Memory Man

He put the book back on the shelf and left the library.

As he was walking his phone buzzed again. It was Lancaster.

“Nothing yet on the email,” she said. “You really think it was the guy?”

“I do.”

“The FBI is checking it out too.”

“Anything on Lafferty yet?”

“That was the real reason I was calling. Can you meet me at the morgue?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just meet me there. You can see for yourself.”

* * *

Decker took a bus over to the morgue, which was on the outskirts of Burlington in an area that, like much of the city, had seen better days. He had pondered Lancaster’s words on the ride over but could not make much of them. What did she want him to see for himself?

When he arrived at the morgue’s front entrance she was waiting for him. Her expression was tight, edgy, her hand tremor even worse.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Come on, Bogart is already back there.”

They walked down halls reeking with the smell of antiseptic. And death. The dead had their own aroma that invaded one’s eyes, nose, and throat. Morgues were not clean places. In fact, they were extraordinarily dirty. No one had to worry about their patrons dying from infections.

Lancaster led the way and finally pushed through a pair of swinging doors. Decker followed her in. The space was large and filled with shelves and stainless steel autopsy tables, three of which were occupied by corpses draped with sheets. Water wands hung down from the ceiling, and there were cabinets filled with both bottles of liquids and the instruments necessary to cut up bodies. The whir of a Stryker saw sounded from another room. Decker had heard that one before. Someone’s skull was being opened up. He wondered if it was a victim from Mansfield about to have his or her brain plucked out for measuring, weighing, and probing.

A group of people was clustered around a table in the far back, Bogart among them. He was once more dressed in a suit, the tie and tie clip just so, the collar tab perfectly horizontal, not a hair out of place, the very picture of professionalism. But in the puffy face, reddened eyes, and slump in posture, Decker read a very different man. There were two other agents with him and a man Decker knew to be the chief medical examiner. They weren’t going to put anyone junior on cutting up an FBI agent. Indeed, Decker was surprised the Bureau hadn’t flown in its own guy.

Bogart looked up when he heard them approach. He nodded briefly, gave Decker a stiff hello with his eyes, and then looked back down at the body under the sheet.

Lancaster said to the ME, “What do we know so far?”

“As was noted preliminarily at the crime scene, cause of death, stab wound to the heart. The body was moved after death. Livor mortis showed that. Blood pooled into the interstitial tissues in her back, but she was found hanging from a light fixture.” He uncovered one of Lafferty’s arms. With difficulty he lifted it up because it was still stiff. “She’s starting to come out of rigor now, extremities backward to the jaw and neck, which more or less confirms the TOD preliminary at midnight.”

“But the ambient temp?” asked Decker. “It was cold.”

“My colleague on site made allowances for that. And the deceased was injected with a very powerful sedative. We found traces of it. It would have rendered her unconscious and incapable of defending herself.”

“And there was mutilation of the genitals,” said Decker.

The ME nodded. But when he started to lower the sheet to reveal this area, Decker stopped him. “We’ve already seen it.”

He looked at Lancaster expectantly. She in turn glanced at Bogart and said, “I haven’t told him. Thought he should just see it for himself.”

Bogart nodded and then looked at the other two agents, both burly men who looked like they wanted to kill someone, anyone. “Turn her over.”

The ME pulled back the sheet, revealing the body of Special Agent Lafferty. Her skin was very pale in front. The ME had of course already cut her open; the Y-incision track sutures across her upper torso looked brutal, menacing, like twin zipper tracks cut into human flesh. Her facial skin drooped a bit because it had been sheared off in one large piece and then put back up. Her skull had been sawed open and her brain taken out before the procedure was reversed and everything was put back together.

When they turned her over the paleness was gone. Her skin there was red, almost burnt-looking from where the blood had pooled.

Decker was not focused on that.

He was looking at what was on her back.

He drew closer because the skin discoloration made it hard to see clearly.

But then he did see it.

Someone had cut something into Lafferty’s back.

Someone had carved out words with the blade of a knife using her body as paper. There were two lines of writing, one directly below the other.

When will it end bro

You tell me

Chapter 33