The Experiment Page 6

  "God knows what that's all about. But again, it was done methodically and precisely." The examiner replaced the foot, moved to the thigh and traced the rim of the wound with his forefinger. "He stuck a knife in at an angle and spun it in a circle, like extracting an oyster."

  Jude wished he would dispense with the culinary metaphors.

  "Maybe there was a birthmark there, or a scar, or some identifying feature," Gloria ventured.

  "Maybe. But it's not a visible place. And it's hard to imagine anyone keeping a record of it. So why go to all the trouble of removing it?"

  Jude felt the deadline nipping at his heels.

  "What's the cause of death?" he asked.

  "Ah," said McNichol, as if the bright kid in the class had finally asked the pertinent question. "Shot to the back of the skull. Professionally done. Probably a .32-caliber, but we don't know that yet for sure. His wrists have bruises, I'd say he was tied up and on his knees when the bullet was fired from above. He was killed first and disfigured afterward."

  Maybe it was a Mafia killing after all, thought Jude. But then he recalled from the wire copy that the body had been found in the woods, dumped in a thicket. When the Mob wanted to keep a killing secret, the body didn't end up where it could be found, and certainly not on an M.E.'s examining table.

  Over in the corner was a clear plastic bag with what looked to be clothes inside. Jude thought he saw a red shirt, all bundled up. McNichol followed his glance.

  "His clothes," he explained. "We'll examine them in detail later."

  Jude looked at his watch. "Anything else worth seeing?"

  "One other thing, but you'll have to wait."

  For a half hour McNichol worked on the body with a long-handled scalpel and a #22 Becton Dickerson blade, keeping up a running commentary as if he were describing a motoring vacation through an exotic piece of countryside.

  "The primary incision goes from the front of the armpit along the anterior axillary line just under the nipples, to the sternum. That is the xiphoid process. Then we move south with a slight detour around the umbilicus to the top of the pubic symphysis, which is right here."

  The M.E. glanced up at Gloria.

  "Incidentally, I should add that this procedure is not recommended for an open casket."

  He went back to work.

  "Now, as you see, we have allowed exposure to both the thoracic and abdominal cavities."

  Jude held his breath and looked. It was not so bad. McNichol cut back the skin flaps and abdominal musculature. Then he picked up an oscillating saw and cut the clavicles and ribs along an angle, creating a wedge-shaped piece. He lifted the chest plate off intact, like a headwaiter raising the domed cover of a main course.

  Jude looked again. This time the sight was revolting. The heart, which looked like a strapped-down slab of red meat, the pathetically deflated lungs, the thymus gland—all so compact and neatly packaged, swimming in a bouillabaisse of mucus and fluid. He inconspicuously rested one hand on the side of the table to steady himself.

  McNichol, meanwhile, was working quickly. He used a syringe to suck up the serous fluid between the thoracic organs and the chest wall and squirted it into a plastic container to save it. He took photographs of the heart and lungs and measured and recorded the ratio of the width of the heart compared to the width of the chest. Then he tied off the carotid arteries, clamped the trachea and esophagus, cut through the diaphragm and the pleural sac, and removed the heart and the lungs together.

  He peered deep into the abdomen and took more pictures. He took out the intestines, clamping the gut and cutting proximally between the first and second segments of the small intestine and distally just before the rectum, and put it aside for later analysis. He reached in with a wide embrace and lifted out a cornucopia of digestive organs—the liver, gall bladder, pancreas, esophagus, stomach and duodenum.

  Jude could see all the way to the back of the abdominal wall. He was able to identify the urinary system—the kidneys, ureters and bladder—but barely; just at that moment they were lifted out in a single block.

  "Check the sheet," McNichol told Jude. "How old did I say this guy was?"

  "Twenty-two to twenty-six years."

  The examiner looked momentarily confused—the first time his self-assurance had slipped a notch.

  "Too young. I can tell by looking at these organs—that's way too young. How could I have been so wrong?"

