The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [53]
He was pointing to what looked at first like a small lump of clumpy bluish blood. If you looked really close, though, you could see it was a misshapen slug, in a glossy dollop of what appeared to be mucus. Cerebrospinal fluid, plus membrane.
“See,” said Dr. Peters. “It was coming just about straight down the pipe, so to speak. Just missed the foramen magnum. Good thing, lot harder to find if it went down that road.”
We stood back, while Dr. Peters used a probe to indicate the location of the slug for Shamrock, who took three photos with each camera. Dr. Peters then picked the bullet up, and used a very sharp probe to scratch an initial in the base of the round. He placed it in a bag, and initialed it, along with the date, time, place, and his name.
Dr. Peters moved over the victim’s chest, to the brain which rested on the cutting board. With all the commentary he was muttering into his tape recorder, and with all the sight-seeing he was helping us with, I couldn’t help noticing that he was very, very gentle with the cadaver. Almost like it was capable of being injured further. He reached over to a stainless-steel tray, and picked up a large knife. Looked to me every bit like a large piece of cutlery you’d find in a kitchen. Complete with a black plastic handle.
“Where’d you get the knives?” I was just making conversation, really. Mildly curious.
“Katie’s Kitchen Korner,” said Dr. Peters, as he judiciously sliced into the brain. “Set of four assorted sizes. Great for this sort of thing.” He laid a large portion of the brain aside. “Not nearly as much as they’d ask for the same sort of equipment in a surgical supply store. And surgical supply stores rarely have sales.” He probed the tissues with gloved fingers. “Don’t need a scalpel for this… it’s not like we have to worry about scars or healing …”
“Oh.” I was imagining a TV commercial … And, wait, there’s more …
“Wonderful set,” he continued. “Great place to shop.”
“Sure is,” said Shamrock. “I got a ten-inch frying pan and a French whisk there last month.”
“The whisks that were on special, near the checkout counter?” asked Dr. Peters.
“You bet,” she said. “Great for meringue …”
That got her points.
“Ah, here we are,” said Dr. Peters. “The bullet’s track.”
He pointed at the sectioned brain, and I was very hard put to see what he was talking about. “Where?”
“Here. Tissues swell back after the passage of a projectile like this one … but see the perforation in the membrane here … and the depression in this white tissue here?”
That I did. We studied the track for a few seconds. No real reason, but it was important evidence, even though we ourselves wouldn’t be testifying about it. After a few moments, Dr. Peters began hunting for the second bullet. He looked at the X rays. “Should be right about here …”
With the brain on the board, I had a difficult time maintaining my orientation between it and the holes in the skull. Not Dr. Peters.
“Here we go … fragment … and here …”
He pointed the track and fragments out to us. We “studied” them, too. While we did, Dr. Peters was slicing some very fine tissues off the brain, and preparing them for the laboratory examination that would be done.
He opened the chest and abdomen, and we continued our tour. No remarkable evidence turned up. That was good. We sure as hell weren’t expecting any. Dr. Peters did complain about the pain in his hands, though. Very, very cold inside the victims. You could see little sparkles of frost underneath as he removed the liver.
The second victim was much like the first, except for the additional wound and track. We found only what we’d expected, and pending laboratory examination, there had been absolutely no surprises. Good news. But the slugs were so mangled I still couldn’t definitely identify them as .22s. Then again, I’m not a ballistics guy.
At the conclusion of the autopsies,