C Is for Corpse

no apparent purpose.
    Derek tried to catch Glen's eye. "Well, I thought that went very well.'
    Glen turned pointedly and peered out of the far window. When your only child has been killed, who really gives a shit?
    Kitty took out a cigarette and lit it. Her hands looked like birds' claws, the skin almost scaly. The elastieized neckline of her blouse revealed a chest so thin that her sternum and costal cartilages were outlined like one of those joke T-shirts.
    Derek made a face as the smell of smoke filled the backseat. "Jesus, Kitty, put that out. For Christ's sake!"
    "Oh, leave her alone," Glen said, dully, Kitty seemed surprised by the unexpected support, but she stubbed out the cigarette anyway.
    The driver appeared and closed the door on Derek's side, then moved around the rear of the limousine and slid in under the steering wheel. I moved on toward my car as he pulled away.
    The mood was much lighter once we got to the house. People seemed to shrug death aside, comforted by good wine and lavish hors d'oeuvres. I don't know why death still generates these little tetes-a-tetes. Everything else has been modernized, but some vestige of the wake remains. There must have been two hundred people crowded into the living room and hall, but it all seemed O.K. It was filler, just something to smooth the awkward transition from the funeral to the bone-crushing sleep that was bound to come afterward.
    I recognized most of the people who'd been at Derek's birthday gathering that past Monday night: Dr. Fraker and his wife, Nola; Dr. Kleinert and a rather plain woman whom I assumed was Mrs. K.; the other doctor who'd been present, Metcalf, in conversation with Marcy, who had worked with Bobby briefly in the Pathology Department. I snagged a glass of wine and inched my way across the room to Fraker's side. He and Kleinert had their heads bent together and they paused as I approached.
    "Hi," I said, suddenly self-conscious. Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea. I took a sip of wine, noting the look that passed between them. I guess they decided I could be privy to their discussion, because Fraker picked up where he'd left off.
    "Anyway, I won't be doing the microscopic until Monday, but from the gross, it looks like the immediate cause of death was a ruptured aortic valve."
    Kleinert said, "From impact with the steering wheel."
    Fraker nodded, taking a sip of wine. The explanation of his findings continued almost as though he were dictating it all over again. "The sternum and multiple ribs were fractured and the ascending aorta was incompletely torn just above the superior border of the valve cusps. Additionally, there was a left hemothorax of eight hundred cc and a massive aortic adventitial hemorrhage."
    Kleinert's expression indicated that he was following. The whole thing sounded sickening to me and I didn't even know what it meant.
    "What about the blood alcohol?" Kleinert asked.
    Fraker shrugged. "That was negative. He wasn't drunk.
    We should have the rest of the results this afternoon, but I don't think we're going to find anything. I could be surprised, of course."
    "Well, if you're right about the CSF blockage, a seizure was probably inevitable. Bernie warned him to watch for the symptoms," Kleinert said. His face was long and etched with a look of permanent sorrow. If I had emotional problems and needed a shrink, I didn't think it would help me to look at a face like that week after week. I'd want somebody with some energy, pizzazz, somebody with a little hope.
    "Bobby had a seizure?" I asked. It was clear by now that they were discussing his autopsy results. Fraker must have realized I didn't have any idea what they were actually saying, because he offered a translation.
    "We think Bobby may have been suffering from a complication of the original head injury. Sometimes, a blockage develops in the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Intracranial pressure builds up and part of the brain starts to atrophy, resulting in posttraumatic epilepsy."
    "And that's why he ran off the road?"
    "In my opinion, yes," Fraker said. "I can't state this categorically, but he'd probably been experiencing headaches, anxiety, irritability perhaps."
    Kleinert cut in again. "I saw him at seven, seven fifteen, something like that. He was terribly depressed."
    "Maybe he suspected what was going on," Fraker was saying.
    "Too bad he didn't speak up then, if that's the case."
    The murmuring between them continued while I tried to take in the