Witch World (13 page)

“Don’t they have a screen at Staples where they show instant replays?” she asked.

“They’ve got several. They’re all pointed toward the rich seats. I tell you, the whole arena is designed for those who pay five hundred bucks a seat and up. Peons like us they can’t even
be bothered with. Even the food they offer in the cheap seats is different from the food you can buy in the high-priced sections.”

“Really? It seems there should be a law against that.”

“There should be a law against many things,” the man said.

The woman seemed to pick up a chart. I heard the fumbling of papers, and the sound came from the left, where she stood. “All right, what do we have here? A twenty-year-old Caucasian female. Discovered by a family who got lost after leaving the Strip, some place in the industrial section of town.”

“Poor girl. What a crappy place to get dumped.”

The woman continued to read from her chart. “She was brought into emergency an hour ago, not long after midnight. Dr. Palmer and Dr. Kirby tried a lengthy resuscitation. Cardiac massage was immediately applied, while patient was ventilated using a tracheal tube. One milliliter of epinephrine was injected in the internal jugular vein along with ten milliliters of calcium chloride. Defibrillation was repeatedly tried with no response. Dr. Palmer certified her a DOA at twelve fifty-nine.” The woman stopped and spoke to her partner. “What do you think we’re looking at here, Dave?”

DOA? I thought. Didn’t that mean “dead on arrival”?

What the hell were these two talking about?

For a moment thick stubby fingers passed over my eyes.

“It’s a strange one, Susan,” Dave said. “Look at this blood on the nose. Someone must have roughed her up. Before they . . .”

“Before they what?” Susan asked.

“Feel how cold her skin is. And she’s been here over an hour. You would at least think she would be at room temperature.”

I heard Susan feeling my left arm, although I couldn’t see or feel her doing it.

“God, you’re right, she’s like an icicle,” she said.

“Palmer didn’t mention it in his notes?” Dave asked.

“He made a quick note she appeared hypothermic but this is ridiculous. It’s like someone had her stored in a freezer before they finally decided to dump her body. You know what that means?”

“What?”

“She could have been dead for a long time,” Susan said.

Dead? I thought. That word again. They were talking about me like I was dead. What the hell was wrong with them? They were doctors, for God’s sakes, and I was lying right here in front of them. All they had to do was check my pulse or listen to my chest and they would know I was alive.

But what if they weren’t real doctors, just interns or even medical students? They might be examining me as part of their studies, in the same way they might dissect a body during gross anatomy in their first year in medical school.

“If she’s been dead a long time,” Dave said, “then whoever killed her went to a lot of trouble to keep her in good shape. She almost looks alive.”

Yes!
I tried to scream.
I am alive! What’s wrong with you people?

But I couldn’t get my mouth to move. I couldn’t make a groaning sound deep inside my throat, or any other sound to let them know they weren’t dealing with a corpse.

“True, she looks great,” Susan said. “I hope I look that good when I die. But it makes me wonder.”

“What?”

“If the cause of death was hypothermia.”

“That’s a leap,” Dave said. “They could have simply frozen her after killing her. For all we know this blow to her nose sent bone fragments into her brain.”

“You’re right. We won’t know until we open her up. But I’ve been doing a preliminary exam of this arm and I can tell already her blood wasn’t pooled in the lower extremities when she was put in the deep freeze.”

Open me up!

My horror transcended reason. It came close to shorting out my brain and leaving me in a quivering, mindless corner. What stopped me from cracking up completely was the realization that I was in greater danger than I had been in the meat locker.

Dr. Susan and Dr. Dave were not real doctors who treated living people. They were goddamn coroners. They were the kind of doctors who were only interested in corpses.

Christ, I had to get out of here. Or else I at least had to make some kind of sound before they started cutting. I struggled with all my might to make my lips move, to twitch, but I couldn’t move what I couldn’t feel.

Dave appeared to examine my right arm. “I see what you mean. The veins on the front and back of her arm and hand are filled with fresh blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if your theory turns out to be correct.” He paused and then added, “What a horrible way for a cute young thing like this to go. To freeze to death in some dark box.”

