A Caduceus is for Killing (6 page)

         KRASTOWITCZ RUBBED his throbbing head. He'd spent way too much time at the Tap and it was way too early to be slicing and dicing. "Got any aspirin?" he hollered at George who pulled on his gloves with a loud snap.
    "Sure. Rough night?"
    "Yeah, a bitch." He pulled his note pad from the inside jacket pocket and reviewed his carefully scribbled notes. Milton Grafton, successful virology researcher at Dorlynd, was actively looking for genetic sources of cancer. Some recent work on the AIDS virus had earned him a multi-million dollar National Institutes of Health Grant.
    Nothing else was significant except the modus operandi. Grafton was the last of three murders he'd worked on, all with severed penises. Connected? Maybe. But why? And what? The others had been bums, transients, throw-aways.
    Maybe they weren't connected at all--just coincidence. He might know more after the autopsy. Grafton worked on AIDS. Had he angered one of his homos?
    Krastowitcz had to talk to Pearson again. If his head ever stopped throbbing long enough. Suzanne was flaky, and from what she told him last night, she and Pearson were complete opposites. How could they live together without getting on each other's nerves? He hadn't managed to live with anyone. Some-times, though, opposites got along pretty well as long as they went in different directions and didn't intrude on each other. He made a note in his book to run a record check on Suzanne, too. If there was anything of interest in either of their pasts, it would show up.
    "Am I interrupting your beauty sleep?" George Iverson toss-ed the aspirin bottle in his direction.
    Gary caught it mid-air. "Excedrin, I hope."
    "You think this is a drugstore? This is the morgue, buddy. Come on, I'm ready." He laughed. "Get the name of the dog that bit you?"
    Gary covered his eyes. "Not so loud. Right after you left, Trent arrived with Pearson's roommate. I couldn't resist checking out his moves with the ladies. He's good. Real good. Unfortunately, I drowned my sorrows in a few pitchers of Milwaukee's finest, waiting for her to decide between me and Trent. Any more questions?"
    "Yeah. Who won?"
    "Obviously not me, chum."
    George pulled the sheet off the mutilated cadaver. "Hope you enjoy this as much as that steak last night."
    The shell that had been Milton Grafton a few days before, stretched the length of the metal table. Deep grooves on either side of the solid stainless-steel slab ran toward a drain at the lower end that waited for body fluids. Steel trays used to weigh various organs hung from scales over George's head.
    "Death is the great equalizer. There's a whole history hidden in this guy's blood and bones; unfortunately, because the dead can't speak, we'll never know what it is--only the way he died and the way he lived. Every time is always a surprise. God, I love pathology."
    "Only a ghoul could get a thrill out of this."
    Placing his foot on the recorder pedal, George pressed downward. "I'm ready to begin." He spoke into the hanging microphone. "The body is that of a well-nourished white male, reported age of 55, measuring 6 feet, 1 inch and weighing 185 pounds. Body identified as Milton Grafton. Eyes are blue-gray; right pupil measures 0.5 cm in diameter and left 0.5 cm. Gray-brown hair with slight frontal receding. The oral cavity is blocked by the presence of a severed penis, apparently belonging to the victim." He removed the organ. "Outwardly, the thorax and abdomen seem in their normal anatomic positions. I am now making a standard "Y" incision from each shoulder to the pit of the stomach and ending at the pubic bone."
    Krastowitcz watched as the scalpel slid effortlessly from the sternum toward the barren pubic triangle leaving a wake of severed sinew and tissue oozing from the newly exposed cavity. In a brief moment of time, a living breathing human was reduced to so much gore. Someday, he'd take his place on the slab--inevitably.
    He pointed toward the rib cage. "What's that?"
    George leaned in closer and studied his handiwork. "The left pleural cavity's been ruptured, causing multi-focal bilateral adhesions from the visceral pleura to the parietal pleura. The small and large bowel mucosa has been ruptured by the passage of a narrow blunt instrument, yet to be determined, inserted into the anus and forced upward. Exact etiology of the cause of death at this time has yet to be determined. I'm now separating the subphrenic area." George reached in through the ribs toward the pericardium.
    "I feel the tip of something narrow and rounded. Slender like a sword, but not sharp. Whew! Death was not instantaneous; the object didn't puncture the heart."
    Krastowticz took two steps back and rubbed his forehead. "Jesus."
