The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

do their job right then no one will ever be able to tell the man’s brain is gone.” He began to sew the scalp together with a loose suture. “See, a couple stitches on top of the scalp is all we do ’cause the mortician’s gonna take it all out anyway. They’ll fluff up his hair and you’ll never even see where I cut him. Unless it’s a bald dude. You can’t do as much with a bald dude except try to hide it with a whole lotta makeup and a big pillow. Good thing Brent Safer had so much hair.”
    “Yeah. Good thing,” she said, gently stroking the hair that made a fringe against his neck. It wasn’t until she touched him that the weight of who she was standing near washed through her. This was a man she’d seen on the big screen, his overlarge image flickering in syrupy theater light. In a strange way she felt as if she knew him. Lyric, who loved to read celebrity magazines, always shared the gossipy threads of Brent Safer’s persona, filaments of stories that were woven into a life fabric that may or may not have been true—it didn’t matter to Cameryn because it was always more interesting than her own life. This man had driven the fastest cars, dated the most beautiful entertainers in the world, sailed on yachts, and stayed at a rehab center in Utah designed just for celebrities. And yet he was reduced in death, like every other human. It somehow made her sad.
    “What happened to you?” she whispered as Ben pushed the tip of the curved needle through a top portion of the scalp. Cameryn’s gaze drifted to the actor’s hands; it startled her to realize his nails were manicured, polished as smooth as the inside of a shell. His chest, too, had been waxed so that his skin looked like marble. The soft mix of acoustical guitar and violin had changed to a vocal, and Cameryn suddenly keyed in to the words at the end of the song.
    Forever the sand slips through the glass
Love is the thing that eternally lasts
We’re fresh when we’re young
We wither with age
Live life without borders
And write on your page

    She watched Ben clip the thread, unaware, it seemed, of how closely the words echoed the dead man’s life.
    ’ Cause even the stars fall from the sky.
They burn as they flame.
They blaze as they die.

    She stroked his forearm with a gloved finger. How did you die? Did someone do this to you? Or is this something you did to yourself? For the briefest moment she closed her eyes, wishing she could hear an answer the way Lyric swore she could if she would only believe. But instead of ghostly whispers she heard the rumble of Dr. Moore instructing Justin on the disinfection properties of a cleaner called Virex and the clank of metal instruments as they dropped into the sink. No, if the dead were to speak, it would have to be through the evidence they left behind. Clues that she would need to read. She opened her eyes just as Ben finished rethreading the needle.
    “Okay, Cammie, now we put the guts back in. Pick up the Hefty bag and hand it to me,” he instructed. “Yeah, it’s under the table, right by your feet.”
    Cameryn did as she was told, aware that the bag contained the remains of Brent Safer’s dissected organs. It was heavier than she expected, at least fifteen pounds.
    “Got it,” said Ben as he plucked it from her hands. He set the bag into Brent Safer’s hollowed torso and topped it with the already cut breast plate. “I kind of smoosh it down so it’s all even,” Ben told her. “Now I’m ready to sew. Watch—I’ll teach you a little technique. I clamp the skin together with these towel clips. See? They’re a kind of forceps with itty-bitty teeth.” He pulled the skin from either side and pinched the edges together with scissors that bent at the end in a kind of clamp.
    “Then I baste the skin with great big baseball stitches, at least an inch apart.”
    Cameryn moved closer to Ben’s side. Standing on his right, she could hear his gentle grunts as he pushed the needle through. “Human skin is tough,” Ben said. She could see a glisten of sweat gathering at the edge of his hair. He pulled down his mask so that it dangled against his chest. “I have to toss the needle when I’m done ’cause they get dull. Same with the scalpels, well, the blades, anyway. They’re disposable.” The needle popped through the skin as Ben made his way toward the crook in the Y incision. “We still haven’t opened up Leather Ed. He’s back there in the cooler.”
    “Oh.” She