  Laboriously, McNichol examined each organ closely, like a jeweler holding a gem up to the light. Each was cleaned of blood and fat, weighed, photographed, and cut into sections, or "breadloafed," as he called it. Each was probed and secreted fluid that was sucked up by the ever present syringe and yielded silver-dollar-sized sections that were placed in the plastic bucket, or "the coffin." From here, McNichol said, they would be sliced thin as a hair, mounted on slides, and put under the microscope for histological examination.

  Finally came the pièce de resistance—the brain. McNichol cut a perfect line across the top of the scalp from ear to ear, and retracted the skin flap. He used the vibrating saw to cut through the bone, creating both a shrill sound and an acrid smell, then removed the skull cap and placed it to one side with a preoccupied gesture, like a chess player discarding a captured pawn. He was looking, Jude surmised, at the fatal wound.

  McNichol picked up a serrated knife and cut through the dura, the tough outer covering of the brain, then reached down hard and sliced the blood vessels at the base. He lifted the brain out, held it high in one hand and said, "Here we are." With a gloved finger, he reached into a hole and flicked out a snub-nosed bullet, which he placed in a small bottle. He put the brain in a large jar of formalin.

  More than ever Jude felt the deadline rushing at him, and again he looked at his watch. McNichol seemed to be cleaning up, replacing the skull cap and chest plate, and wiping the body with blue cloth.

  "I don't mean to rush you," said Jude. "But what was that thing you said would be worth waiting for?"

  "I haven't forgotten," replied McNichol.

  He stood at the top of the gurney, behind the head of the body that was now cut and lined and red with blood. He leaned over and pried open the mouth, which was now drained, and directed Gloria and Jude to look inside. They did and were flummoxed.

  "I don't get it," she said. "I don't see anything."

  "Precisely," retorted McNichol, puffing up with pride. "You don't see anything. Not a single cavity. Every tooth strong and perfect. On a grown man. When was the last time you saw a mouth like that?"

  Jude and Gloria looked at each other.

  "Of course," continued the M.E., "it just compounds the problem."

  "The problem?"

  "Of identification. It looks like he's never been to a dentist. No prints and now no dental records. That makes him practically untraceable."

  Jude asked for an office with a telephone line and found one on the second floor with a desk looking out onto the back parking lot. A secretary brought him a cup of coffee, which he drank heartily.

  He plugged in the computer and typed in the slug for his story—slay—the time-honored slug for the day's most sensational killing. In a half hour he was done. He wrote seven hundred words, going heavy on the forensic material—the burned fingertips, the perfect teeth—details that made it clear he had personally witnessed the autopsy. He also took care to portray McNichol as something of a hero, recalling as he did so the advice of a long-departed editor who used to tell him: "It pays to be generous to people who can return the favor." He attached his modem to the phone line, dialed up the special number, heard the whining hiccup of a connection, and sent the story to 666 Fifth Avenue.

  * * *

  On the drive back to the city in the evening, Jude thought about Gloria. After he had filed, he had driven her back to her paper.

  "You want to go out later, when I'm through?" she'd asked, a touch less than matter-of-factly. "I know a good health food restaurant, if you're up for that kind of thing." />
  He wasn't. He suspected the offer entailed more than dinner, and somehow when he thought of the long drive back and the gory scene in the autopsy room and even, for some reason, Betsy and the hurtful names she had hurled at him months ago—mixing it all up into one complicated, exhausting package—he felt drained of desire.

  He'd held out his hand to shake good-bye.

  She'd held hers out and smirked.

  "In a hurry, huh? Big-time reporters like you come up here for one day. Then we help you, and the amazing thing is, you still manage to get something wrong."

  That had hurt.

  Still, he thought, the story he'd filed was not a bad one. And he hadn't gotten anything wrong, he was sure of that.

  He flipped on the radio, caught the headlines on 1010, and was pleased to note that there was not much competing news. He began conjuring up front-page headlines for his story, a favorite pastime: "Mutilating Mangler on the Loose" or "Body Tells No Tales" or "Faceless Horror Upstate." He lowered both windows to let the wind whip through the car, found a rock station and turned the volume up.

