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“Thank you, Tony. But, really, I couldn’t impose. Besides, I’m not spending my money.”
Then Harris’s phone had started ringing. That reminded Payne he’d turned his off, and he pushed the 0/1 button till his screen lit up. He cleared out the MISSED CALLS list-all from Chad Nesbitt, who within a twenty-minute period had called a dozen times, then had gotten the message and given up.
I told you, ol’ buddy, I’ll deal with that later.
Harris answered his phone.
After a moment, he said, “Okay, thanks.” And ended the call.
“Dr. Mitchell’s finishing up with the girl they fished out of the river,” Harris said. “I asked him to call me when he did. I wanted to swing by. You guys don’t need to go.”
“Am I allowed to ask, ‘Who’s Dr. Mitchell’?”
Payne said, “Sure. Feel free to ask anything. He’s the medical examiner.”
“As strange as it might sound, I’d like to go,” Byrth said. “You always learn something. Even if it’s only a little thing that triggers a thought later.”
“The Black Buddha calls that ‘Looking under the rock under the rock,’ ” Payne said. “I’m in, too, Tony. I figure I’ve got enough liquid encouragement in me to get through it.”
“Won’t take but a moment,” Harris said.
Harris had been wrong. It had taken longer than he had thought. They’d had more to discuss than just the young Hispanic woman.
The Medical Examiner’s Office, just across the Schuylkill River, was next door to the University of Pennsylvania and, somewhat appropriately, just up University Avenue from Woodlands Cemetery.
The medical examiner’s job was to investigate all “non-natural and unattended natural deaths.”
The Medical Examiner’s Office was open round-the-clock. In a city like Philly, that was an absolute necessity. Its investigators handled some six thousand cases each year-which averaged out to be a staggering sixteen a day. They worked long hours to determine what caused a person’s violent or suspicious death, particularly all homicides and suicides and any deaths that were drug-related.
And they were good at it. They more or less quickly determined the manner of death in about half of the cases; the remainder required an autopsy. The ME’s office then wrote up a report of the autopsy for use in the criminal justice system, and the ME himself often appeared in court and provided expert testimony.
Philadelphia Medical Examiner Howard H. Mitchell was board-certified in forensic pathology, and the balding, rumpled man could usually be found in a well-worn suit and tie. When Payne, Harris, and Byrth found him, however, he wore tan hospital scrubs and surgical gloves. The scrubs and gloves had more than a little blood on them.
Dr. Mitchell was in the room marked PORTMORTEM EXAMINATION. The autopsy room was brightly lit, almost harshly, and its temperature a chilly sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The walls and floor were covered with shiny ceramic tiling, gray ones on the floor and white ones on the walls. There were three stainless-steel operating tables, each with a four-inch-diameter stainless-steel drain in the tiled floor directly beneath them. Two of the stainless-steel operating tables were empty and gleaming.
Dr. Mitchell stood at the third table. He was neatly suturing up the flesh over the chest cavity of a brown-skinned female body without a head.
He looked over his shoulder as the three came into the room.
“ ’Evening, gentlemen,” Dr. Mitchell said.
“Thanks for calling, Doc,” Tony Harris said. “Doc, this is Sergeant Jim Byrth of the Texas Rangers. Jim, Dr. Howard Mitchell, our distinguished ME.”
“Good to meet you, Doctor,” Byrth said.
“Same,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “I’d offer my hand, but…”
“I appreciate that,” Byrth said.
“Jim’s here in Philly hunting a guy who likes to lop off heads.”
Dr. Mitchell nodded as he kept stitching. “What a coincidence, eh?”
“Good to see you, Doc,” Payne said.
Dr. Mitchell didn’t take his eyes off his stitching. “Likewise, Matt.”
Payne had seen the crude sewing of other doctors on post-autopsy bodies. He knew that Dr. Mitchell’s neat suturing was done as a gesture of respect for the deceased, as well as for their families, who may or may not have to view the body for a positive identification.
