The Fold: A Novel Part 24

"What?"

"Over two million lines of code. How'd you go through all of it in one day?"

She looked at him for a moment. She took in a slow breath. Then her eyes got watery and trembled. "Oh, you poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"What?"

"I'm going to throw up all over you on the way home."

TWENTY-FOUR.

A dark-haired woman with owlish gla.s.ses and a white coat leaned into the lobby. "Leland Erikson?"

Mike straightened up. "Yeah."

"Phoebe Forrester." She held out her hand.

"Dr. Forrester?" he repeated with a faint smile.

"Believe me," she said as they shook hands, "I heard it all through med school." She studied his face for a moment, then gestured him through the door and into a white hallway. "I've been expecting you. Someone from the Defense Department called, said you'd be stopping by."

He bit back a yawn. "I hope it's not too inconvenient."

"It's not a busy day, and it's a break in the routine. Are you okay?"

"Sorry. Late night dealing with a drunk friend."

"Ahhh. You were one of the ones who found the body, right?"

"It wasn't a body then."

"Right. Sorry." She stopped by a wide door. "How do you want to do this?"

"To be honest, it's my first autopsy. What do you recommend?"

"Do you want to see the body or just hear the results?"

"I know which one I want," he said, "but I think I need to see the body."

Forrester gestured him to the next door. "He's cleaned up. It won't be that bad." She pushed open the door. "Did you know him?"

"Kind of. We'd hung out a couple of times."

"Just remember to breathe. Speak up if you need a minute."

The cold smell of polished metal and chemicals. .h.i.t his nose. He'd seen morgues on television, but he still paused for a moment in front of the wall of steel doors. Phoebe walked to the far corner and double-checked a clipboard. "This was an odd one."

"Odd how?"

"Better to show you." She pulled a pair of latex gloves from a box. "You want a pair?"

"Hopefully, I won't need them."

She held the box for another moment. He tugged out a pair of gloves and held them in his hand. She snapped hers on. "What's your field of specialty? Your people didn't say."

"Early American literature."

"Sorry?"

"It's a joke," he said. "Don't worry about me. Feel free to be clinical. I'll ask if I don't understand something."

"Okay."

She yanked on the handle and slid the body out. There was no sheet. Both of Bob's eyes were cold and white now. His yellow skin had faded to a pale, waxy color. A large Y of st.i.tches stretched out across his chest. The ragged wound in his side had been cleaned. He'd been a big believer in manscaping.

"My official ruling," said Forrester, "going off the scalp wounds, is that the underlying cause of death is sharp force trauma. Accidental. That's what's going to be on the death certificate."

"But you're saying it like that because...?"

"Because there's a lot wrong with this guy. But trying to pin down all the contributing factors for the chain might take a few weeks. Maybe even months. There's the obvious stuff," she said, pointing at the wound below the ribs. "He's got a nice gash on the back of his skull, too. Between them, they account for the blood loss. Less than three pints in him when he got here. I'd guess one, maybe one and a half pints of what he lost ended up on his clothes, but they still need to be tested."

"Dammit," said Mike.

"What?"

"His clothes were already b.l.o.o.d.y."

"I'm sorry?"

"It can wait." He nodded at Bob's-at the body's wound. "Do you know what that is?"

"It's a puncture wound," she said. "I'd be tempted to say it's ballistic trauma-a gunshot wound-because it goes straight through the soft tissue, but it's too clean to be point-blank. This..." She shrugged. "Maybe a very fast stab or thrust of some kind?"

He gestured at the malformed body. "So you think all of this might've contributed to his death?"

Forrester shrugged. "Maybe. I don't think he would've lived much longer, even if he hadn't bled out. Three or four months, tops."

"Why?"

"He had cancer."

"What kind?"

"Lots of kinds." She waved a hand across his body. "His skin's like that because of pancreatic cancer. In some cases it causes painless jaundice. I heard about a patient this bad once when I was a resident, somebody with skin like the Simpsons, but I've never seen it before."

"And you're sure it's cancer?"

She nodded and gestured at the Y incision. "His pancreas was just a mess of tumors. Same with his liver, lungs, colon, and prostate. A few small ones in his brain, too. Spleen and bone marrow show signs of leukemia. Except for the pancreas, none of it's that advanced, but I don't think he was getting treatment for any of it. No sign of chemo in his system, but..."

He looked at Forrester. "But what?"

"Nothing."

"I need to know anything you found."

Forrester tapped her fingers against each other. "There's not going to be any trouble about this, is there?"

"What do you mean, trouble?"

"I'm not going to get black-bagged for figuring out too much, am I?"

Mike blinked three times. "What?"

"You know. Black sack over the head. Whisked away in an unmarked van, never seen again."

"You watch a lot of television, don't you?"

"I just..." She shrugged. "This whole thing is a little weird, and then the DOD calls, and then you show up..."

"You're safe," Mike said. "Honest. Believe me, if I could get somebody black-bagged, there are four or five people who'd be on the list ahead of you."

She exhaled and her shoulders relaxed.

"So what'd you find? What's so weird?"

Forrester gestured at the scarred hand. "See that?"

"Yeah."

"That's a burn." She pointed at another scar near the elbow. "So is that. I'd guess maybe a year or so old. You can tell by the way they flatten out against the skin."

"Okay."

"This guy has a couple of old burns and a lot of cancer. One thing causes both of those."

Mike felt his brows go up. "Radiation?" He looked at the body. "Those are radiation burns?"

"No such thing. Burns are burns. If you don't know the cause, you can't always pin it down from the wound itself, despite what you may have seen on television." She shot a quick smirk at him. "Combined with all the cancer, though...I'd be willing to bet a few bucks on it."

"How many?"

Her mouth twitched side to side. "Maybe fifty."

"That sounds like a pretty confident bet."

"I'd go higher, but there's a bit of a conflict. Burns mean intense radioactive exposure for a very brief time. But cancer's a result of long-term, low-level exposure."

"How long term?"

"It's not really something you can work backward to figure it out. It usually takes years for radiation cancers to manifest, but there are cases where it's taken a lot less. My a.s.sumption was it was tied to everything else."

He looked at Bob-at the body-again. "Everything else?"

"Well, look at him. He's had the s.h.i.+t beat out of him a couple times over the past few months."

"No," said Mike. "That's all...pretty recent."

Forrester bit her lip. She shook her head. "This is all old damage."

"It can't be."

She ran a finger along the body's bubbly jaw line. "See this? That's scar tissue. Old scar tissue. Again, I'd guess a year, at the most."

He crouched and peered at the line of pale ripples in the skin. "You're sure?"

"Yeah. And it's a mess. Looks like half his face was ripped off and he didn't get any st.i.tches. I don't even think it was taped. I'd say he just held it in place for a couple of hours until the blood clotted and it all healed by secondary intention."

Mike frowned.

She pointed at his arm. "Same with this. That twist? That's a broken humerus that wasn't set. Well, wasn't set right, anyway. Probably hurt like h.e.l.l all the time."

"Broken when?"

"A little over a year. Again, all consistent."

Mike crossed his arms.

"Something wrong?"

"Very wrong. How old's the puncture wound?"

"I'd say an hour before death."

He frowned again. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. There was a lot of tissue damage, but it didn't hit any major arteries, so that's consistent with blood loss. A few inches higher, closer to the armpit, that'd be a different story."

"Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"Two more things. They almost seem minor compared to everything else."