Original Copy: CH4 - Sliced and Diced
Jack found his way down to the basement morgue of LA County General and spotted Dr. Silas Larchmont pacing in the hallway outside his office.
Silas looked up. “I said an hour.”
“I said thirty. If you hadn’t hung up like a housewife slamming the phone on her husband, you might’ve caught that. What’s your hurry? Someone wake up on the wrong side of the table?”
“No, nothing like that. I said I would wait to do this autopsy. Can’t do it Jack. I’m getting pressured from above, and they’re getting pressured by someone else. They weren’t thrilled that the first two bodies were transferred.”
Jack followed him into his office and leaned against the doorjamb, “What’s the big deal about that? I thought the unclaimed went to Boot Hill or cutting practice at some low-rent university?”
“This is LA County, Jack. Bodies go to the highest bidder.”
“Highest bidder? Who’s had the top dollar this time?”
Silas rifled through stacks of notes, “Second body, I don’t know. When I got back from vacation, it was gone. First one? Autopsy was February 13. I sent the heart to the National Heart Institute. They didn’t ask for it—I just figured, hell, it was so pristine I made it my Valentine’s gift to them. Not even a ‘Thank You’ card, I guess they won’t be on my Christmas list this year.
“Were you born this twisted Silas, or did an endless line of stiffs finally punch a hole through your sense of decency?”
Flipping through the stained manila file on one of the endless piles, Silas muttered through a half-smile: “Just as God made me, Jack. Just as God made me.”
“Anyway, the rest of that body... here we go. Standridge Research Institute, Chicago. February invoice. I remember the call. A weird one for sure. Said they were looking for ‘peculiar anomalies.’ Wouldn’t define what that meant. I think they rang me back in January. They sent three fellows in suits to take possession of the body. One did all the talking, the other two, neck-down types.”
“Neck down?”
“Yeah, you know, not much gray matter upstairs. Brains off, follows-orders sort. At least that’s how they struck me. But what do I know? They weren’t dead, never got to pop the hood.”
“Remind me never to nap around you.”
“Noted.” Silas leaned in, “You got secrets upstairs you don’t want out?”
“You ever get a date to stay for desert?”
Silas snorted a sharp laugh. “Smartass.”
“Anyway. Why wouldn’t they want you to pack it in ice and stick it on a train or a plane for Chicago?”
“Normally I would send it to a funeral home for embalming. They’d box it up and put it on a train. Maybe Standridge just wanted to save a buck and decided to skip the embalming. Like I said. Weird.”
Jack wanted to laugh. If Silas thought it was strange, it had to be the kind of oddity that would curl the toes of average Joes.
“Did you get a look at the car?”
Silas’s frustration boiled over. “What is this, twenty questions? I called you because I’m getting pressured. The feds are gonna pick the body up at 5PM, if we are gonna get some information, I got to start now, I had all day, but now, I don’t have enough time to get it all done. I hope you’re ready, any more delays and there will be more questions than I have answers.” Pushing through the doors to the morgue, Silas’s voice reverberated against the block walls. “There’s a lab coat in the closet and some goggles. And No! I didn’t see the car, didn’t have time for that, two murders the night before kept me busy”
Deckard donned the lab coat and goggles from the cabinet. He eased through the doors as if the dead could be woken. The antiseptic smell burned his nose. Too clean. On the center cadaver table, naked but for a toe tag, the body lay under the harsh surgical light, serene, unnaturally symmetrical. Perfect. As if dumped from a mold.
Holding the microphone close, Silas pressed a button spinning the twin reels on the Dictaphone.“Coroner’s Office, Los Angeles County. Case file John Doe number six, July 19th, 1954 11:45 AM. Subject: unidentified male, approximately thirty-five years of age. No apparent cause of death.”
Silas hung the microphone on a hook hanging from the exam light, “Victim is five feet eight inches, weighing 163 pounds, and has blue eyes. Skin is pristine, without freckles or blemishes, not so much as a callous on any digit. No facial hair. Of note, a small puncture wound at the base of the skull, looks to be in the range of a 22 gauge hypodermic needle.” Returning John Doe #6 onto his back, from his rolling cart, he grabbed a syringe and drew nearly a pint of blood, “Jack, we need to do some tests on this body, it just doesn’t look right.”
He took his reverent time, the knife slicing silent from the collarbone to the breastbone—first the left, then the right—completing the Y incision from the breastbone to his belly button, exhaling as he pulled the knife from the body. It took him many years to come to terms with the organized mutilating nature of his work. The moment before the first cut, to the final indignity. He saw no point in rushing through any of it.
“The skin cuts normal but has a resilient feel to the surface similar to John Doe #1 & #4. Skin seems to be from a much younger person than the age required to grow to this size body.” Silas scribbled something on a pad pulled from his coat pocket. Stuffing the pad back into a pocket.
