Public Anatomy (19 page)

Salyer had pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. He opened the cover to the title page, a magnificently detailed rendering of Vesalius at a public dissection. The drawing showed the anatomist in the center of an outdoor theatre framed by a semicircle of Corinthian columns. A host of onlookers surrounded him: scholars, students, and rogues who had ventured in to see the spectacle. Next to the depiction of Vesalius lay a female, nude, her abdomen open, organs on display for the pleasure of the audience.

Salyer’s voice pulled Eli out of the mesmerizing picture. “Tell me why you must view the
Fabrica.”

“I’m not quite sure myself,” Eli said. He reached in, bare-handed, and Salyer slapped his wrist. Eli slipped on a glove provided by his professor and then gently turned the pages of the Latin text to the illustration on Plate 4. At the bottom of the page, an oval, boat-shaped bone was displayed. The bone was cut through the middle and cracked open to reveal the spongy marrow inside.

Eli swept his index finger over the bone’s image as though touching the fabric would make a full confirmation. He could sense Salyer’s growing unease. The professor didn’t allow anyone to touch the pages of the
Fabrica
, even if latex should block the transfer of noxious oils from human skin.

“That’s amazing,” Eli said. The resemblance to Lipsky’s photo was striking. The killer had reproduced the image perfectly.

“Yes, it’s all quite amazing,” Salyer said, distracted.

“The photo was exactly like that.”

“What photo, Eli? What the hell is this about?”

Eli owed his professor an explanation. He was deciding where to begin when his cell phone rang. He had a beeping ringtone, no pop music melody or angry rap. But the electronic tone in this small chambered room, with its ancient holding, seemed absurd. Eli answered quickly to stop the intrusion.

Lipsky’s voice grumbled and cracked. “Sorry to interrupt your golf game, Doc.”

To avoid Lipsky’s joke, Eli snapped, “What do you want?”

“I’m down in Tunica—”

Before he could continue, Eli interrupted the detective. “How are the slots going? Your pockets full of quarters?”

“Good one, doc. I’ll tell you what, though. We’re both taking a gamble.”

Eli watched Salyer, his white gloves gently turning the
Fabrica’s
pages in admiration of the text.

“Someone’s a bit displeased with your profession.”

“What else is new?” Eli responded, as Salyer passed through the
Fabrica’s
second book. He caught a glimpse of the tongue illustration, a thick slab-like muscle splayed across the page, identical to Lipsky’s photo of the killer’s drawing, and to the specimen Meg had showed him in the morgue. Eli motioned for Salyer to linger on that page. The detail of the drawing was exquisite, down to the ligamentous attachments, little horns retracted against the meat of the tongue.

Lipsky went on.

“Got a dead doctor down here. Had a little mishap in a hot tub.”

Salyer moved on to the third book—
The Vascular System
. Eli thought of arteries and veins, delicate, tubular channels that Vesalius had dissected and displayed so elegantly. If the killer, for some reason, followed
the order of Vesalius, a bone from the first victim, muscle from the second, then the vascular system would be next. Something superficial, easy to remove.

“Someone cut out this guy’s—”

“Veins?” Eli asked, interrupting Lipsky. “Stripped the veins out of his leg?”

Salyer shot a glance at Eli and turned the pages of the
Fabrica
to the illustrations of the venous system.

“Sorry, doc,” Lipsky said. “I’m not too good with the blood and guts, that’s your department.”

Salyer closed the book and was removing his gloves. He motioned for Eli to step back. The small space was too cramped and they both wanted out. Just before Salyer locked the door, Eli looked again at the
Fabrica
. Three deaths in three days. If the pattern of deaths could be predicted by the seven books of this ancient anatomy text, there would be four more killings. Four more unsuspecting doctors or nurses or take your pick of healthcare workers.

“Did you say veins?” Lipsky asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m no genius, but I think this guy’s missing his stomach.”

Salyer had returned to his desk. He opened the bottom drawer and placed a half-empty bottle of George Dickel on the desktop.

