The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

timing, Dr. Moore spun forward again and placed his palm against the handle of the door. “And here we are.”
    Moore pulled on the metal lever and ushered her inside. Cold air, heavy with the stench, hit her full in the face, and she tried for a moment to hold her breath. Cupping her hand over her nose she walked on, her eyes filming as the smell rolled over her. Dr. Moore flipped on the lights, which came on one row at a time, like those in a stadium.
    She tried not to register the bodies resting on shelves like packages of meat in a deli. There were seven of them in total. Six decedents rested on stainless steel shelves stacked against the wall, but the seventh and farthest away still lay on a metal gurney. White cotton sheets had been placed over each body, including the head, but the feet remained exposed. Each decedent wore a toe tag. She followed Dr. Moore past a body whose toenails were painted a seashell pink. Another set of feet belonged to a man whose nails were as thick as a rhino’s hide.
    “Are Safer and Stein here?” she whispered. Clearing her throat she repeated the question, louder this time. There was no need to speak softly when everyone who might listen in on her conversation was dead.
    “No, they’re long gone. Their publicists couldn’t get them out fast enough. Vultures.” Dr. Moore spat the word. “I’ve been holding off the media by telling them the tests results haven’t come in yet, but my phone hasn’t stopped ringing—everybody wants to score the juicy details. I despise celebrity deaths.”
    “People go wild when someone famous dies, but no one cares about Leather Ed. But life is still . . . life,” she said.
    “Oh, I remember the heady days of youth, when I was an idealist, too,” Dr. Moore answered her. “I’ve learned through the years that life is not fair. He’s at the end, the one on the autopsy tray.”
    The refrigerator hum was loud in her ears. The body at the farthest end had toes that had turned a purplish black. The tag read Edward Staskiewicz .
    Reflexively, Cameryn clamped her hand tighter over her nose, but it was no use. The stench penetrated her fingers and she breathed him in, the odor thick enough to taste. Dr. Moore, though, seemed unfazed as he stepped to the right of Leather Ed’s head. With an expert motion he rolled back the sheet all the way to just above Leather Ed’s groin. “He came in with boots on and Ben had a devil of a time getting them off. In the end he had to slice them with a carpet knife. We had to cut off his leathers, too. My guess is he had been dead for three weeks, although I’m sure the cool air slowed his decomposition. As you know, declaring time of death is never an exact science.”
    “Uh-huh. Especially when the body is in putrefaction.” Cameryn forced her thoughts to turn away from the smell and concentrate instead on what remained. This was what told the story. She could see his mind in what he left behind. Something told her the answer was there for the taking, if only she could see it. She leaned closer, the clinical side of her mind firing up as she studied the coiled gray hair that rested like metal filings against the tray. She took in the long lobes of his ears and the white hair matted thick on his chest, the huge stitches that reached to his navel, the paper white look of his skin. Livor mortis had settled into his hip area, which made the flesh appear a deep rose. His abdomen, though, had turned a mossy green, and green streaks that formed along the veins snaked up into his shoulders and chest.
    “That greenish color comes from what we called marbleization,” Dr. Moore explained. “Ben calls it ‘Shrek green.’ You see the blisters along his skin?”
    Cameryn nodded.
    “Those contain serous fluid. It’s all part of the fermentation process. His leather clothes kept him together, which, in its way, was helpful. Fortunately he did not enter the black stage of putrefaction. In the black stage the body cavity actually ruptures. Tomorrow we’ll put him into the freezer.”
    If he was testing her to see if she would fold, it did no good. She forced herself to lower her hand from her mouth. “Can I see his legs?”
    “Be my guest.” Grabbing the sheet from the ankles, he pulled it up. Cameryn peered at Leather Ed’s shins, then his feet. There was mottling here, with white circles that looked like popcorn against deep purple, green, and blue, but there was nothing unusual. His hair was finer