Page 117 of Evil Bones
My first reaction. Brown looked like a prop for a B-grade zombie movie.MaybeBrown. I decided to wait before sharing Katy’s information with Nguyen.
Joe directed a question to Nguyen by raising two dark caterpillar brows. Nguyen nodded.
With one deft maneuver, Joe inserted both hands into the open cranial cavity, teased the brain free, and placed it on a corkboard positioned beside the table.
I watched as Nguyen weighed, observed, and sectioned the brain. As she took samples and dropped each into a vial filled with preservative. As Hawkins sealed and marked the vials with identifying information.
At Nguyen’s signal, Hawkins used a scalpel to make the proverbial Y-incision, slicing Maybe Brown’s torso horizontally from shoulder to shoulder, then vertically down the center of his chest. That done, he went back to the oscillating saw to cut through and remove the sternum and the ventral portion of the rib cage.
One by one, Nguyen examined and snipped tissue from each of the internal organs. Lungs. Heart. Liver. Kidneys. Stomach. Pancreas. Spleen. Gall bladder. Intestines. Bladder.
On gross examination everything looked normal. No tumors, lesions, congenital abnormalities, or indications of past trauma or disease.
Setting the brain and entrails aside, Nguyen began her examination of the disemboweled body. Her face remained neutral—the part visible above her blue polypropylene mask—until she probed the man’s anus.
“Palpate here,” she said to Hawkins, indicating the location of the anomaly that had caught her attention.
Joe explored the area with the tip of one finger.
“Eyeh.” Bushy brows going into full furrow. “Something hinky there.”
The three of us gathered at the computer terminal to reexamine the lower abdominal X-rays.
It took a full minute until I noticed a subtle opacity maybe four inches up the anal canal, a white cloudiness obscured by an overlying organ.
“Look.” I finger-tapped the white blob.
“What the frick?” Nguyen murmured, reengaging her scalpel.
Minutes later an object lay oozing blood and decomp fluids onto a folded towel on the instrument tray. Silver and flat, the thing measured two inches long by half an inch wide.
Needing no direction, Hawkins prepared an ABFO ruler to serve as scale and case identifier, shot pics, then took the object to the sink for additional cleaning. As the dark outer coating washed down the drain, a hairline crack appeared circling one end.
“It’s a thumb drive,” I said.
“Appears so,” Hawkins said.
“Oh, my,” Nguyen said.
I extended a gloved palm.
Hawkins placed the device on it.
Grasping what I suspected was a removable cap, I tugged gently with my index finger and thumb. The cap came off revealing a USB connector.
“You called it,” Hawkins said.
“How odd,” Nguyen said.
“Why would a data storage device be shoved up a vagrant’s butt?” I asked, eyes moving from the thing on my palm to the man on the table.
Mild disapproval came my way from the others.
“Am I allowed to view the contents?” Nguyen may have been posing that question to herself.
“I’ve no clue where the law stands on ass drives,” I said in response.
More disapproval.
