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Lindstrom was still there. The corpse was still on the table.Organ samples now floated in labeled jars or lay in slices on a cork cutting board.
When I hesitated at the door, Lindstrom waved me in.
“You won’t bother me,” he said, jovial as Santa at the mall.
“Actually, I might need your access code to view my films.” A problem I should have anticipated, but in my agitation did not.
“Absoluto.”
I punched in the sequence Lindstrom provided. Then the file number grudgingly assigned by the radiology tech.
The first of a half dozen images appeared on the screen. It showed two young and healthy lower arm bones, one set neatly severed above the wrist. Ditto for the second and third images.
Curious, or wanting a break from his autopsy, Lindstrom joined me and peered over my shoulder.
“Only radii and ulnae?” he asked as I brought up the fourth plate.
“Yes.”
“Someone cut off the left hand?”
“Yes.” My focus on the screen, I didn’t elaborate.
“My golly, those are clean cuts. Your doer used one whack-a-doodle sharp blade.”
“Any suggestions as to tool type?”
“Machete? Cleaver?”
Fifth image.
“What the dingle-donkey is that?”
24
A vertebrate long bone is built along the same lines as a pipe. Hard on the outside, hollow in the center.
The outer compact bone, being dense and able to block most X-ray particles, appears white on a radiograph. The same is true for metals and the majority of contrast media. Structures containing air appear black. Fat, muscle, organs, and fluid appear as shades of gray.
Lindstrom’s dingle-donkey surprise looked like a tiny comet blazing in Quentin Bonner’s distal left ulna.
“Whatisthat?” Lindstrom asked again.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it doesn’t belong there.”
“Care to view the anomaly under magnification?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“Would you like an assist?”
“I don’t want to delay—”
“That fellow isn’t going anywhere.” Lindstrom chin-cocked the man on the table.
“Thanks.”
While the pathologist fired up the scope and monitor, I gloved and slipped on an apron. When properly garbed, I maneuvered the ulna under the lens.
