man as perceptive as you.”
“Thanks Doc. I’m glad you’re on this one.”
Relovich was a big, beefy guy with broad shoulders and a thick neck. But on the metal gurney, naked, streaked with blood, he looked victimized and vulnerable. Relovich’s brown eyes glittered under the fluorescent lights, as lifeless as imbedded marbles.
The countless corpses I had seen rarely had looks of terror or horror on their faces, which had surprised me when I finished basic training and saw my first dead bodies. Often, they looked simply confused or disoriented. But Relovich had a curious expression: his mouth was open and his eyes were slightly narrowed as if he was about to raise an index finger and say, “I disagree.”
I bent over the body and spotted a thick scar on the side of his nose. That must have been where the bullet fragment entered his nasal cavity before landing in his mouth. I don’t think I would’ve had the balls to spit it out, carry my partner to safety, and then return fire.
When I pick up a case late—like this one—the victim is an abstraction for the first day or two. It is not until the autopsy, until I see the victim splayed on the gurney, cold and gray, the dangling toe tag, that the murder becomes palpable to me.
Now, looking down at Relovich’s corpse, I felt a great responsibility. To him. To securing justice. And I felt a great burden. I knew that if I didn’t solve this case, it would never be solved. It’s all on me. I looked around at the other bodies on the gurneys and thought of my murdered relatives. They never had a proper burial. Nobody investigated their deaths. Their killers were never brought to justice. Not one of them even has a tombstone.
Gupta snapped his fingers and said, “Wake up, Ash.” He pointed to the neat, round hole below Relovich’s lower lip. “A clean entry wound.” He then lifted Relovich up, and I spotted at the base of his head the jagged, star-shaped exit wound.
“I’ve got a complicated diagnosis for you,” Gupta said gravely. “Cause of death, mode of death, and manner of death can be summed up like this: B.B.T.S.”
“I don’t know that one,” I said, perplexed. “You better explain.”
“Brains blown to shit,” Gupta said with a high-pitched giggle. Still smiling, he grabbed a scalpel off the counter and made a large Y-shaped incision from Relovich’s shoulders to his navel. An autopsy technician,wielding a huge pair of clippers, crunched through Relovich’s ribs and removed the sternum.
“No matter how many times I hear it, I hate that sound,” I said.
Gupta lifted the rib cage and peered inside, like a mechanic searching for a missing spark plug. Pointing to an expanse of brown, pitted tissue he said, “Very dirty lungs.”
“Well, he
did
work in Los Angeles.”
“No. He was a smoker.”
After deftly trimming out Relovich’s heart and other internal organs, weighing them, and logging the information on a clipboard, Gupta grabbed a metal ladle, dipped it into the open chest cavity, and poured a small quantity of blood into a glass vial. “See how easy that blood pours? Your victim expired quickly. No thickening or clotting at all.”
“Coroner investigator estimates time of death at about twenty-three hundred,” I said. “But I don’t trust their estimates. What’s your take?”
Gupta jabbed at the stomach contents with the scalpel. “I’d say the investigator was pretty close.” He pointed to a checkerboard of partially digested brown meat fibers and what appeared to be white potato chunks. “He probably ate dinner a few hours before he was killed. That food had just started working through his digestive system.”
Gupta dissected Relovich’s neck, snipped out the larynx, and then with a few deft slashes just above the throat, removed the U-shaped hyoid bone, which was encased in pink tissue. He pointed to a jagged edge of bone and said, “The hyoid’s cracked. Your guy was probably strangled.”
I pointed to
“Thanks Doc. I’m glad you’re on this one.”
Relovich was a big, beefy guy with broad shoulders and a thick neck. But on the metal gurney, naked, streaked with blood, he looked victimized and vulnerable. Relovich’s brown eyes glittered under the fluorescent lights, as lifeless as imbedded marbles.
The countless corpses I had seen rarely had looks of terror or horror on their faces, which had surprised me when I finished basic training and saw my first dead bodies. Often, they looked simply confused or disoriented. But Relovich had a curious expression: his mouth was open and his eyes were slightly narrowed as if he was about to raise an index finger and say, “I disagree.”
I bent over the body and spotted a thick scar on the side of his nose. That must have been where the bullet fragment entered his nasal cavity before landing in his mouth. I don’t think I would’ve had the balls to spit it out, carry my partner to safety, and then return fire.
When I pick up a case late—like this one—the victim is an abstraction for the first day or two. It is not until the autopsy, until I see the victim splayed on the gurney, cold and gray, the dangling toe tag, that the murder becomes palpable to me.
Now, looking down at Relovich’s corpse, I felt a great responsibility. To him. To securing justice. And I felt a great burden. I knew that if I didn’t solve this case, it would never be solved. It’s all on me. I looked around at the other bodies on the gurneys and thought of my murdered relatives. They never had a proper burial. Nobody investigated their deaths. Their killers were never brought to justice. Not one of them even has a tombstone.
Gupta snapped his fingers and said, “Wake up, Ash.” He pointed to the neat, round hole below Relovich’s lower lip. “A clean entry wound.” He then lifted Relovich up, and I spotted at the base of his head the jagged, star-shaped exit wound.
“I’ve got a complicated diagnosis for you,” Gupta said gravely. “Cause of death, mode of death, and manner of death can be summed up like this: B.B.T.S.”
“I don’t know that one,” I said, perplexed. “You better explain.”
“Brains blown to shit,” Gupta said with a high-pitched giggle. Still smiling, he grabbed a scalpel off the counter and made a large Y-shaped incision from Relovich’s shoulders to his navel. An autopsy technician,wielding a huge pair of clippers, crunched through Relovich’s ribs and removed the sternum.
“No matter how many times I hear it, I hate that sound,” I said.
Gupta lifted the rib cage and peered inside, like a mechanic searching for a missing spark plug. Pointing to an expanse of brown, pitted tissue he said, “Very dirty lungs.”
“Well, he
did
work in Los Angeles.”
“No. He was a smoker.”
After deftly trimming out Relovich’s heart and other internal organs, weighing them, and logging the information on a clipboard, Gupta grabbed a metal ladle, dipped it into the open chest cavity, and poured a small quantity of blood into a glass vial. “See how easy that blood pours? Your victim expired quickly. No thickening or clotting at all.”
“Coroner investigator estimates time of death at about twenty-three hundred,” I said. “But I don’t trust their estimates. What’s your take?”
Gupta jabbed at the stomach contents with the scalpel. “I’d say the investigator was pretty close.” He pointed to a checkerboard of partially digested brown meat fibers and what appeared to be white potato chunks. “He probably ate dinner a few hours before he was killed. That food had just started working through his digestive system.”
Gupta dissected Relovich’s neck, snipped out the larynx, and then with a few deft slashes just above the throat, removed the U-shaped hyoid bone, which was encased in pink tissue. He pointed to a jagged edge of bone and said, “The hyoid’s cracked. Your guy was probably strangled.”
I pointed to
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