“Jack, be a doll and hand me that little circular saw, and plug it in please. This is where it gets a little messy. You may want to stand back”
Silas plunged the saw into John Doe’s sternum, churning up fine pieces of cartilage and bone into mist, the high speed whine lowering in pitch, then speeding up as it broke through each bit of hardness in the chest. Removing the front of the rib cage, Silas freed the lungs and heart, weighed each and set them aside on a tray. He emptied the contents of the stomach into a large beaker, weighed and noted the recognizable contents.
“I wish I had some onions Jack, this liver looks perfect”
“Just stop it, you’re more twisted than a mountain road. What’s so good about that liver?”
“That’s just it—perfect. Go to that cold storage unit and bring me box marked JD#2”
“You mean the refrigerator?” Jack strode to the fridge, opened it and found the box next to a lunch. Jack looked over his shoulder and then back at the box and the lunch, shook his head and grabbed the box.
“Hand me the bag that says ‘JD#2 LIVER’.”
Jack retrieved the liver and put it on the scale.
“See that! Within two ounces of the one I just removed, and look, damn near identical.”
“What do you make of that? Nearly identical isn’t actually identical.”
“Livers aren’t like fingerprints, but no two are ever this close — unless they were from twins raised on oatmeal and Holy Water. I can safely say these two people, never smoked, never consumed alcohol even in moderation. You want to know what’s worse? I’ll tell you. Overreaching feds grabbing the body before I can finish. Cutting up a body is only half the fun; I get paid to make sense of it, and this advanced timeline isn’t conducive to business as usual. Yesterday I got ready for this possibility. There is another box of innards in the cold storage unit, behind my lunch. Grab that, we are taking all of the organs we can get out of Johnny here and put these in from a automobile wreck last week. Heart attack at the wheel, tragic, just not criminal. Similar sized individuals. Once the Feds get this body, it will never be seen again. Oh they will claim they are going to do a ‘full set of advanced diagnostic tests’, whatever the heck that means. We will get a poorly fabricated report stating unequivocally, “death by natural causes.” Hiding the truth, Jack, that’s not their game, they’re gonna bury it, with the help of LA County’s finest coroner, six feet deep with the wrong heart.”
“Aren’t you the only coroner in this town?”
“You noticed? Help me roll him over, I’ve got to get a skin sample from around the puncture, if any of the poison seeped around the needle, the lab can test it. I’m going to get the kidneys also. Blood type match that will take an hour or so, if the sample is good, even from a corpse, the antigens don’t lie, unless, of course, the body has been cooking too long in the sun”
Silas pulled out a second scalpel and extracted the skin around the puncture wound. He measured the penetration depth beneath the skin. Holding the rough square of skin under the magnifier looking for anything that might hint of a substance. Sliding the sample under the microscope, he hunched over the eye piece and began to focus.
Jack glanced at the clock, 3 PM, “We don’t have much time left, this is burning through the afternoon…”
“Shit…… !”
Jack’s head jerked back to Silas hunched over a microscope.
“Would you come look at this, it’s unbelievable.”
Silas moved to the side of the scope making room for Jack. “See the faint black line feathering away from the hole— I think he was electrocuted. This radial feathering, its a hallmark of human lightning strikes. I don’t have enough time to confirm electrocution, and I am not sure its possible. We are way beyond the average murder. This medical science isn’t in any textbook. If there is a fourth body, and we can get to it early enough, maybe it will prove to be a common method. Jack, this is some weird shit, I don’t have any idea what you need to kill someone like this. Electric chairs use 2000 volts. But this, this is elegant, precise, diabolical. Look at it close, no trauma outside the hole, a bare strand of something at the innermost layer of the dermis. Looks like metallic filament, could be a wire, a damn small wire. Nothing like this was visible in the other victims. Maybe what ever it was, misfired with less intensity or duration. This is out there Jack, someone’s in the warning track and doesn’t care if they hit the wall. Death must have been near instantaneous, a small jolt. This is clean, not just effective. It’s sterile.”
“We don’t have much more time Silas. The Feds are never late, you got to sew this stiff back up and hide the organs, but I need something first. I need all the autopsy files for these. I can’t say right now who, but I know someone who knows something, and we got to give him what you have. “
“Right. I will say that one of them Federal Agent fellows with greased hair and a dark suit came by and took those already”
Silas rifled through his records, found all the pertinent John Doe files, then stuffed them in a manila envelope.
“Jack, don’t go out the way you came. Go left out of this office, then down the corridor, third or fourth right, there’s a sign. The loading dock is that direction. Bodies leave the morgue the other direction, that will be the way those G-men slink in. Here, take these and go now! I got to sew Johnny up. Don’t come back or call, I will leave a message for you when the dust settles. Good Luck Jack Deckard!”
Jack turned abruptly, leaving…
“And Jack—“
He paused with his hand on the door, “yeah”
“Don’t get yourself shot! I only work on the dead—and I don’t want to find you on my table.
The door swung shut, leaving Silas in the dead silence.
