his notes while Carl put the body of Barry Landrieu back into the cooler and got Evelyn Stark prepped and ready to go.
Carl laid the woman’s body out on the table and snapped pictures, then removed her clothing and took more pictures, expression emotionless and clinical. He wiped away the blood on her face, but I could still see it clotted up in her nostrils. Evelyn had been an attractive woman, but it was clear she’d been awfully close to that point in life when even the best of genetics weren’t enough. She had a slim, leggy build, but the skin of her belly sagged and her thighs were flabby and had no muscle tone.
He glanced up at me after he set the camera aside. “Can you give me a hand?”
“With what?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him in distrust. He had a habit of asking me to do gross and nasty things during autopsies.
He silently held out a syringe. His face was expressionless, but humor danced in his eyes.
He was asking me to get the vitreous—the fluid in the eyeball. The process for this involved sticking a needle into the side of the eye. Needless to say, it squicked me out big time. I usually shied away from this. Emphatically.
But this time I took the syringe from his hand. He cocked an eyebrow at me in mild astonishment, then smiled and gestured to the body. “You know how to do it?”
I gave him a stiff nod. I’d seen it done a few dozen times. Time to stop being a weenie. The needle slid in with barely any resistance. A shiver raced down my spine at the sight of the needle tip going through the pupil, but it came with an absurd sense of satisfaction. I’d finally won a round of “make Kara do something nasty.” I carefully drew out the fluid, pulled the needle back out, and then carefully handed it to Carl.
“Don’t ever ask me to do that again,” I said.
He burst out laughing, then quickly squirted the fluid into a tube. “I won’t. I promise.” He put the tube away, then turned back to me. “Do you want to try cutting the head open?”
“No!”
He grinned. “Your loss,” he said.
“And on that, I will gladly accept defeat,” I told him.
We suspended our banter as Doc returned to the cutting room. He remained largely quiet during the autopsy of Evelyn Stark. I had the feeling that his mind was already running through possibilities on why Barry Landrieu’s brain had exploded, so to speak.
I watched his face as he began to cut through Evelyn Stark’s brain, could see the instant he saw it from the way his face went still and pale. He gave his head a slight shake of disbelief, then yanked his gaze up to me. “What’s the connection?” he asked. “There has to be some sort of connection. This isn’t possible.”
I could completely understand how he felt. “I don’t know, Doc,” I said, the lie bitter in my mouth. “But I gotta say, I’m glad to know my hunch was right.”
His gaze grew hard for an instant, then he shook his head again. “That was one hell of a hunch, Kara.” He gave me a smile, but it had a guarded, curious edge to it.
I spread my hands and tried to look baffled.
“Hunh.” He turned his attention back to the body. “Maybe it’s some sort of designer drug. Something that’s not showing on the quick test. Or a virus.” He grimaced. “Of course, if it is a virus, we’re all fucked.”
“I was on both scenes and gave CPR to her,” I jerked my chin toward the body. “And my brain hasn’t exploded yet. So we’re probably all right.”