and posterior. Some very old, some more recent, but none that would have been administered in the last few days,” Perish began as if he were reading into a report recorder.
“Jailhouse jostle,” Nick said, thinking of the status Ferris would have had at MDCC as a child molester.
“Possibly,” the M.E. said as he positioned a scalpel over the body’s chest and began making his incisions.
Nick concentrated on the tattoos that Ferris had obviously gotten while he was inside. Serpents in dark ink that now stood out on the pale insides of both forearms. Somewhat crude but detailed enough to see the fierceness of eyes and sharpness of claw. Nick wondered if Ferris had paid a prison artist to do them so he could project his toughness or whether it was an expression of what was inside his head.
Petish worked quickly and meticulously, cutting away inside the chest cavity, with deft strokes slicing the connective tissue of major organs and carefully weighing each before unceremoniously dropping them into a five-gallon bucket on the floor nearby. In the air, the Adderley brothers played a buoyant riff of 1930s blues in stark juxtaposition to what was going on at the table. Nick asked an occasional anatomy question and watched as the doctor took tiny samples of the organs and slipped them into test tubes for later microscopic examinations.
“Don’t you think that hole in his head makes a pretty good case for cause of death?” Nick said, only half joking as the physician pointed out a darkened portion of lung tissue, snipped and bottled it.
Petish looked up for the first time. “Really, Mr. Mullins. Have you known me to be anything other than completely thorough?”
Nick kept quiet but had to turn his head away when the doctor removed the lower intestines from the corpse. After the weighing, the M.E. misjudged the bucket below and one end of the colon caught an edge, flipping a stream of liquid through the air and against one wall. Those who thought they’d witnessed autopsies by watching CSI: Miami were missing this part unless they had scratch-and-sniff TV. The odor was nearly intolerable. But Nick was bothered more by the growing disdain he was building in his head by going back to the serpents and then recalling Ferris’s crime scene: the little house, the small body bags. Instead of the scientific atmosphere he usually held to at these proceedings, he could feel a hate building. Fucking deserved it was on his lips when Petish said, “There it is.”
Nick stepped closer to look at the cutting board that Petish had lain on top of the chest and realized the M.E. had Ferris’s heart out and was snipping an artery with a pair of scissors.
“What? He had a heart attack,” Nick said and then realized his voice was much too anxious.
Petish shook his head with a look of smiling exasperation. “No, no, no, Mr. Mullins. Yes, you can see the hardening of the artery here. But no. I was speaking of the recording.”
He was now pointing the scissors at the CD player and the band was just launching into “We Dot” and Cannonball had just made reference to a young man named Ray Charles.
“Ha!” said the doctor. “A young man. Yes. Did you hear?”
It was three AM when Nick shook hands with the doctor, minus the latex gloves, and made his way across the darkened parking lot. A false dawn was showing in the east and even though he knew what time it was, and could feel the dry tiredness in his eyes like a parchment on his irises, the possibility of daybreak encouraged him. He got behind the wheel and sat for a while in the quiet, trying to gauge the anger he was still holding for the dead man inside. Why be pissed at a guy who took one through the brain and had just been eviscerated in front of you? Hell, wasn’t that enough? But Nick was transferring and he knew it. The face of the man who had killed half his family was the one he’d wanted to see on that table.
He’d almost gotten over it, the anger, the raw feeling for revenge. Or at least he’d pushed it back into a dark spot in his brain so he could get back to work, get back to Carly. Then he’d heard last week that Robert Walker was out. Then he’d called in a marker with a friend at the Department of Corrections and Parole to find out