  That didn't feel bad. Not bad at all.

  The next morning, however, when Jude went out in his shorts and T-shirt to fetch the paper from a newsstand, he had a shock. Not only was the story not on page one, he couldn't even find the damned thing! He rested the paper on a mailbox, started on page two and began flipping the pages—his anger growing with each flip. Finally, he spotted it—way back on page 42, crammed in with the bra ads. And it had been reduced to four paragraphs. Barely enough for a byline.

  Jesus Christ!

  All that work. Driving all the way up there, talking his way into the autopsy, beating out the Daily News.

  All that—and they cut it to shreds and bury it.

  He raced back upstairs, changed and went to the office. Spotting Leventhal across the newsroom, he bellowed out his name.

  Leventhal motioned him into his fishbowl of an office, equipped with a full-size picture window so that he could see out into the newsroom. The trouble was, the newsroom could see in. Jude didn't care. He had righteousness on his side.

  "I don't get it," he yelled. "That was a great story. Why the hell did you short it?"

  Leventhal looked at him blankly, pretending confusion. Finally, comprehension dawned.

  "Oh. You mean the New Paltz thing. That's what's got you raving like a maniac?"

  "Damn right. That should have been front page."

  "Front page!"

  Leventhal searched around for a prop, and found it: today's paper, which he threw dramatically down on his desk.

  "Now, that's front page."

  Jude read the headline: DOUBLE TROUBLE. A subhead explained: Identical Twins Held in Murder Rap. Which One Did It?

  He read the first paragraph. The story was about twin lawyers, one of whom was suspected of strangling a blonde woman on the Upper East Side. The other one was going to represent him as soon as their identities were untangled.

  Jude hated to admit it, but Leventhal had a point.

  "Still, you didn't have to bury my story like that."

  "Bury it? It got all the space it deserved, Harley. Yeah, it's got some gory details, but right now it's just an anonymous body. You get me a name to go with the corpse, then we'll see if it goes anywhere. OK?"

  Jude tried to revive his anger, but it had been defused by Leventhal's one-two punch. He looked up and tried to count the colleagues staring in at his discomfiture. Half a dozen, at least. Leventhal noticed them, too, and his face turned red.

  "Goddamn it," he said. "I'm the weekend editor, and I decide what goes in the Monday paper. I'm sick and tired of people second-guessing me. Now, get out of here!"

  Jude left. But when he thought about it later, it seemed odd. Leventhal usually didn't yell like that. It seemed like he had gotten too upset. Jude mentioned this to Clive to see what he thought, but the news clerk simply shrugged.

  Chapter 5

  Skyler knocked on Kuta's door. He knew the old man was in because he had seen his weather-beaten boat tied to the dock, its grimy engine mounted on a stump nearby, undergoing the perpetual repairs. The waves on the small bay were turning rough in the wind.

  He was feeling scared. He had been feeling that way all morning and then all afternoon, taking the goats to pasture, ever since he had encountered Julia and she had whispered her message about the password. He had waited for her near the air strip as long as he could. When she hadn't appeared, he'd left a message for her in the mailbox, telling her to meet him at Kuta's this afternoon—the first time he had dared do such a thing and a mark of how desperate he was. Now he was going to wait for her and see with his own eyes that she was safe. But he had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

  The door opened, and Kuta fixed a bloodshot eye on him.

  "Child, you look a mess. What you been up to?"

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned and led the way. It felt cool inside.

  "Take a seat," he said, motioning toward the easy chair. He put on a pot of water for tea.

  Skyler sat quietly for a while and then slowly unburdened himself. He told about Patrick's death and how he and Julia had discovered the body in the basement morgue; he talked about the funeral service and Julia's detective work. He spoke in a general way about his fears for her, but this was hard to do—the words seemed to get tangled in his throat. Finally, he dropped off into silence.

  Kuta shook his head slowly from side to side.

  "A lotta strange goings-on," he said finally. "I've been saying that for years. A lotta strange goings-on. And don't this beat all. It ain't natural for a boy that young to die. I believe those people in that Lab are some kind of Satan worshippers. Some kind of anti-Christ."