Eli repeated what he heard. “Stomach?”

Salyer filled a shot glass.

The stomach, an abdominal organ, did not fit the pattern. Organs of the abdominal cavity were addressed in Vesalius’s fifth book. At once, Eli felt the whole thing was preposterous. This was police business. Murder, no less.
What was he doing in the middle of it?

Salyer appeared irritated at Eli’s prolonged phone conversation. In unison with swirling his glass, he shook his head.

“Lipsky, I’m in Oxford. Just an hour or so east of you.”

“I remember,” Lipsky said. “You’re an Ole Miss boy. I probably disturbed your reunion. Old fraternity buddies back in for a throw down.”

Eli ignored all this. “I want to see the body. Can you wait for me?”

“Sure, Doc. I’ve got time. Might just visit those slots after all.”

Eli told Salyer all he knew about the three murders. The professor sat behind his heavy oak desk and listened. He didn’t interrupt with history lessons or other professorial words of wisdom. When Eli told him of the photos and the odd resemblance to Vesalius and the
Fabrica
, Salyer filled another shot glass, turned it up, and filled it again.

A glazed expression gradually took over Salyer’s face, and it became progressively stone-like after each glass until Eli lost count and departed for Tunica, the besotted professor still sitting at his desk.

Lipsky wasn’t at the slots. Eli found him at the crap table, and from the looks of his stack of chips he’d done pretty well.

“Thought you had to stay at the crime scene.”

Lipsky looked up. “That’s the beauty of deputies, doc. You know about that, don’t you? Hierarchy? Hell, I thought surgeons invented that shit.”

Lipsky’s cursing was definitely for the benefit of his onlookers. A small group of retirees had gathered to watch a consistent winner play. They enjoyed the detective’s banter, but two younger women, dressed in short, tight skirts and sipping umbrella drinks, got bored and turned to leave.

As if their lost interest were his cue, Lipsky collected his chips and said, “Got to go.”

He led Eli through the casino and into the spa, where two officers guarded the entrance. They moved aside when Lipsky flashed his badge. Inside the yellow tape, Eli saw Basetti bent over the body, collecting
samples. Eli recognized the Memphis crime technician’s ankle-high black sneakers crimped at the toes just inches from the obese body lying flat and nude on the tile floor. The water in the hot tub was still pink, with frothy bubbles along the edge. Eli crossed under the yellow tape and stood over the body.

“Well, if it ain’t Doc Branch,” Basetti said, like Festus in an episode of
Gunsmoke
.

To Eli, Basetti looked like he should be in college. But with his youth, Eli guessed, came technical craftiness, in a television forensics sort of way. Basetti ran a Q-tip inside the victim’s mouth. Eli doubted the importance of this step to the investigation, especially when the lethal abdominal wound was so obvious.

Lipsky approached with more evidence, a glistening tubular-shaped organ held in his gloved hand. From twenty feet, Eli could see that it was the man’s stomach. On closer examination, he noted that the dissection was intricate and precise, the proximal cut made smooth at the junction of the esophagus, the distal transection line just below the muscular pylorus where food empties into the small intestine.

“Ain’t no hack job, is it, doc?”

Eli shook his head, part answer, part disbelief. “Whoever did this knows what he’s doing.”

But exactly what is he doing?
Three victims, each with a specific organ removed in its entirety, without damage. He imagined the drawings in the
Fabrica
, how the sequence of bone to muscle to stomach no longer fit the sequence of Vesalius’s manuscript.

“On the phone, you guessed that veins were removed from the victim.” Lipsky emphasized the question by rotating the stomach resting in his hands. “What did you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” Eli conceded. “It was nothing.”

Basetti announced he was finished taking samples. He held open a plastic specimen container and Lipsky dropped the stomach inside, the image of a steak marinating in a freezer bag. Lipsky and Basetti stared at Eli as though he held the answer.

“What?”

