Read Online Faithless by Karin Slaughter - Free Book Online Page B

Lena nodded. Sara pressed the pedal under the table, engaging the Dictaphone, and recorded into the tape, “Coroner’s case number eighty-four-seventy-two is the unembalmed body of a Caucasian Jane Doe with brown hair and brown eyes. Age is unknown but estimated to be eighteen to twenty years old. Weight, one thirteen; height, sixty-three inches. Skin is cool to the touch and consistent with being buried underground for an unspecified period of time.” She tapped off the recorder, telling Carlos, “We need the temperature for the last two weeks.”
    Carlos made a note on the board as Jeffrey asked, “Do you think she’s been out there longer than a week?”
    “It got down to freezing on Monday,” she reminded him. “There wasn’t much waste in the jar, but she could have been restricting her fluid intake in case she ran out. She was also probably dehydrated from shock.” She tapped on the Dictaphone and took up a scalpel, saying, “The internal exam is started with the standard Y incision.”
    The first time Sara had performed an autopsy, her hand had shaken. As a doctor, she had been trained to use a light touch. As a surgeon, she had been taught that every cut made into the body should be calculated and controlled; every movement of her hand working to heal, not harm. The initial cuts made at autopsy- slicing into the body as if it were a piece of raw meat- went against everything she had learned.
    She started the scalpel on the right side, anterior to the acromial process. She cut medial to the breasts, the tip of the blade sliding along the ribs, and stopped at the xiphoid process. She did the same on the left side, the skin folding away from the scalpel as she followed the midline down to the pubis and around the umbilicus, yellow abdominal fat rolling up in the sharp blade’s wake.
    Carlos passed Sara a pair of scissors, and she was using these to cut through the peritoneum when Lena gasped, putting her hand to her mouth.
    Sara asked, “Are you-” just as Lena bolted from the room, gagging.
    There was no bathroom in the morgue, and Sara assumed Lena was trying to make it upstairs to the hospital. From the retching noise that echoed in the stairwell, she hadn’t made it. Lena coughed several times and there was the distinct sound of splatter.
    Carlos murmured something under his breath and went to get the mop and bucket.
    Jeffrey had a sour look on his face. He had never been good around anyone being sick. “You think she’s okay?”
    Sara looked down at the body, wondering what had set Lena off. The detective had attended autopsies before and never had a bad reaction. The body hadn’t really been dissected yet; just a section of the abdominal viscera was exposed.
    Carlos said, “It’s the smell.”
    “What smell?” Sara asked, wondering if she had punctured the bowel.
    He furrowed his brow. “Like at the fair.”
    The door popped open and Lena came back into the room looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what-” She stopped about five feet from the table, her hand over her mouth as if she might be sick again. “Jesus, what is that?”
    Jeffrey shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.”
    “Carlos?” Sara asked.
    He said, “It’s… like something burning.”
    “No,” Lena countered, taking a step back. “Like it’s curdled. Like it makes your jaw ache to smell it.”
    Sara heard alarms go off in her head. “Does it smell bitter?” she asked. “Like bitter almonds?”
    “Yeah,” Lena allowed, still keeping her distance. “I guess.”
    Carlos was nodding, too, and Sara felt herself break out into a cold sweat.
    “Christ,” Jeffrey exhaled, taking a step away from the body.
    “We’ll have to finish this at the state lab,” Sara told him, throwing a sheet over the corpse. “I don’t even have a chemical hood here.”
    Jeffrey reminded her, “They’ve got an isolation chamber in Macon. I could call Nick and see if we can use it.”
    She snapped off