts to the upper abdomen. Not only were the head and the hands hacked off, but there was a series of wide, deep gashes in the torso and thighs that exposed swaths of greasy adipose tissue. The edges of all the wounds were ragged.

“Looks like the fish have been having a banquet,” Jack said.

“Oh, gross!” Vi

The shotgun blasts had bared and damaged many of the internal abdominal organs. Some strands of intestines were visible as was one dangling kidney.

Jack picked up one of the arms and looked at the exposed bones. “A hacksaw would be my guess,” he said.

“What are all these huge cuts?” Vi

“Nah, I’d guess he’d been run over with a boat,” Jack said. “They look like propeller injuries.”

Jack then began a careful examination of the exterior of the corpse. With so much obvious trauma, he knew it was easy to miss more subtle findings. He worked slowly, frequently stopping to photograph lesions. His meticulousness paid off. At the ragged base of the neck just anterior to the collarbone he found a small circular lesion. He found another similar one on the left side below the rib cage.

“What are they?” Vi

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Puncture wounds of some sort.”

“How many times do you suppose they shot him in the abdomen?” Vi

“Hard to say,” Jack said.

“Boy, they weren’t taking any chances,” Vi

A half hour later, when Jack was about to commence the internal part of the autopsy, the door opened and Laurie walked in. She was gowned and held a mask to her face, but she didn’t have on her moon suit. Since she was a stickler for rules and since moon suits were now required in the “pit,” Jack was immediately suspicious.

“At least your case wasn’t in the water for long,” Laurie said, looking down at the corpse. “It’s not decomposed at all.”

“Just a refreshing dip,” Jack quipped.

“What a shotgun wound!” Laurie marveled, gazing at the fearsome wound. Then looking at the multiple gashes, she added, “These look like they were done by a propeller.”

Jack straightened up. “Laurie, what’s on your mind? You didn’t come down here just to help us, did you?”

“No,” Laurie admitted. Her voice wavered behind her mask. “I guess I wanted a little moral support.”

“About what?” Jack questioned.

“Calvin just reamed me out,” Laurie said. “Apparently the night tech, Mike Passano, complained that I had been in last night accusing him of being involved in the theft of Franconi’s body. Can you imagine? Anyway, Calvin was really angry, and you know how I hate confrontation. I ended up crying, which made me furious at myself.”

Jack blew out through pursed lips. He tried to think of something to say other than “I told you so,” but nothing came to mind.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said limply.

“Thanks,” Laurie said.

“So you shed a few tears,” Jack said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“But I hate it,” Laurie complained. “It’s so unprofessional.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jack said. “Sometimes I wish I could shed tears. Maybe if we could do some kind of partial trade, we’d both be better off.”

“Anytime!” Laurie said with conviction. This was the closest Jack had come to an admission of what Laurie had long suspected: his bottled-up grief was the major stumbling block for his own happiness.

“So, at least now you’ll drop your minicrusade,” Jack said.

“Heavens, no!” Laurie said. “If anything, it makes me more committed because it suggests just what I feared. Calvin and Bingham are going to try to sweep the episode under the carpet. It’s not right.”

“Oh, Laurie!” Jack moaned. “Please! This little run-in with Calvin will only be the begi

“It’s the principle,” Laurie said. “So don’t lecture me. I came to you for support.”

Jack sighed, fogging up his plastic face mask for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing in particular,” Laurie said. “Just be there for me.”

Fifteen minutes later, Laurie left the autopsy room. Jack had showed her all the external findings on his case, including the two puncture wounds. She’d listened with half an ear, obviously preoccupied with the Franconi business. Jack had had to restrain himself to keep from telling her again how he felt.

“Enough of this external stuff,” Jack said to Vi

“It’s about time,” Vi

Jack ignored the friendly banter evoked by his hapless corpse. With all the obvious trauma, Jack had to vary the traditional autopsy technique and that took concentration. In contrast to Vi

“Chet, get over here,” Jack called. Chet McGovern was Jack’s office mate. He was busy at a neighboring table.

Chet put down his scalpel and stepped over to Jack’s table. Vi

“What’cha got?” Chet asked. “Something interesting?” He peered into the hole where Jack was working.

“I sure do,” Jack said. “I got a bunch of shotgun pellets, but I also have some vascular sutures.”

“Where?” Chet asked. He couldn’t make out any anatomical landmarks.

“Here,” Jack said. He pointed with the handle of a scalpel.

“Okay, I see them,” Chet said with admiration. “Nice pickup. There’s not a lot of endothelialization. I’d say they weren’t that old.”

“That’s my thought,” Jack said. “Probably within a month or two. Six months at the extreme.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think the chances of me making an identification just went up a thousand percent,” Jack said. He straightened up and stretched.

“So the victim had abdominal surgery,” Chet said. “Lots of people have had abdominal surgery.”

“Not the kind of surgery this guy apparently had,” Jack said. “With sutures in the vena cava and the hepatic artery, I’m betting he’s in a pretty distinguished group. My guess is that he’d had a liver transplant not too long ago.”