Lipsky laid out the prompts. “Over the past three days, we got two doctors and a nurse murdered. Each of them with different body parts cut out, displayed, and sketched on paper.”

Lipsky waited. Eli said nothing.

“I been in this business about twenty years now. Seen people gutted, heads cut off, seen one guy doubled over kissing his own ass.”

Basetti snickered, cleared his throat.

“Difference is, Doc, those homicides were all from plain meanness, your everyday I’m-pissed-gonna-hack-somebody rage.” Lipsky regarded the victim again. “This is different. There’s some kind of pattern here.”

“Damn straight,” Basetti said, amen-like, agreeing with the preacher.

“And frankly, I ain’t got a clue.”

Basetti agreed. “Damn straight.”

“Shut up and collect your Baggies, will you,” Lipsky snapped.

Basetti held the bag to the light, acted like he was reading a message. “There’s got to be some connection, don’t you think? A doctor and two nurses? Maybe they’re friends or work at the same hospital. Or maybe—” Basetti became animated, “it’s a ménage à trois.” He did his best charade to demonstrate. “That’s when three people do it together.”

Lipsky turned to Eli. “He’s an expert on that sort of thing. Except he has to inflate his partners with an air hose.”

Eli checked his watch. His ER shift started in one hour. And here he was, listening to this crap.

“I am a little curious, though, Doc.” Lipsky stroked his bare chin. “How come you happened to be so close to Tunica when I called?”

When Eli didn’t respond, Lipsky went on.

“And you didn’t seem very surprised to hear about another death.”

Eli decided it was time to spill what he knew.
Or thought he knew
. Maybe Lipsky could use the information and make the whole thing go away.

“Do you remember the federal agents who visited me in the hospital a couple of months ago?”

Lipsky nodded. “Yeah, I remember the suits. Said they may be calling on you again for another investigation once your wounds heal.”

“They called.”

Lipsky paced a few steps as if considering the implications. “Okay, Mr. Investigator. Want to bring me up to speed?”

“The first victim had a bone removed,” Eli began. “The second, her tongue cut out.” He stopped, knowing the explanation to Lipsky and Basetti would be difficult to comprehend.

Check that.

Damn near impossible.

“And?” Lipsky asked.

Basetti raised both hands in the air. “The tongue wasn’t just cut out,” the crime technician said. “It was dissected, the way an anatomist would do it.” Basetti looked at Lipsky. “His dad was an anatomy professor.”

“I know that, Sherlock,” Lipsky said. “Let him finish.”

“The specific bone removed, called the navicular, is the same bone, of all the bones in the foot, illustrated separately in a classical text on human anatomy. Even the way the bone was cut open.”

“Doc, we know you went to medical school,” Lipsky said. “Studied hard, fell in love with your textbooks—”

Eli interrupted him. “I’m not talking about a modern text. This one was written in the sixteenth century. The first two books of the manuscript describe the bones and muscles, in that order.”

“Bones and muscles,” Lipsky repeated. “But the second victim had her tongue cut out.”

Basetti interrupted. “The tongue is a muscle.”

Lipsky ignored him, turned to Eli for confirmation.

“He’s right.”

Basetti stuck his tongue out at Lipsky. Flicked it up and down.

“Okay,” Lipsky said, trying to piece it together. “The killer gets his ideas from some book.”

“Not just any book,” Eli corrected him. “This one was written in the year fifteen forty-three.”

One by one, Basetti flipped up four fingers. “Makes it over four hundred years old.”

“You said the first two books. I’m betting there’s more,” Lipsky said.

“There are seven books in all,” Eli informed him. “But the third book is on the vascular system, veins and arteries. The sequence fit, until now.”
Eli pointed to the victim. “The stomach is part of the abdomen. That’s book five.”

“Maybe he’s skipping around,” Lipsky said, laughing at his own next thought. “Maybe he likes to read ahead.”

“Or maybe this anatomy book theory is a bunch of shit,” Basetti said. He must have realized he was out of line so he started collecting the specimen bags.