NaNo Chapter Four

Chapter Four
I’m sorry, I appear to have your tibia, and I think you’ll find that’s my ulna there…

“Well, I’ve certainly never seen quite so gruesome a puzzle as this. I’m not sure my champion jigsaw puzzle skills will be as much use as I thought!” Isabel tried for levity, but Dr Stafford’s dour expression let her know, on no uncertain terms, any flippant remarks were not welcome. Which was sad, she thought, because this was going to be a tedious, gruesome project, and it would be nice to lighten the mood just a little.

“Let’s just get started, shall we?” Dr. Stafford neatly arranged fourteen gurneys in the middle of the room, and rolled all of the bags of remains to the side. “We’ll start by putting a head on each table, then determine as much as we can about it to try to match up the rest of the remains to each head. Oh, and because the body parts have to be out for so long, I’ve turned down the temperature of the room quite a bit.”

“Okay, let’s get started.” She pulled her sweater on before she slipped into the lab coat, looking forward to this job less and less. Now she was going to have to spend the entire day freezing, as well as getting the cold shoulder from her former schoolmate. Maybe he was still bitter about that whole jello in the cadaver incident. Though that wasn’t entirely her fault, she could see how he might still harbor a little bit of resentment towards her. You’d think ten years would have been enough time to forgive and forget, but maybe not. Or maybe he was just a cranky old bastard.

They sifted through the bags of body parts the SOCOs had brought in until thirteen of the fourteen tables had a head – or at least a part of a head – on it. They rummaged through all of the bags a few more times before finally admitting defeat.

“They’re still bringing stuff in,” Isabel said hopefully. “Maybe it will turn up in the next hour or so.”

“I think that’s mostly going to be smaller bits, though. The heads are pretty obvious. You’d think they’d have gotten all of them on the first go-round. Though it is possible, if it’s in an odd place, that they haven’t found it yet. That crime scene was a nightmare, body parts stuffed in all sorts of odd places.” Dr Stafford said. He placed a clipboard with the standard morgue papers on each of the gurneys. “Let’s see if we can figure out who’s missing.”

They were just about to get started with the first head when Detective Campbell and Sergeant Riggs walked in. Sergeant Riggs paled visibly, but managed to keep a straight face as he took in the mangled body bits.

“Found anything yet?” Detective Campbell asked. Unlike his partner, he was mostly unfazed by the atmosphere of the morgue. Some said it was because he was hardened and cynical after years working homicide, others had odds on that he was actually a robot. The latter was currently leading the pool, after he appeared completely nonchalant during the autopsy of a murder victim last year so unpleasant that three M.E.’s had to leave the room a various points to regain their composure. No one, they argued, gets that cynical.

“We just started,” snapped Dr. Stafford. He glared at the officers, and Isabel could feel him willing them out of his morgue. It was amazing he kept his job, she thought, if he couldn’t manage to work well with the police. But Detective Campbell didn’t seem to take any offence to his biting remark.

“Looks like you’re one short,” he noted, nodding at the empty gurney.

“I didn’t know you could count that high,” Dr Stafford said caustically. That caused the detective to raise an eyebrow and stare at him pointedly. This was nasty, even for the not-so-tactful Dr. Stafford.

There was silence in the room for a moment, then Sergeant Riggs broke in. “Well, it’s not really a matter of counting, you do have an extra gurney there. So either you set out an extra one, implying you can’t count, or you’re a head short.” He was trying for flippant and lighthearted, but it came out as a little strained.

“Or maybe he was thinking that there might be more than just the fourteen bodies,” Detective Campbell said mildly. “Or he just pulled out all the gurneys they had, so he had more room to sort.”

Sergeant Riggs shrugged. “Could be any number of things, really. Have you counted to see how many head there were?”

“I tried, but once I got past all my fingers I was out of luck. Can’t really take off my shoes and socks in here, it’s freezing.” Detective Campbell said. He gave a thin, self-deprecating smile. Dr. Stafford bristled, and was about to say something when Isabel broke in.

