In Death 04 - Rapture in Death

cape whenever he walked down the corridors. His slicked-back hair was snugged into a long ponytail.
    Eve knew, since he'd called her in directly rather than passing her off to one of his techs, that it was something unusual.
    "Dr. Morris?"
    "Hmm. Lieutenant," he began without turning around. "Never seen anything like it. Not in thirty years of exploring the dead." He swung around with a flutter of his lab coat. Beneath it he wore stovepipe pants and a T-shirt in loud, clashing colors. "You're looking well, Lieutenant."
    He gave her one of his quick, charming smiles, and her lips curved up in response. "You're looking pretty good, yourself. You lost the beard."
    He reached up, rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. He'd sported a precise goatee until recently. "Didn't suit me. But Christ, I hate to shave. How was the honeymoon?"
    Automatically, she tucked her hands in her pockets. "It was good. I've got a pretty full plate right now, Morris. What do you have to show me you couldn't show me on screen?"
    "Some things take personal attention." He rode his stool over to the autopsy table until he pulled up with a slight squeal of wheels at Fitzhugh's head. "What do you see?"
    She glanced down. "A dead guy."
    Morris nodded, as if pleased. "What we would call a normal, everyday dead guy who expired due to excessive blood loss, possibly self-inflicted."
    "Possibly?" She leaped on the word.
    "From the surface, suicide is the logical conclusion. There were no drugs in his system, very little alcohol, he shows no offensive nor defensive wounds or bruising, the blood settlement was consistent with his position in the tub, he did not drown, the angle of the wrist wounds..."
    He bumped closer, picked up one of Fitzhugh's limp, beautifully manicured hands where on the wrist the carved wounds resembled some intricate, ancient language. "They are also very consistent with self-infliction: a right-handed man, reclining slightly." He demonstrated, holding an imaginary blade. "Very quick, very precise slashes to the wrist, severing the artery."
    Though she'd already studied the wounds herself, and photographs of them, she stepped closer, looked again. "Why couldn't someone have come up from behind him, leaned over, slashed down at that same angle?"
    "It's not beyond the realm of possibility, but if that were the case, I'd expect to see some defensive wounds. If someone snuck into your bath and sliced your wrist, you'd be inclined to become annoyed, quarrelsome." He beamed a smile. "I don't think you'd just settle back in the tub and bleed to death."
    "So you're going with self-termination."
    "Not so fast. I was prepared to." He tugged on his bottom lip, let it snap back into place. "I ran the standard brain analysis required with any self-termination or suspected self-termination. That's the puzzle here. The real puzzle."
    He scooted his stool over to his workstation, gestured over his shoulder for her to follow. "This is his brain," he said, tapping a finger on the organ floating in clear liquid and attached to wire thin cables that fed into the mainframe of his computer. "Abby Normal."
    "I beg your pardon."
    Morris chuckled, shook his head. "Obviously you don't make time to watch enough classic videos. That's from a takeoff on the Frankenstein myth. What I'm saying is, this brain is abnormal."
    "He had brain damage?"
    "Damage -- well, it seems an extreme word for what I've found. Here, on the screen." He swiveled around, tapped some keys. A close-up view of Fitzhugh's brain flashed on. "Again, on the surface, completely as expected. But we show the cross section." He tapped again, and the brain was sliced neatly in half. "So much went on in this small mass," Morris murmured. '"Thoughts, ideas, music, desires, poetry, anger, hate. People speak of the heart, Lieutenant, but it's the brain that holds all the magic and mystery of the human species. It elevates us, separates us, defines us as individuals. And the secrets of it -- well, it's doubtful we'll ever know them all. See here."
    Eve leaned closer, trying to see what he indicated with the tap of a finger on the screen. "It looks like a brain to me. Unattractive but necessary."
    "Not to worry, I nearly missed it myself. For this imaging," he went on while the monitor whirled with color and shapes, "the tissue appears in blues, pale to dark, the bone white. Blood vessels are red. As you can see, there are no clots or tumors that would indicate neurological disorders in the making.