standard autopsy?”
And Sheldon Hawkes would be forced to say, “No.”
Hawkes had decided to do his best to respect the wishes of Asher Glick and his religion, but when it came down to Hawkes looking at the very white naked man on the table in front of him, he reached for his long forceps. Even if he had to be intrusive, he would at least be able to say that he had tried. He had the information from the Virtopsy. He could focus on what the procedure had revealed. Three years earlier, Hawkes had been reamed by the deputy police commissioner for the bloody autopsy he had performed on a man named Samson Hoffman, who turned out to be an Orthodox rabbi, a singular fact that no one had bothered to share with Hawkes.
So, now he began on Asher Glick by carefully removing the two bullets lodged in his brain. The Virtopsy had revealed their location. They came out cleanly, in good shape. He dropped the bullets in a metal bowl.
Normally, he would simply cut across the corpse’s chest from shoulder to shoulder and then saw down the center of the rib cage. This would be followed by pulling back the ribs like two reluctant doors, beyond which were the vital organs. Instead, it took Hawkes about two hours to do this autopsy, being as careful and minimally intrusive as possible.
He had three more corpses waiting for him, and who knew how many more might come in while he sat waiting?
Hawkes was tired: sixteen hours without sleep, too much coffee, a badly burned corpse early that morning. He had discovered that she had been strangled before she was burned.
When he was finished with Glick, he returned the man’s body to the drawer from which it had come, opened another drawer and moved the corpse of Eve Vorhees to the just-scrubbed steel table. She was a good-looking woman with neatly trimmed dark hair and punctured with holes.
From time to time he had heard the comment at funerals that the corpse looked “peaceful.” Usually, that look had been manipulated by someone at the funeral home.
This one, Hawkes thought, looking at the woman, looks genuinely at peace.
He plugged the earpiece of his iPod into his right ear, put the iPod in his chest pocket and turned it on. It was a day for 1950s modern jazz, the plaintive trombones of J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, the deep soulful sounds of Gerry Mulligan’s sax and the sad knowing voice of Chet Baker singing You Don’t Know What Love Is.
When Hawkes made the first incision he was unaware that he was singing along with Baker.
The photographs were laid out on the clean laboratory table along with a small stack of computer printouts. Stella waited while Aiden took a white plastic bottle of saline solution from the drawer, tilted her head back and let two drops fall into each eye.
Stella knew that looking at the computer screen for hours took its toll. Two years earlier, Matt Heath, a twenty-one-year-old computer geek with a winning smile and uncontrollable red hair, had finished a sixteen-hour shift at the computer. When he tried to get up, he was dazed, his vision blurred, and he had fallen to the ground with a seizure and gotten a split head that took ten stitches.
He had come back to work after three days, wearing thick glasses. He seemed to be his old self until he sat down in front of the screen. He turned on the computer, listened to it hum to life, desktop images appearing against a light blue background. Matt Heath had immediately turned off the computer, gotten up and walked out the door. Stella heard he was now attending a gourmet cooking school in Zurich.
“You okay?” asked Stella.
“Fine,” Aiden said, picking up the printout and handing it to Stella. “Look what we’ve got.”
“What time’s your appointment?” Mac said, looking over Danny’s shoulder at the computer screen.
“Two,” said Danny.
Mac had ordered Danny to make the appointment with Sheila Hellyer, the on-call NYPD psychologist. Everyone had periodic evaluative sessions, usually
And Sheldon Hawkes would be forced to say, “No.”
Hawkes had decided to do his best to respect the wishes of Asher Glick and his religion, but when it came down to Hawkes looking at the very white naked man on the table in front of him, he reached for his long forceps. Even if he had to be intrusive, he would at least be able to say that he had tried. He had the information from the Virtopsy. He could focus on what the procedure had revealed. Three years earlier, Hawkes had been reamed by the deputy police commissioner for the bloody autopsy he had performed on a man named Samson Hoffman, who turned out to be an Orthodox rabbi, a singular fact that no one had bothered to share with Hawkes.
So, now he began on Asher Glick by carefully removing the two bullets lodged in his brain. The Virtopsy had revealed their location. They came out cleanly, in good shape. He dropped the bullets in a metal bowl.
Normally, he would simply cut across the corpse’s chest from shoulder to shoulder and then saw down the center of the rib cage. This would be followed by pulling back the ribs like two reluctant doors, beyond which were the vital organs. Instead, it took Hawkes about two hours to do this autopsy, being as careful and minimally intrusive as possible.
He had three more corpses waiting for him, and who knew how many more might come in while he sat waiting?
Hawkes was tired: sixteen hours without sleep, too much coffee, a badly burned corpse early that morning. He had discovered that she had been strangled before she was burned.
When he was finished with Glick, he returned the man’s body to the drawer from which it had come, opened another drawer and moved the corpse of Eve Vorhees to the just-scrubbed steel table. She was a good-looking woman with neatly trimmed dark hair and punctured with holes.
From time to time he had heard the comment at funerals that the corpse looked “peaceful.” Usually, that look had been manipulated by someone at the funeral home.
This one, Hawkes thought, looking at the woman, looks genuinely at peace.
He plugged the earpiece of his iPod into his right ear, put the iPod in his chest pocket and turned it on. It was a day for 1950s modern jazz, the plaintive trombones of J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, the deep soulful sounds of Gerry Mulligan’s sax and the sad knowing voice of Chet Baker singing You Don’t Know What Love Is.
When Hawkes made the first incision he was unaware that he was singing along with Baker.
The photographs were laid out on the clean laboratory table along with a small stack of computer printouts. Stella waited while Aiden took a white plastic bottle of saline solution from the drawer, tilted her head back and let two drops fall into each eye.
Stella knew that looking at the computer screen for hours took its toll. Two years earlier, Matt Heath, a twenty-one-year-old computer geek with a winning smile and uncontrollable red hair, had finished a sixteen-hour shift at the computer. When he tried to get up, he was dazed, his vision blurred, and he had fallen to the ground with a seizure and gotten a split head that took ten stitches.
He had come back to work after three days, wearing thick glasses. He seemed to be his old self until he sat down in front of the screen. He turned on the computer, listened to it hum to life, desktop images appearing against a light blue background. Matt Heath had immediately turned off the computer, gotten up and walked out the door. Stella heard he was now attending a gourmet cooking school in Zurich.
“You okay?” asked Stella.
“Fine,” Aiden said, picking up the printout and handing it to Stella. “Look what we’ve got.”
“What time’s your appointment?” Mac said, looking over Danny’s shoulder at the computer screen.
“Two,” said Danny.
Mac had ordered Danny to make the appointment with Sheila Hellyer, the on-call NYPD psychologist. Everyone had periodic evaluative sessions, usually
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