“Relax,” said Tim. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”
“I know, but…”
Tim sighed again. “No buts. Send flowers to the widow Shippey, from the Senate. Express your deepest, most heartfelt condolences. Then get back to work.”
He hung up, shaking his head, and returned to his movie. Some people would panic over anything. They had no taste for life.
Or death.
2
At six the next morning, Declan stood outside the hospital morgue and waited for his assistant to show up.
Over the door was a beautifully scripted sign in black on red that said Rue Morgue. Beneath it was another sign, this one carved in natural wood: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.
He’d put the signs there eight months ago when he had first arrived on the island. He’d left his job as chief trauma surgeon at a large inner-city hospital to take a surgical post on an island paradise. By dint of his prior experience, he had also been appointed to the post of territorial Medical Examiner. He had one-and-a-half jobs, which, together, were a million times less stressful than his previous position. And nobody had ever complained about the mordant humor of the signs.
Nor should they, he thought. Hell, in addition to his surgical-cum-general practice, he was the only qualified pathologist on the island. The latter job was something he needed to grin and bear.
His assistant, a nurse named Hal Devlin, showed up at last, carrying two takeout coffees.
“Latte for you,” Hal said. “Cappuccino for me.”
Even in the middle of nowhere, Santz Martina boasted not one but two Starbucks. “Thanks, Hal.”
They stepped into the small anteroom together; then Declan unlocked his office. Hal followed him in.
The office was just big enough to hold a desk and bookshelves fully loaded with every imaginable up-to-date reference on pathology, autopsy and homicide investigation. Declan was the only one who ever opened most of them. The unsparing, graphic photographs were worse than Hollywood’s most vivid imaginings.
“What’s on the agenda today?” Hal wanted to know, flopping into the chair across from Declan’s desk.
“Male in his early sixties, sudden death. No obvious signs of foul play.”
“Heart attack,” Hal said, with the surety of one who has seen it before.
Declan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Both of Hal’s dark eyebrows rose, his eyes widening. He was a trim young man in his late twenties, his skin and broad cheekbones kissed golden by his native heritage. “You mean we have a mystery?”
“I’m not sure what we have. When I saw the body last night, it felt squishy everywhere.”
Hal shrugged. “Congestive heart failure.” In congestive heart failure, the body could retain thirty or forty pounds of excess water.
“Ankles weren’t swollen.”
Finally Hal frowned, getting the message. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I don’t exactly know, Hal. It could be edema, but if it is, it’s the worst I’ve ever heard of. It was more than a spongy feeling.”
“Lovely. Who was it?”
“Carter Shippey.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
Declan nodded. “I gave him a physical a month ago. He was fine.”
He put his feet up on the desk and sipped his coffee, pretending that he hadn’t been anxious since last night. Coming to the island had been his attempt to unwind, to leave behind the tension that had been nigh on to killing him. Unfortunately, the nightmares hadn’t been left behind, and unpleasant events reminded him that his natural tendency was to stay wound up tighter than a drum.
It didn’t help that Carter Shippey hadn’t looked like any sudden-death heart attack victim he’d ever seen.
Hal was still shaking his head in disbelief.
“Of course,” Declan continued, “a fatal arrhythmia could strike without warning. That’s why it’s called sudden death. But the way Cart looked, the way his body felt when I knelt to examine him last night…”
The dead were always flaccid until rigor began to set in, but Carter Shippey had been more than flaccid. He’d almost felt like…dough. As if there had been nothing rigid beneath his skin at all. That degree of edema was extraordinary, and congestive heart failure didn’t usually come on so rapidly.
“He should have been having other symptoms,” Declan said, more to himself than Hal. “Shortness of breath, coughing, swelling of his extremities.”
“Yeah.” Hal took a deep swig of coffee. “Well, let’s go see if we can figure it out. No point waiting.”
The hell of being the M.E. on an island this size was that you were apt to know the person who had lived in the body you were cutting open. Declan still had a bit of difficulty with that. On rare occasions it even made him long for the anonymity of the big city E.R.
They suited up in scrubs, Tyvek surgical gowns, rubber gloves and, finally, plastic face shields. Declan pointed to the cooler door, and Hal opened it. Carter Shippey’s body, covered by a paper sheet, slid out on its tray.
A chill crept along Declan’s spine, and he found himself ardently praying that he was wrong, that he’d missed something at Carter’s physical, that the doughy feeling had indeed been edema from congestive heart failure. The thought surprised him, for he would feel awful if he’d missed the diagnosis on an easily treatable condition and cost Carter Shippey his life. But the alternative frightened him more.
He pulled the sheet back and gasped.
Carter’s body was still fully clothed, and that was all that made him identifiable as a human being. He looked like an inflatable mannequin that had sprung a leak. Last night he’d been flaccid. This morning he was flat, as if his body were nothing but a puddle within his skin.
“Jesus Christ,” Hal said.
“Make that a prayer,” Declan said. “For me, too.” Even though he didn’t believe. He hadn’t believed in God for years now.
Their eyes met across the body.
“Don’t touch him,” Declan said. “Get out of here now, and strip your suit this side of the door.”
Hal didn’t hesitate to obey. Declan felt an equally powerful urge to get out, but he stood a moment longer, looking down at his friend’s remains, astonished that someone he knew could become unrecognizable so fast. With a rubber covered finger, he pressed Carter Shippey’s side and felt his finger sink in as if into jelly, meeting no resistance at all.
Then he took his own advice. He left the body on the table. The less it was handled the better. Outer-wear and gloves went into the biohazard chute, and he hurried into the office where Hal was awaiting him, trying to steady his cup of coffee in an unsteady hand.
Speaking the words out loud wasn’t easy. Even to Declan they sounded a little nuts. But his instincts, honed by years of experience and training, and an innate honesty that sometimes got him into trouble, wouldn’t allow him to dissemble about something like this.
“It’s got to be infection. I’m reluctant to say a hemorrhagic fever…there was no hemorrhaging from the body orifices, nor apparent ulceration of the skin. But…” Declan looked past him, reconsidering all the unhappy thoughts that had been troubling him since last night. “Ebola and Marburg don’t kill that fast, anyway. And I don’t know of anything that dissolves bone.”
“Bone?”