  In recent years, Kuta had been turning religious, and he'd even tried teaching Skyler the Scriptures, to counter what he called "all that false instruction."

  He rose, took two battered mugs out of a cupboard, put a tea bag in one, and poured hot water into them. After a minute, he switched the tea bag.

  "That explains the airplane," he continued. "Seems like every time there's one of them deaths, that little airplane goes off. I heard it come back no more than two hours ago." He was referring to a small propeller plane that was stored in a tin hangar next to the strip runway. Skyler had heard it at various times, but never paid it much attention.

  "What do you mean, explains it? What do you think the plane's doing—aside from carrying mail?"

  "That I can't say. What I can say is I notice it flying off whenever there's some kind of trouble—you know, a medical emergency."

  "What do you mean? What are you saying?"

  Skyler was getting upset. He was sorry he had come.

  "I'm not saying anything. I'm not meaning anything. Hush up and have your tea."

  A minute later, Kuta asked a question.

  "You think they was operating on him?"

  "On Patrick?"

  "Yes."

  Skyler nodded. He didn't want to speculate with Kuta. He felt close to him, closer than to anyone else except Julia. But he didn't feel like trying to put words to the suspicions and fears that so preoccupied him—all that belonged to a different part of his life, which he wanted to share only with her. And he especially didn't feel like talking about it now, with her maybe missing out there somewhere.

  He got up and turned on the radio that was set on the old refrigerator. Out came the strains of a fiddle and guitar and the slides of an accordion—Zydeco, Kuta called it. Skyler sat back down in the easy chair and waited for Julia.

  By the end of the third song, he became convinced that something had gone wrong. He glanced over, for the hundredth time, at the old kitchen clock mounted on the wooden wall with its slow-moving, thick black hands. Her chores in the Records Room should have ended more than an hour ago.

  He stood up abruptly and turned off the radio. At least he could go and look for her. As he brushed by Kuta, he detected a look of worry in the old man
's face and his wrinkled brow, but again he did not feel like explaining—this time because he didn't want to linger another moment. For, suddenly, his anxiety had burgeoned into a gnawing, uncontrollable fear. He imagined he heard a small voice inside his head—her voice—calling to him for help.

  He bolted through the door, and by the time his foot hit the ground, he was running. And now the voice inside him was screaming.

  Halfway up the path, he thought he saw someone in the bushes, a startled face watching him—it was Tyrone. Maybe he had followed him, was spying upon him. He didn't care. It barely registered. As long as the face was not Julia's, he would not stop. He dashed through the woods, dodging trees and leaping over fallen branches. The storm was gathering force. The wind was picking up and the Spanish moss was waving in the air above, and as he heard his footsteps strike the earth, he felt his heart pounding in his rib cage. Something has gone terribly wrong. The fear was growing into a certainty and it propelled him along the path, running with all his might.

  By the time he reached the main grounds of the Campus, large raindrops were mixing with the wind. As he ran, his lungs burning now, he could feel them slap his face and arms. He looked around quickly as he raced on, crossing a small brook and the Parade Field. No one was around. Just as well—surely, they would have seen his desperation and called out the Orderlies. He leapt over a bench, ran to the men's barracks, yanked open the screen door and tumbled inside. He came to a halt, sweating and shivering, in the middle of the semi-darkened room. A dozen faces looked up in astonishment. The Jimminies were scattered about, most lying on their bunks, except for a cluster in a corner listening to music. They stared at Skyler, slack-jawed, as he gulped for breath.

  "Julia," he blurted. "Where is she? Have you seen her?"

  He read the answer in the dumbfounded looks and didn't wait for anyone to speak, but instead turned and bolted out the door. He crossed the Parade Field again, with the rain coming down harder. Now he had to break into a fast walk, holding a stitch in his left side. Already, puddles were accumulating in the hollows and potholes of the barren ground. Behind him, staring out through the screen door of the men's barracks, he could almost feel the eyes of the others upon his back.