IF THE DRIVE DOWNTOWN had been me adrift at sea, walking the steps down into the basement of the NSPD morgue felt like I had gone overboard, being pulled down into tarry depths by unimaginable forces beyond my hope to control. Each step down was like another stone being used to line my stomach. My hand reached into my inner coat pocket, feeling for the one thing tonight that might give me a chance to come back up for air. Before the night was through, I was going to get some answers.
Stepping forward, the basement tiles were flecked with an uncomfortable array of browns, ochres and blacks, leading up to a man in a stained cutter’s apron apprehensively waiting for me at the end of the hallway, dimly lined by fluorescent light bulbs flickering angry at the dark.
The coroner looked like he hadn’t slept in days, unwashed brown hair and dark circles under his eyes implying a man chronically at work. The crooked bend in his back made me believe he was one more unsolved hit-and-run victim away from cutting warm meat instead of cold.
We shook hands as I came up to him. His hand was hot and clammy, wet with something more than sweat.
“Mr. Gallows I presume?” he asked.
Gallows. Lloyds always had a twisted sense of humor.
“The very same.” I said.
I saw a look of uncertain recognition in his eyes, as if he’d seen me before but wasn’t sure where to place me. After a moment, he just nodded as he retracted his hand, leaving my hand oily in the wake of his.
“The name’s Casey. John Casey. I was told you’d be coming by to take a look at a body.”
Casey walked over to a nearby desk, picking up a clipboard. He ran a finger down the length of its paper, tapping it on what I saw was my name.
“#107F. Salvatore Piero Paixley. Strange name.”
“Italian, sounds like.” I said.
“Paixley?”
“Italian-immigrant. I think.”
The coroner huh’d, then motioned towards a side-room separated by a medical curtain stained with uncomfortable colors.
“He’s laid out for you in there. Last slab.”
Casey handed me the clipboard and what I noticed was the autopsy report.
My autopsy report.
“I’ve got work on another body I need to be doing,” Casey said as he walked over to a nearby washing basin to clean his hands, “so I can’t help you with anything practical. So if you have any questions, now’s the time to ask before I’m red to the elbows.”
I skimmed over the contents of the autopsy report while Casey had his back turned to me, then took out my notepad.
“You’re the one that did the autopsy?” I asked as I flipped through my pad’s pages.
“Yes. I got called in for it.” Casey replied in a grumbling tone. “On my night off.”
I looked down at my palm, rubbing the oily residue his hand left on mine between my fingers. The color of it was an off-putting maroon, the smell of it a suspicious saccharine. Memories of Egypt flooded back to me.
It took me a moment to place it considering the stuff was hard to come by these days, but the devil’s allure was hard to mistake for anything else once you’ve had a taste of it.
Laudanum.
Stolen story; please report.
I couldn’t blame him. Sometimes you just needed a little something sweet to get you through the bitterness of another New Seattle night. Besides, this city was a hell of a workload for a coroner.
“Anything you think I should know about the body?” I asked.
Casey turned around with his rinsed hands, wringing his hands in a nearby towel as he spoke.
“Everything worth mentioning is in the report.”
“I meant more along the lines of something… stranger.”
Casey stopped drying his hands, leveling me with a look I could only describe as professionally suspicious. I could almost sense his hackles rising.
He took more care with his next few words than he likely did with most bodies that passed under his knife. “The autopsy on Mr. Paixley was done according to standard procedure. Who was it again that sent you?”
I raised my palm in apology. “Take it easy, pal. I’m not here because of a foul. Lloyds did.”
His shoulders calmed again and he exhaled deeply, the tension leaving his face.
“Right. I probably should have led with that question.”
Casey roughly rubbed at his eyes, then blearily blinked his vision back. He threw the towel away and picked up a nearby medical tray. I noticed the scalpels and tools were pristine, neatly laid out in the order he would need them.
He values his work more than himself. Interesting.
“As for yours,” he continued, “the thing that immediately stood out to me as inexplicably peculiar--which is what I’m assuming you’re asking after--was the complete lack of malodorous scents coming from the body. There was the smell of maggots--like ammonia--but little else that I would expect coming from a body that was that far along the stages of decomposition when it was first brought to me.”
“And you said you performed the autopsy the night it was brought in?” I glanced down at my pad, checking the date from Lloyds’ police report. “The night of July twelfth?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What about any belongings found on his body?”
“I’ve set up any effects he had on his person by the body in a box. You can look through what he had on him, but,” and the coroner’s voice dropped an octave or three lower as he fixed me with a warning look, “I won’t tolerate any stealing. Lloyds and I have an understanding, but the man lying there on that table has already lost his life. I’d rather not see him robbed of anything else.”
A man with vices, but clear integrity. It was beginning to feel like I was staring in a mirror. A broken one, but a mirror all the same.
I extended my hand out for another shake, felt it tightly gripped by his.
“Scout’s honor. How long do I have?”
Casey glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. It was almost three AM.
“To be honest,” he said as he started walking down the hallway with his tray between his hands, “I would rather you have left already. My work will take me the better part of half an hour. I would rather not see you still after that.”
“My handsome face will be nothing more than a memory.”
The moment I said it, I knew that had been the wrong thing to say.
Casey paused and glanced back at me over his shoulder as if he had just realized something.
As if he just remembered where he’s seen my face before.
He looked at me for another moment, before shaking his head slowly from disbelief.
“Yes, Mr. Gallows,” he said as he continued on his way. “See that you’re gone by the time I am done.”
I watched Casey walk away until he was gone from sight before I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he had recognized my face because he'd been putting it together last week or maybe he didn't. Either way, Lloyds was right. I needed to be careful. Someone had tried to murder me and succeeded. The fewer people knew of me not taking up space in the ground, the better a shot I had at getting back at my would-be killer who hadn't even done me the decency of digging me a hole.
I pulled back the medical curtain separating the adjacent mortuary room, revealing half a dozen different tables arranged around a large archaic medical theater. The light was low, but it was just bright enough to make out that the slab at the far back was the only one that wasn’t empty, occupied by a macabre shape hidden by a stained white sheet. I started walking towards it, my stomach an anchor. All my senses sharpened as adrenaline spiked up my awareness as I got closer, my gut not just telling, but screaming for me to get out. It felt like the buzzing in my bones was almost loud enough to drown out the electrical thrum of the ice-boxes that lined and dominated the nearby wall where they kept the rest of the stiffs of the city.
Coming up to the table, I simply stared at a familiar silhouette hidden under the cloth. Five-ten, male. Slightly overweight.
No longer funny.
My mouth had dried up. I swallowed, just barely, and reached out a hand to tear off the sheet.
There’s something to be said about seeing the sight of your own corpse laid out before you in gory detail.
Surreal. Terrifying. Incomprehensible.
Weird.