    "See, Gary, the abdomen hasn't been punctured, either. But, look here. The pancreas has been torn. See that tan-gray area within the coarse surface?" George slowly lifted the torn pancreas and shoved it toward Gary's face.
    Instinctively, Krastowitcz swiped his hand away. "Cut it out, George. I'm not in the mood."
    "No tumors, but an area of hemorrhage is noted. Death couldn't have occurred for several minutes after initial onset of penetration, unless he died of shock, which is unlikely from the amount of blood at the scene." Taking his foot off the pedal he added, "pretty gruesome, huh, Gary-boy?"
    "Look, George, you're not going to get to me. Do you know how many autopsies I've attended in the last ten years? About as many as you've performed, so save the melodrama for someone who gives a shit. Get to the murder weapon." The pain in his head had dulled to a slow, even throb--not a good day for kidding.
    "Okay, okay. Don't get excited. I've dissected all the intestines around the instrument. See that area of tearing? There must have been a great force involved, because look. What the. . . For Christ's sake! Gary, look."
    George looked as surprised as Gary felt. The pathologist tugged on an eighteen-inch, slender staff intertwined with snakes. Covered with blood, it appeared red. "Why it's a caduceus!"
    "What the hell is that, George?"
    "Shit. It's brass. Come here, closer, while I wash it off." He walked to a large stainless steel basin. "It's the staff of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine. It's a. . . a caduceus; the symbol of the medical profession. Boy, somebody must've really been pissed about their bill!" George chuckled.
    "What a way to go." Krastowitcz shuddered. "`Mr. Jones, that'll be forty-thousand for the operation. There was one small problem though. Oops, the knife slipped and we cut your pecker off, Mr. Jones.' And Mr. Jones says, `Maybe you need your pecker realigned, Dr. Grafton?' Well thanks, George. Case closed! Let's get some lunch."
    "Real funny, big-boy. Don't you wish all your cases were this easy? I've still got to complete the gross description and finger through the other organs, weigh, measure, and sew him back up and you, the lucky investigating officer get to stand right here and watch me do it, so I don't miss anything. Why is it all you cops ever think about is eating?"
    "Don't forget sex, George. That comes before eating in my book."
    The coroner narrowed his gaze. "You'd be awfully thin if you waited for sex before eating, Gary, my boy."
    George replaced his foot back on the recorder pedal and continued his narrative. "Urogenital system: The epididymis contains mature spermatozoa within the lumens. Testes show unremarkable seminiferous tubules present with maturation of spermatogonia to mature spermatozoa. Unremarkable except for the absence of the penis severed at the cura. The cutting instrument appears to have been a very sharp knife, probably similar to a scalpel." George stopped and looked quizzically at Krastowitcz.
    "This sure has the ingredients of a serial murder. An organized one. Same kind of M.O. Three so far. What do you think, Gary?"
    "I don't know. You might be right. Maybe the killer only goes for men? Or, homosexual men? Grafton seems to have been pretty strange. Do you usually test for AIDS?"
    "Standard procedure in all cases; that's one of the first things I'm going to run. There's something odd about this one and I can't put my finger on it. And, then, I wouldn't touch it unless I were double gloved. The wrists--they've been lacerated from thin wire bindings embedded into the skin, yet if he'd struggled. . ."
    "Any ideas as to what kind of wire?"
    "Looks to me like picture-wire. I don't know. The wire's so sharp, if he did struggle, he'd probably have cut clean through his wrists--to the bone."
    "Why picture wire? Where do you think he got it?"
    "See that caduceus? Check the loop on the end. There's a fragment of wire still on it. I'll have the crime lab run a comparison on the fragment and the wire around his wrists. I'll bet they're the same."
    "Convenient."
    "I'd say so. Murder weapon and binder, all in one."
    "This changes things," Krastowitcz said. "At first, I thought it might be premeditated. But the killer used an ornament. He must've grabbed it. Probably, off a wall somewhere. If the wire's the same, it'll tell us why the killer used wire to bind the wrists. He didn't have time to find anything else. Elementary, Dr. Iverson. A crime of impulse, passion. We need to find out whose wall it came from."
    George worked diligently, weighing and measuring, examining each piece of flesh closely, until the last suture was stitched and the cadaver once again resembled Milton Grafton. It took about six hours to complete the autopsy from head to toe. Too many times autopsies were bungled because the M.E. hadn't spent the time needed to examine the body thoroughly--the reason why many murders remained unsolved.
