Postmortem

The quiet I usually craved was u

The minimal security in my office never seemed to worry anyone but me. Budget requests for an adequate security system were repeatedly refused. The commissioner thought in terms of property loss, and no thief was going to come into the morgue even if we put out welcome mats and left the doors open wide at all hours. Dead bodies are a better deterrent than guard dogs.

The dead have never bothered me. It is the living I fear.

After a crazed gunman walked into a local doctor's office several months back and sprayed bullets into a waiting room full of patients, I went to a hardware store and bought a chain and padlock myself, which after hours and on weekends were used to reinforce the front glass double doors.

Suddenly, while I was working at my desk, someone shook those front doors so violently the chain was still swaying when I forced myself to go down the hallway to check. No one was there. Sometimes street people tried to get in to use our restrooms, but when I looked out I didn't see anyone.

I returned to my office and was so jumpy that when I heard the elevator doors opening across the hall I had a large pair of scissors in hand and was prepared to use them. It was the dayshift security guard.

"Did you try to get in through the front glass doors a little while ago?" I asked.

He glanced curiously at the scissors I was clutching and said he didn't. I'm sure it seemed an inane question. He knew the front doors were chained, and he had a set of keys to the other doors throughout the building. He had no reason to try to get in through the front.

An uneasy silence returned as I sat at my desk trying to dictate Lori Petersen's autopsy report. For some reason, I couldn't say anything, couldn't bear to hear the words out loud. It began to dawn on me that no one should hear these words, not even Rose, my secretary. No one should hear about the glittery residue, the seminal fluid, the fingerprints, the deep tissue injuries to her neck-and worst of all, the evidence of torture. The killer was degenerating, becoming more hideously cruel.

Rape and murder were no longer enough for him. It wasn't until I'd removed the ligatures from Lori Petersen's body, and was making small incisions in suspicious reddish-tinted areas of skin and palpating for broken bones that I realized what went on before she died.

The contusions were so recent they were barely visible on the surface, but the incisions revealed the broken blood vessels under the skin, and the patterns were consistent with her having been struck with a blunt object, such as a knee or a foot. Three ribs in a row on the left side were fractured, as were four of her fingers. There were fibers inside her mouth, mostly on her tongue, suggesting that at some point she was gagged to prevent her from screaming.

In my mind I saw the violin on the music stand inside the living room, and the surgical journals and books on the desk in the bedroom. Her hands. They were her most prized instruments, something with which she healed and made music. He must have deliberately broken her fingers one by one after she was bound.

The microcassette recorder spun on, recording silence. I switched it off and swiveled my judge's chair around to the computer terminal. The monitor blinked from black to the sky blue of the word-processing package, and black letters marched across the screen as I began typing the autopsy report myself.

I didn't look at the weights and notes I'd scribbled on an empty glove packet when I was performing the autopsy. I knew everything about her. I had total recall. The phrase "within normal limits" was playing nonstop inside my head. There was nothing wrong with her. Her heart, her lungs, her liver. "Within normal limits."

She died in perfect health. I typed on and on and on, full pages blinking out as I was automatically given new screens until I suddenly looked up. Fred, the security guard, was standing in my doorway.

I had no idea how long I'd been working. He was due back on duty at 8:00 P.M. Everything that had transpired since I saw him last seemed like a dream, a very bad dream.

"You still here?"

Then hesitantly, "Uh, there's this funeral home downstairs for a pickup but can't find the body. Come all the way from Mecklenburg. Don't know where Wingo is…"

"Wingo went home hours ago," I said. "What body?"

"Someone named Roberts, got hit by a train."

I thought for a moment. Including Lori Petersen, there were six cases today. I vaguely recalled the train fatality. "He's in the refrigerator."

"They say they can't find 'im in there."

I slipped off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. "Did you look?"

His face broke into a sheepish grin. Fred backed away shaking his head. "You know, Dr. Sca'petta, I don't never go inside that box! Uh-uh."

Chapter 3

I pulled into my driveway, relieved to find Bertha's boat of a Pontiac still there. The front door opened before I had a chance to select the right key.

"How's the weather?" I asked right off.

Bertha and I faced each other inside the spacious foyer. She knew exactly what I meant. We had this conversation at the end of every day when Lucy was in town.

"Been bad, Dr. Kay. That child been in your office all day banging on that computer of yours. I tell you! I as much as step foot in there to bring her a sandwich and ask how she be and she start hollerin' and carryin' on. But I know."

Her dark eyes softened. "She just upset because you had to work."

Guilt seeped through my numbness.

"I seen the evenin' paper, Dr. Kay. Lord have mercy."

She was working one arm at a time into the sleeves of her raincoat. "I know why you had to be doin' what you was doin' all day. Lord, Lord. I sure do hope the police catch that man. Mea

Bertha knew what I did for a living and she never questioned me. Even if one of my cases was someone from her neighborhood, she never asked.

"The evenin' paper's in there."

She gestured toward the living room and collected her pocketbook from the table near the door. "I stuck it under the sofa cushion so she couldn't get hold of it. Didn't know if you'd want her to be readin' it or not, Dr. Kay."

She patted my shoulder on her way out.

I watched her make her way to her car and slowly back out of the drive. God bless her. I no longer apologized for my family. Bertha had been insulted and bullied either face-to-face or over the phone by my niece, my sister, my mother. Bertha knew. She never sympathized or criticized, and I sometimes suspected she felt sorry for me, and that only made me feel worse. Shutting the front door, I went into the kitchen.

It was my favorite room, high-ceilinged, the appliances modern but few, for I prefer to do most things, such as making pasta or kneading dough, by hand. There was a maple butcher block in the center of the cooking area, just the right height for someone not a stitch over five foot three in her stocking feet. The breakfast area faced a large picture window overlooking the wooded backyard and the bird feeder. Splashing the monochrome blonds of wooden cabinets and countertops were loose arrangements of yellow and red roses from my passionately well attended garden.

Lucy was not here. Her supper dishes were upright in the drainboard and I assumed she was in my office again.

I went to the refrigerator and poured myself a glass of Chablis. Leaning against the counter, I shut my eyes for a moment and sipped. I didn't know what I was going to do about Lucy.