“We have found only thirteen heads so far,” Isabel said before Dr. Stafford blew a gasket. She could see the tension in his face. He was always one who could dish it out, but couldn’t take it. “There’s still a chance they’ll find the last one, they’re still out there looking.”

“If they don’t, though, it rather blows an idea I had out of the water,” Detective Campbell said. “It came to mind that perhaps instead of trying to cover up a murder, the perpetrators of this… bizarre display were trying to make us dig more deeply into a homicide. Making us look twice at a death we’d all but written off as an accident.”

“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Dr. Stafford muttered. Everyone ignored him.

“It’s possible, but it seems very… Rube Goldberg. Why not just write an anonymous note?” Isabel looked over at Drew Stafford, who was starting to sweat profusely.

“Did you turn up the heat because you were cold?” he growled at her. “The bodies need to be kept cold, you stupid twit!” He marched over to the thermostat, and stared at it, puzzled.

“It feels pretty chilly in here to me,” Detective Campbell said. Sergeant Riggs nodded his agreement.

“Chilly? It’s burning up!” Dr. Stafford sputtered, then collapsed to the floor. Isabel hurried over and took his vital signs.

“He’s barely breathing, and his pulse is erratic. Call the E.R., have them get someone down here now.” She stayed hunched over him, monitoring him as Detective Campbell used the wall phone to call the emergency room.

“They’ll be down in a moment,” he said after he hung up. “Is there anything we can do?”

“No, I don’t even know what’s wrong with him,” she said. “He seemed fine just a but ago, when we were sorting out the heads. Surly, but that was usual.”

They waited in silence, Isabel keeping an eye on Dr. Stafford and the officers keeping an eye on the door, as though they could will the paramedics to get there faster. When they finally did, and got Dr. Stafford loaded up and taken off to the emergency room, the three occupants seemed at a loss as to what to do next.

“I… suppose I should carry on,” Isabel said. “Or can I, since this is Drew’s morgue and I really don’t have any authority here? Can you get another M.E. from this precinct to oversee things?”

“Let me make some calls, but for now, carry on and we’ll stay and make sure you don’t steal a spleen or anything,” Detective Campbell said, pulling out his cell phone. He wandered over to a corner, punching in numbers and, after a moment, speaking softly into the phone.

“Well, then,” Sergeant Riggs said. He was starting to look queasy again, now that the focus was off of Dr. Stafford and back on the mutilated corpses. “I suppose… um, carry on?”

“Right you are,” Isabel said, picking up a clipboard and starting to make notes. She busied herself around the first gurney, taking measurements and jotting down information on the clipboard. Then she compared what she had on the skull to a list taped to the morgue wall. “Mr. Creete, I presume. What did you guys think of him?”

“We didn’t get that far. We only did about half of them, and then Jack wanted to check in with you,” Sergeant Riggs said.

“Jack?”

“Detective Campbell. Jackson Campbell,” Sergeant Riggs said. “And I’m Charlie. Sorry we didn’t really introduce ourselves, Jack likes to get right into a case, sometimes forgets the little formalities. Nice to meet you.” He started forward as if to shake her hand, but thought better of it.

“Nice to meet you, too, Charlie,” Isabel said, inclining her head.

Detective Campbell snapped his phone shut and walked over to them. “They say you’re fine working here with just an intern, they’re sending one down now. Basically just someone to get you access to the areas you need, to log things into the computer, that sort of thing.”

“So they trust me to play with the body parts, but not to use the computer in case I might surf for porn?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Something like that. I guess they figure there’s not much trouble you can get up to with the bodies, since they were yours first, anyway. But they don’t want anyone messing with their precious databases.”

“I understand,” she said. “After all, this might have just been a clever ploy on my part to gain access to your records and, oh, I don’t know, alter something. Maybe I have a mass of speeding tickets I want erased!”

“Are you saying we should be checking into your background, Ms. Curtis?” Detective Campbell asked seriously. For the first time, her chipper half-smile faltered.

“No,” she said slowly, meeting his gaze with her own unblinking one.

Detective Campbell gave her a hard look, then turned and walked out of the morgue, motioning for Sergeant Riggs to follow him. They almost collided with a skinny young man with glassed, presumably the intern, hurrying in.