“I disagree,” Susan said. “I can think of a lot worse ways to go.”

“Do we have permission to perform a full autopsy?”

Susan studied the chart. “We don’t need it. She’s been classified an official Jane Doe, and a probable murder victim. Which means the LVPD has been notified and wants answers right away. We can open her up now if you want.”

No! Dave, you don’t want to open up such a cute young thing like me!

But Dave suddenly sounded excited. “Can I take the lead on the case?” he asked.

“Do you want the headache? A case like this, you’ll probably end up in court answering a hundred questions.”

“I told you before, I think it’s time I stretched my legs. For years I’ve been working cases no one wants to hear about, other than the immediate family. I’ve watched you in court, I think I can handle the pressure.” He added, “Unless you have an objection?”

Object! He’s an idiot! He can’t tell a dead girl from a live girl!

But neither could Susan. I was mentally screaming at the
wrong pair. Susan put down her chart and wheeled an overhead light above me. She turned it on, and I was bathed in blinding white light. For several seconds, I couldn’t see a thing.

“Be serious, Dave. I’ve been waiting for the day you would step forward like this and demand your day in court, as the lawyers like to say. It’s time you used your talents to the fullest and this looks like the perfect case. You have a beautiful young victim, a mysterious method of murder. I wouldn’t be surprised if two months from now we see you on TV three nights a week, giving the locals the latest update on the Fridge Freak Killer.”

Dave chuckled. “The Fridge Freak Killer. I like that.”

“I thought you would. Now, since we’re talking about a possible court case, we have to start recording in the preliminary stages. I know you’re not used to that.”

“I don’t mind. When do you want to turn on the mic?”

“In a couple of minutes. Let’s take her clothes off. But no tearing of the material. We have to bag everything and label it and hand it over to the detective in charge of the case.”

“But the docs in the ER ripped the buttons off her blouse when they were working on her,” Dave said.

“That usually happens. The police won’t hassle you about that.”

“Gotcha,” Dave said.

They were going to strip me naked? I shouldn’t have cared, of course, they were going to cut me open. But I did care. Plus their excuse for doing my autopsy without a family member—
or even a friend—signing off on it was bogus. At least I thought it was bogus. The fact was, I didn’t know much about the law. But shit, if they simply checked with the police, they would discover that I was missing.

That is if Jimmy had filed a missing-persons report. I was beginning to think Alex had told him about Russ, maybe to calm him down and make him jealous at the same time, and Jimmy had yet to go to the police. Nothing made any sense, I only knew I was trapped in a nightmare. It couldn’t get any worse.

Of course it could get a lot worse.

They could start cutting.

As they removed my clothes, my head rolled from side to side and I was able to get a look at Dave and Susan. From their comments, I expected Dave to be younger than Susan. Such was not the case. Susan was an extremely attractive thirty, with dark features that had probably originated with a dash of Middle Eastern genes. Her hair was a dark brown, but because it was tucked behind a surgical cap, I couldn’t tell its length. As she turned me, it was as if her eyes caught mine.

“Dave?” she said.

“What?”

“This girl freaks me out. It’s almost like she’s alive.”

Go, Susan! Go, girl! Look into my eyes again! Look and you’ll see I’m still here!

“I know how you feel,” Dave said. “She’s almost perfectly preserved.”

Susan sighed. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Young, pretty, her whole life in front of her. Then some creep gets hold of her and she ends up on our chopping table.”

“Well, we’re all going to end up here one day.”

“That’s true. But I’d rather not think about it.”

“I think about it every time I eat another doughnut.”

Susan chuckled. “It doesn’t stop you from putting another one in your mouth.”

My head rolled in Dave’s direction. He was older than Susan by ten years, but it looked like twenty because he was obese. He had huge fleshy lips and fingers, and a serious problem with body hair. It was everywhere but where it was supposed to be. His green eyes bugged out of his fat head.

They finished removing and bagging my clothes. Since they had both moved closer to the table, I could see the two of them, especially when they were examining the upper part of my body. Susan reached for a black wire and I heard a loud click. A twitch of nervousness crossed Dave’s face.

