Deviations by Mike Markel Page B

left. He looked about
375 pounds, up from 350, which was his normal inflation rate in recent years. He
was wearing his old white lab coat, frayed around the sleeves and where the
lapels folded over. It was laundered, but there wasn’t any kind of detergent
that could remove the tie-dyed crimson and yellow that covered the front. He
had on some kind of baggy, plasticy waterproof pants, with orange Crocs on his
feet.
    Even though the AC was set on Siberia, like it
always was, little drops of sweat dotted the top of his bald head. He had done
a below-average job shaving this morning, with rows of stubble visible in the
folds between his chins. Loose skin was hanging off his cheek bones a little
more than I remembered, and his gray eyes, normally sparkling like a kid’s,
looked flat and dull. All in all, he looked terrible, and I loved him
completely.
    Robin, the Evidence Tech, got up from a busted old
office chair missing the back and one of the arms. She came over to me and extended
her hand. “How ya doin’, Karen?”
    “Good, Robin. How are you?”
    “Not bad,” she said cheerfully. “Long as they keep
giving me pubes to check for semen, I’m happy.”
    “I like the new highlights.” When I last saw her, the
streaks in her blond hair were green. Now they were aquamarine, which set off
the two small turquoise stones on the horseshoe loop at the end of her left
eyebrow.
    “Thank you,” she said brightly. “It complements
the freckles, don’t you think?”
    “Very nice,” I said. Even though Robin and I were
from different generations and we were members of the same species only
technically, I suddenly felt, for the first time, that I was back on the job.
    “Okay,” Chief Murtaugh said. He gestured to the
Medical Examiner. “You want to take us through it?”
    Harold’s cheeks puffed out with effort as he made
his slow way over to the steel table. A white cloth covered the body of Dolores
Weston. I knew he’d begin by pulling back the cloth and telling us what he’d
seen during the autopsy. But when we’d gathered around the table, he turned and
faced us.
    “This is case 1019007, Dolores Weston. The body is
that of a female Caucasian, aged fifty-nine, with brown hair and green eyes.
The body, which is sixty-eight inches long and weighs 123 pounds, is
unremarkable, with three scars: one an apparent appendectomy, one consistent
with a fracture to the right humerus, and the third consistent with a cartilage
reconstruction to the left knee. All three scars appear to be at least three
decades old. We took X-rays, which confirmed the fracture to the humerus and
the knee procedure.”
    I glanced at Ryan to see if he knew why Harold
wasn’t lifting the cloth off the stiff. Ryan gave a small shrug.
    “The body temperature was eighty-two degrees
Fahrenheit when it was brought in after being recovered yesterday afternoon at
2:43 pm . We removed the victim’s
clothing, gathered hair and skin samples, as well as sand, dirt, and other
substances in the chest wound and under the nails. We checked for fibers and
other substances, and we performed a rape examination. For reasons that will
become obvious in a moment, we have not yet performed the autopsy.”
    Harold looked over to the chief, who nodded for
him to proceed. He turned to the table and placed his hand on the cloth near
Weston’s head. He paused a moment, then carefully pulled it back.
    Long time ago, in the academy, I’d gone through
some medical training, the standard three or four-day course. The usual ABC
stuff—airway, breathing, circulation—as well as how to recognize possible
spinal-cord injuries so we wouldn’t yank the poor bastards around and mess them
up worse than they already were. Harold had come in for a morning to talk with
us about autopsies, and the Evidence Tech, some dweeb before Robin, to talk about
how to gather evidence at the scene.
    I’ve seen some stuff. Lots of people with faces
full of windshield glass. Guys with stumpy