Chapter 26
Ryan’s plane arrived ahead of schedule. A gate was available.
An aviation miracle.
Le monsieur came down the ramp wearing jeans and a blue-plaid flannel shirt. Except for the bare ankles and Hokas, he looked like he’d dressed for timbering in Belarus.
I had to smile. And inwardly shake my head. No matter how often Ryan visits the Carolinas, it seems he’s unable to retain a picture of summer in Dixie. Or maybe his Quebecois soul rejects the concept of intense and prolonged heat and humidity.
Ryan and I aren’t prone to public displays of affection. PDAs, as Katy would say. Still, we greeted each other warmly.
Though the flight had landed early, the checked baggage took forty minutes to hit the belt. Ryan’s duffel was not among those that did.
By the time Ryan made his way up the queue and filed a lost luggage report, it was going on seven. I was no longer in the mood to cook. Or, being honest, to watch Ryan cook.
He wanted tacos, so we stopped at Azteca, my favorite of Charlotte’s many Mexican restaurants. And one that was directly on the way home.
I chose the chicken enchiladas. I always do. Ryan ordered Chile Verde extra spicy. Complained when the peppery sauce burned his mouth.
As we ate—Ryan sweating and pounding Dos Equis across the table from me—I filled him in on developments in my life. Katy. Ruthie. My recent cases at the MCME.
Ryan told me about his current investigations. One involved money laundering. Another insider trading. Yet another identity theft.
I smiled and nodded encouragingly, but only half listened. I find the subject of finance boring as hell.
The briefings were, well, brief in both directions. It hadn’t been forty-eight hours since our last phone conversation.
We’d just begun our usual battle-for-the-bill ritual when my mobile buzzed.
The screen showed a number at the MCME.
“I’d better—”
“Of course,” Ryan said.
“I’m sorry to bother you after hours,” Nguyen said, not sounding at all contrite. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“No, no.” Yes. Yes.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan snatched up the check and crossed to the cashier station by the front entrance.
“You asked that I keep you informed concerning MCME-753-25.”
That took a moment of mental triage.
“The male DOA from the McDowell Nature Preserve,” I said.
“I’ve scheduled the autopsy for early tomorrow. I’ll be doing it myself.”
“Do you want me to attend?”
“That’s up to you.”
I knew that tone.
“What time?”
“I plan to begin at eight.”
“I’ll be there.”
I disconnected, feeling, what? Resignation? Disappointment? Irritation?
Definitely irritation.
Watching Ryan cross back to the booth, an autopsy was the last thing on my mind.
The next morning dawned dreary and gray, making it hard to get out of bed. That, and the fact that Ryan and I hadn’t fallen asleep until well past one a.m. I’ll leave it at that.
Ryan assured me he’d be happy on his own while I worked at the lab and asked if he might use my bike.
I was good with that. Since his missing bag had yet to show up, he wanted to purchase a few toiletries.
Then he’d buy provisions for a mysterious feast he intended to prepare. I was very good with that.
When I arrived at the MCME, Mrs. Flowers told me Nguyen was already suited up and cutting in the main autopsy room, with Joe Hawkins assisting.
The red message light on my desk phone indicated missed calls. Ignoring its somewhat frenzied flashing, I went directly to the women’s locker room to change into scrubs. Suitably attired, I hurried down the hall to join the chief and Joe.
People think an autopsy is conducted in an atmosphere of hushed quiet. Some are. At large facilities, most are not.
Instruments clanged. Water pounded in a stainless-steel sink. An old Stones tune blasted from a boom box: “Paint It Black.”
An elderly woman was under the knife on the closest of the three tables.
Her scalp had been swirl-cut, her face peeled down below her chin.
A pathologist was instructing his autopsy tech in a loud voice.
The tech was buzzing through the woman’s skull with a handheld saw, sending the smell of hot metal and bone dust into the air.
The McDowell corpse, now unofficially identified by Katy as Quaashi Brown, was stretched naked and supine on the farthest of the tables. An unzipped body bag lay abandoned on a gurney snugged to the wall behind it. X-rays glowed gray-and-white on a screen off to one side.
Nguyen was wrapping up dictation of her preliminary observations. Hawkins was shooting pics. Both were dressed in autopsy chic: blue-green scrubs and caps, paper aprons, and booties.
I crossed to them.
Up close, I noted that the overheads—their collective wattage sufficient to illuminate several airport runways—turned the man’s toffee skin a sickly turd brown.
The hair escaping his bandanna was smashed into wormlike squiggles against his cheeks and forehead.
The letters beneath the forehead squiggles looked dark and raw. PE.
My first reaction. Brown looked like a prop for a B-grade zombie movie. Maybe Brown. 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.
“The contents might help with a positive ID,” Hawkins said.
“True,” I agreed.
“Do you think the data will still be readable?” Nguyen sounded dubious.
“Even if it is, access will be password protected,” Hawkins predicted with his usual glum pessimism.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Though I suspected Joe was right. “Only one way to find out.”
“Disinfect thoroughly.” Nguyen’s directive was coated with cringe at the thought that one of her terminals might be polluted.
While I cleaned the device with an alcohol swab, Nguyen logged into the MCME system. When she’d made a successful connection, I inserted the business end of the drive into the terminal’s USB port.
An icon appeared on the screen. A key, with the label USB DISK beneath it.
I double-clicked on the key.
A new screen appeared. On it was a single blue folder.
The hairs on my neck rose to full upright.
The folder was labeled with one word: Evil.
My gaze met Nguyen’s.
Eyes giving away nothing, she offered another of her go-ahead nods.
I opened the folder.
All my synapses fired straight to anxiety mode.
Superimposed on a background that looked like a scene from the underground horror movie Creep, two letters crawled slowly from left to right: PE.
I watched the cryptic message inch sideways, unable to look away.
Reaching the right edge of the screen, the letters disappeared, and the monitor went black.
I sat back, a million questions elbowing for recognition, some relevant, some ridiculously immaterial.
Who shot the video?
Why?
When?
What did it mean?
Was it a prank? A warning? A threat?
If a threat, directed toward whom?
Me? Nguyen?
Toward Brown?
Why?
Was Brown alive when the device was introduced into his anus? Had he placed it there himself? Or was he already dead and the insertion performed postmortem? If so, by whom?
Why?
Over and over, my brain kept circling to one central question.
How had the video file ended up on a flash drive inside the rectum of a homeless man? A homeless man found dead of gunshot wounds in a county nature preserve?
Nguyen’s voice sliced into my consciousness.
“Detective Slidell is working this case, correct?”
“He is.”
“I must contact him.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
My ears registered the rhythmic swish of Nguyen’s retreating shoe covers. The rattle of a gurney. The whoosh of a cooler door.
Easy, Brennan.
I forced myself to draw a series of deep, calming breaths.
Ryan and I often discussed our cases. I debated. Should I share this bizarre story with him?
Except for knowing Slidell and a few others, Ryan was unfamiliar with the Charlotte scene. Looping him in would require reams of backstory. Given that our time together was so limited, I hated to waste any of it on tales of corpses with missing hands and oddly placed storage devices.
Still. If the device was meant as a threat, he had a right to know.
I was formulating a condensed version of events for Ryan’s consumption when the issue of the thumb drive yielded to a new concern.
A much more terrifying one.