Brown, Sandra-Friction

Chapter 7
The morgue was in the basement of the county hospital. The medical examiner, Dr. Forest Anderson,
was a fifty-something bachelor who loved forensics and French cooking. When he wasn’t busy
pursuing one interest, he was elbow deep in the other, which explained why he was almost as wide as
he was tall.
In addition to being obese, he had high blood pressure and diabetes, and often joked that his
autopsy would be one for the textbooks, and that he regretted he wouldn’t be around to observe it.
As he waddled toward the table on which the cadaver lay covered, he said, “One bullet entered
his back, burst through his heart. He never felt it.”
Matt Nugent had been waiting for Neal and Crawford when they arrived. The three of them lined
up along one side of the table. The ME moved around to the other, the cadaver’s left, and folded back
the sheet as far as the navel.
Over the course of his career, Crawford had seen a lot of bodies, but the dispassion of death never
ceased to shock him. It was the ultimate equalizer. Whether one died violently or peacefully in his
sleep, death left the remains cold, gray, and eerily motionless.
He took a few seconds to bolster himself, then looked at the dead man’s face.
“This one would also have been fatal,” Dr. Anderson continued. “It went through the neck from the
back, severed the spinal column, exited here.” He pointed to the area where the Adam’s apple should
have been.
Crawford’s ears had begun to ring. His blood seemed to have come to a boil. He forced himself to
breathe evenly through his nose.
“The third shot entered the torso from the back, lower right side, exited through the gut on the left.
Until I look inside, I won’t know the damage it did, but I’m guessing it was extensive. Those SWAT
guys don’t mess around when it comes to saving a fellow officer.”
Standing beside Crawford, Neal maintained a stoic professionalism. No one acknowledged that
Matt Nugent was swallowing noisily.
Anderson said, “Good thing none of them went for a head shot or his face might not be intact.” He
looked across at them. “No one’s come forward to ID him?”
Neal answered for the group. “Not yet.”
“Autopsy may shed some light on his last few hours,” the doctor said, rocking back and forth on
feet that were comically small compared to the rest of him. “Contents of the stomach. Drugs and
alcohol in his system. I haven’t found any needle marks yet, but heavy users can be clever. I’ll be
thorough.”