The Bone Bed

brilliant starburst and streaking artifacts are at a high Hounsfield unit value of almost 4000. Dense metal, possibly lead. Most likely old bullet fragments in the soft tissue of the left hip, and more of them in his right posterior thigh. A possible roadmap of the life this man lived, but not what killed him, and the massive internal damage that did is grossly inconsistent with a tumble down the stairs.
    A flail chest is more common in the crushing injuries I associate with people pinned under machines or run over by tractors or cars. Most people who fall on the back of their heads also don’t have a basilar fracture. They don’t have broken cranial bones at foramen magnum, the hole in the base of the skull. I click through more images from the whole-body scan, finding no fresh injuries to the arms, hands, pelvis, or lower extremities.
    Beyond a leaded glass window, the silhouette of the large bore CT scanner is indistinctly white in the near dark, no one home, and I decide Anne probably stepped out for coffee or to use the ladies’ room. I jot her a note and place it on her keyboard, letting her know I plan to post the body from the Massachusetts Bay later in the day and will need to scan it first.
    Should discuss Howard Roth,
I add as a PS
. Confusing loc of fxx/injuries & lack of them. Need complete history & scene details. Do not want him released yet. Thx.—KS.
    I check the autopsy room next and find it quiet and shiny clean, the floor still damp from mopping, long rows of empty steel tables gleaming dully in natural light that filters in through the one-way glass of side windows and those facing the parking lot. Banks of high-intensity lamps in the thirty-two-foot ceiling are turned off, the observation windows in the upper walls opening onto teaching labs that are dim and empty.
    Luke Zenner often lingers down here, enjoying the quiet to do paperwork, to check on pending projects, or to tidy up his station, number 2, right next to mine. But I don’t see him or anyone else, my five other pathologists and team of investigators probably in their offices or taking care of various appointments or out on calls.
    I enter my iPhone’s password to send Luke a message and notice I have a new one from Benton.
    We still on for 5 & you ok? Have seen the news.
    I write him back that I will return directly to the CFC after court and probably work into the early evening. I can meet with him and the other agents as soon as I’m done with the post.
    Will call when I get a breath
, I text him.
Dinner? If really late, take-out here while we meet?
    My phone immediately chimes and he replies,
Will pick up Armando’s.
    I answer
, Combos with xtra cheese, fresh tomato, peppers, onions. On 1 of them add spinach & artichoke hearts. Say they R for me.
I tell him I look forward to seeing him.
    It will feel reassuring when Benton appears, when the rest of this afternoon is behind me, and I glance at my watch. It’s twenty-eight minutes past one, and I text Luke about the Howard Roth case, letting him know we need to discuss it and not to release the body yet.
I should be back in a few hours
, I type, as I move on past the soiled room, the anteroom, the changing rooms and locker rooms, no sign of Luke or anyone, which is typical at this hour, unless we have an unusually heavy caseload.
    Beyond anthropology the corridor bends around to the Bio4 containment lab, or what we informally refer to as decomp, reserved for suspected infectious or contaminated or badly decomposed bodies. Pushing a hands-free button that automatically opens a metal door, I walk into an air-locked vestibule and hang up my coat. Grabbing protective clothing off shelves, I push a second button that opens a second door and find Marino covered from the neck down in white Tyvek, checking his camera equipment.
    The stretcher bearing the black pouch is parked next to one of three stainless-steel tables attached to wall sinks, and above them observation windows are dark. A clock mounted next to the walk-in cooler reminds me unpleasantly that it’s now one-thirty. I’m supposed to be in court in exactly half an hour, and I continue to hope, at this point rather ridiculously, that I’ll be canceled at the last minute. Or perhaps the trial is running behind schedule and the judge will understand that I am, too.
    “Was afraid you got lost,” Marino says, as he covers his bald head with a designer surgical cap, this one a
medicine skull
that he ties in back like a