Dead Guilty

stood in the cleared area under the corpses, looking like he was about to be hanged himself. Diane understood. She hated this part—placing once living people into body bags.

Chapter 5
    The only other time Diane had been in a hot autopsy room was in the South American jungle. Dr. Lynn Webber’s lab in the regional medical center was sti fling. The smell of death weighed over the room like a heavy blanket of rotting flesh. The metal tables, white glass-door cabinets, appliances and tools that went so well with the usual chill of the autopsy room looked out of place and dreadful here. Diane wanted to back out of the overwhelming stench and heat and go someplace else.
    Through a window on the opposite side of the main lab Diane could see the isolation room designed for the autopsy of badly decomposed and infectious bod ies. The diener, servant to the dead, stood by a table occupied by one of the hanging victims—extended on a shiny metal table, neck curved around the torso so that the head sat beside the shoulder.
    Lynn was in her office on the phone, the door open. Her voice carried out to the autopsy room.
‘‘I asked you two days ago to come fix the air condi tioner.’’ Pause. ‘‘I don’t care if it’s the vents, not the unit. The temperature is too high in here. I have dead bodies rotting on my tables. No amount of lemon juice is ever going to get the smell out of my hair.’’
Lynn tapped a pencil on a pad of paper as she lis tened. ‘‘I don’t care if both your ankles are sprained. A man your age has got no business being on Roll erblades. Let me remind you that I’m a woman who knows how to kill and leave no evidence to show up in the autopsy. I want this problem fixed, and I don’t mean tomorrow.’’
She hung up the phone and walked out into the lab. ‘‘I hate to talk to maintenance men. It’s like talking to a blackmailer. They know they’ve got you by the balls.’’
She motioned toward suits of protective gear lying on the countertop. The two of them slipped on lab coats, face shields and gloves and entered the isola tion lab.
The room had two tables, shiny metal rectangles atop bright white cabinets. Between the two tables hung scales for weighing organs. Across the room stood a series of cabinets, metal countertops and sinks. Everything sparkled, from the glossy blue floor to the metal surfaces—everything except the blackened corpse with stiff blond hair and an exceptionally long neck.
‘‘I was so happy to get this new containment room. But it’s been one problem after another.’’
‘‘Can’t the hospital administration do anything?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘You’re talking about Jack the Bean Counter.’’ She sighed. ‘‘I’m sorry it’s so unbearable in here. Right now we have to keep working and put up with it.’’
‘‘My grandma found somebody hanging like this when she was a girl,’’ said the diener. ‘‘Neck all long like a snake. She took it as a sign.’’
‘‘A sign of what?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘That she and her family should move to Atlanta.’’ ‘‘Did they?’’
‘‘Sure ’nuff, they did.’’ He started toward the door, taking off his face shield. ‘‘I’ll be right back.’’
Diane and Lynn watched the lean young black man walk out of the room.
‘‘I never ask Raymond what he’s doing when he gets that blank look on his face.’’ Lynn shrugged, then shifted gears. ‘‘I’d like to start with the clothes. We’ll have to cut the sleeves, but I’d like to inspect the body before the hands are untied.’’
The material was stiff and hard to dropped from the body to the metal cut. Maggots surface of the table as they worked. They were putting the clothes in a bag when the diener came back in. He put on his gloves and took the bag of evidence.
‘‘I’ll label. What we calling the body?’’
‘‘Blue,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Blue,’’ said Raymond. ‘‘I guess that’s as good a name as any.’’
‘‘When we cut them down, we tied blue, red or green cord around both cut ends of the rope so we could match the ropes again after they were sepa rated.’’ Diane pointed to the blue string wrapped around the end of the rope that marked it and kept it from unraveling.
The noose was still tight around the neck, sunk deep into the flesh under the chin. Diane would hate for any family member to ever see their loved one like this. They would never be able to think of their rela tive again without seeing this