“How do I start?” he asked.

“Identify yourself and your subject. In this case just refer to her as Jane Doe. Say what you know, don’t extrapolate. Here, let me set the digital recorder to zero. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re live,” Susan said.

“This is Dr. David Leonard, a coroner and pathologist at Las Vegas Memorial. Also attending is Dr. Susan Wheeler.
Today’s date is June twelfth; the time is two sixteen a.m. The subject is an unidentified Jane Doe who was dead upon arrival at the hospital approximately two hours ago. The patient is a female, approximate age twenty. She was admitted to the ER with zero respiration and pulse. An EKG showed no brain activity and she was pronounced dead at twelve fifty-nine by Dr. Fred Palmer.”

Susan stopped the recording. “You’re getting stuck in your introduction. Start describing what you see in the patient.”

“Can we go back and erase the rough parts?”

“We can edit it any way you wish. Now continue.”

“The subject has two striking characteristics. There’s a large quantity of blood around her nose, and her skin and musculature are unusually cold, well below room temperature. Yet the lack of pooling of blood in the lower extremities indicates she was alive when she was put in a freezer. For that reason, it would appear that the cause of death might be hypothermia.”

Dave paused and wiped the sweat from his brow and I heard another click on Susan’s end. “Boy,” he said. “This is a lot harder when you realize jurors might be listening to it one day.”

“You get used to the spotlight. You’re doing fine, by the way. But it might be time to open her up and see what we’ve got. To speed things up, I can saw open her skull and remove her brain while you remove her viscera and perform the pericardium cut. Understand, I’ll keep my mouth shut and let you describe the condition of the cranium.”

“How do we coordinate it so it looks like I’m in charge the whole time?” Dave asked.

“It’s easy. I’ll just hold the brain out for you to see. If you want to slice it, do a microscopic exam, I can do that while you keep talking.”

Dave rubbed his hands together. “Sounds like a plan.”

Stop! Oh, please God in heaven, STOP!

They couldn’t hear me. They were too busy with their toys. Susan had a handheld band saw that was powered by a tiny motor. She checked to make sure the motor was working, then reached for a scalpel.

Every medical thriller I had ever seen came back to haunt me. I knew precisely what she was about to do. Using the scalpel, she would cut an incision around the entire top of my head. She would cut down the sides of my face. Then, using her gloved hands, she would grip my skin and peel it off. Yeah, just like I was some kind of bloody doll. Next she would peel the flesh on my face all the way down to my chin and let it hang from my jaw.

Finally, she would cut open my skull and yank out my brain.

Dave was holding a pair of scissors large enough to slice open my abdomen, which is precisely what he was going to use them for. He would pull out my guts—my liver, gallbladder, spleen, large and small intestines, stomach—and toss the whole mess into a steel bowl to be weighed and examined later.

Then, using the same pair of Paul Bunyan nail clippers, he would move on to the ever-popular pericardium cut, a favorite of coroners everywhere because they get to snap open the sternum and pretend for a while they’re performing heart surgery. When in reality he was just going to cut out my heart and toss it into another bowl.

Dave pressed the tip of his blade in a place I couldn’t see.

For the first time I felt something, a dull pressure.

I think he had the blade pointed at the top of my pubic bone.

OH, GOD!

Dave frowned. “Susan, turn off the mic a sec.”

Susan did as he requested, her scalpel in hand. “What’s the problem?” she asked.

“It’s her skin. It’s so cold, it’s still partially frozen. I’m not sure how easy she’ll be to open up.”

“You won’t know until you try.”

“That’s just the thing. I think maybe we should wait another hour.”

YES! WAIT ANOTHER HOUR! GOD BLESS YOU!

Susan sounded annoyed. “I don’t have another hour. Look, if it’s too much pressure, let me handle this one. You can always do the next one.”

“But you were saying what a special case this is. I don’t want to miss out.”

“Then start cutting.”

Dave sighed. “All right. Turn the recorder back on.”

NO! WAIT! GOD DAMN YOU! NO!