    Finally, the caduceus was cleaned and tagged. Blood samples were stacked neatly in vials waiting to be centrifuged and tested for whatever secrets they could divulge: diseases, drugs, toxins.
    The next item of business for Krastowitcz would be to talk to Pearson, again, and try to figure out why someone would want to murder Grafton. After all, there had to be a motive. Was he a homosexual? Was he being blackmailed, or was he blackmailing someone? What type of person was he?
    Krastowitcz's massive shoulders drooped as he thought of the investigative process. This was going to be a long and complicated one. He knew it in his bones. This seemed to be a crime of passion--almost too passionate. Maybe it was, but what kind of passion?
         ANDREA SAT UP abruptly and placed her hand on her throbbing forehead; another nightmare. This time, she stood and watched Sarah fall over the retaining wall. Andrea tried to catch her, but was stopped at the edge by unseen hands.
    Screams had awakened her, pulling her back from the wall. Her screams. Her breath came in short waves but it wasn't asthma this time.
    Just fear.
    She looked at the clock. It was ten o'clock and she was late for rounds. Still groggy, for a moment she didn't remember what had happened only twenty-four hours earlier and then it hit her like a fist in her solar plexus.
    Slowly, she groped her way into the bathroom and turned on her shower. It wasn't a dream. Milton really was dead. She sat on the stool and buried her throbbing head in her hands. What was she going to do? She had to go in to the hospital today, just to straighten up the mess in her part of the office. She couldn't stay home.
How could this have happened?
She forced herself up and got under the hot stream.
    The shower had helped her head to clear. So did the drive to Dorlynd with the window open. The air was still cool and the humidity was low. If her asthma stayed quiet, the day might prove to be livable.
    Approaching the door to her office, she felt like an intruder. Suddenly, she didn't belong anymore. Not here. Not anywhere.
    The door to Dr. Grafton's office was closed and there was a CRIME SCENE, DO NOT CROSS ribbon secured to the door.
Don't worry
, she thought
. I won't cross for a million bucks!
    It had only been two days, but the pile of mail on her desk was about a foot high.
Better get started. This will take a couple of hours just to go through
.
    Andrea wondered if she was pathetic--the mail had become a source of enjoyment. Even at home, she eagerly ran to the mail-box and hungrily waded through stacks of junk-mail for that special envelope. The one with Ed McMahon's picture on it. "Andrea Pearson, you have just won TEN-MILLION DOLLARS!" But that was all a daydream because the mail never carried anything exciting in it, just the usual stuff: bills, mailers, catalogs, and a few letters from old school chums.
    Now, it was all different.
    She ran her finger along an envelope and felt the familiar stinging pain of a deep paper cut. She knew better than to use her fingers for a volume of mail, but fingers were so much more efficient. Instinctively, she placed the injured finger in her mouth, at once uttering, "Fuck!"
    "I beg your pardon," Sergeant Krastowitcz said, entering her office.
    Andrea's felt her cheeks burning as her capillaries filled with blood. "Excuse me, Sergeant Kra. . . Kraso. . ."
    "That's Gary, remember? I thought we got those formalities out of the way yesterday?" he said with a laugh. "Paper cuts can be murder. Oops, sorry about that, it just slipped out."
    Andrea glared at him for a moment. How could he make a joke, especially to her?
    "Please, sit down," she said in her most professional tone. "What can I do for you? Have you found anything? Finger-prints? The murder weapon? A motive? A suspect?"
    "Hold on a minute," he said, putting his hands up in mock protest. "We've found a lot of things; but, I've got a lot of questions to ask you. I've talked to a lot of people, but I haven't found anything concrete or feasible as far as motive; that's a real mystery. You'll have to fill me in on what type of person Dr. Grafton really was, in detail. In order for me to investigate this thing, I've got to know much more than I do. It's a real puzzler. About all we've found, so far, is the murder weapon."
    "You did? What was it? Was he stabbed? There was so much blood." Andrea's eyes watered.
    "I'm not able to say just yet, but I'd like you to go back into Grafton's office and look around the room to see if anything is missing. Would you mind doing that?" he said as he removed the ribbon blocking the connecting door. It was still sealed after print-dusting, photography, and sampling. The room would remain so until Krastowitcz made his final investigation.