Grave Situation by Alex MacLean

vena cava were both damaged. Death ensued after
massive hemorrhage.”
    He came back and picked up the
breastplate. He turned it over and looked at the
underside.
    “The tip of the blade actually
nicked the posterior surface of the gladiolus.” Coulter’s normal
didactic tone of voice changed, Allan noticed. For a brief spurt, a
trace of guarded amazement replaced it. The doctor’s eyes became
reflective, as though trying to remember if he had seen this
before. “Good thing the blade wasn’t longer. It could’ve come out
the front of the chest.”
    He went back to work on the body,
removing the pericardial sac. Next came the lungs. Another odor,
acrid and metallic, began to overpower the smell of meat. Allan
found himself staring into the thoracic cavity at a pool of blood
that looked inches deep. He put a hand to his nose and stepped back
a few feet.
    “You okay, Lieutenant?” Sodero
asked, looking at him from the other side of the dissection
table.
    “It’s just the smell. Nothing
serious.”
    Coulter glanced
over from the sink. “We have some VapoRub . Might help you.”
    Allan put up a hand. “No, I’m fine.
Really.”
    “Suit yourself, Lieutenant,”
Coulter said. “I found the root of the right lung damaged, but it
wasn’t life threatening.”
    He came back over and inspected the
neck for trauma. With the scalpel slicing away, he took out the
larynx, trachea, carotids, and tongue. These were explored at an
adjacent table.
    He systematically emptied the
abdominal cavity and checked the stomach for undigested food. Once
more, he didn’t find anything noteworthy. He finished up by
collecting tissue samples of all the major organs for later
microscopic analysis and one vial of urine through the fundus in
the bladder.
    Sodero took the block from beneath
the victim’s back and placed it under the head. Scalpel in hand, he
started an incision behind the right ear across the crown of the
head to the back of the left ear. Face straining, he pulled the
front section of scalp up and over the top of the head, rolling it
down over the victim’s face. The back section was pulled down to
the nape of the neck. All semblance of Brad Hawkins had now
disappeared, buried under a contortion of skin.
    Allan winced.
    Flesh and
bone , he thought. We’re all just flesh and bone.
    Coulter took over at this point.
Using the Stryker saw, he cut around the perimeter of the cranium.
Before he could lift away the skullcap, he had had to remove the
dura mater that adhered to the inside. He took a chisel and slid it
under the edge of the cranium, gingerly prying away the thick
membrane. As the top of the skull was worked free, there was a wet
sucking sound.
    “No signs of epidural hematoma,”
Coulter said. “Meninges are clear.”
    Next, he stripped away the white
dura to reveal the convoluted surface of the brain. It glistened
under the powerful overhead lights.
    “The cerebrum looks good. No
subdural hematoma or signs of other hemorrhaging.”
    Gently working his fingers down the
sides of the brain, he lifted on the frontal lobes. He skillfully
cut through nerves, arteries and the intersection between the
spinal column and brain stem. In his hands, the brain quivered like
a gelatinous mass as he carried it to the scale and weighed it.
Coulter then suspended the organ in a jar of formalin.
    With the autopsy over, Sodero
poured the hodgepodge of organs into the body cavity and set the
breastplate onto the chest. Threading heavy twine through the eye
of a hagedorn needle, he began stitching up the abdomen.
    The brain would not go back with
the body. Coulter positioned the cranium in place and then rolled
the scalp back over the top of it. As if by magic, the face of Brad
Hawkins reappeared.
    “I can have my full report to you
in the morning, Lieutenant,” said Coulter, writing on his
clipboard. “The lab work will be later in the week. DNA profiling
will be a few weeks.”
    “If we’re lucky,” replied Allan.
“The lab is