CHAPTER 60
Clegg and I followed Doctor William Cartwright, a skeletal man with stooped shoulders and a horseshoe of wispy brown hair, down a long corridor located somewhere in the basement of Harvard’s medical school. Cartwright seemed a bit too titillated by the large police presence accompanying us for my liking—Clegg’s, too, I could tell.
“The medical students aren’t always prepared for gross anatomy,” Cartwright said in a breathy voice. “Some of them find it horrific to see a dead person. Imagine that, doctors afraid of the dead.”
“Imagine that,” Clegg said. I could tell Clegg was annoyed, but Cartwright seemed oblivious.
“We’ll have to scramble to get a replacement cadaver, as we don’t keep a surplus of bodies,” Cartwright continued. “Fortunately, we’re still able to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s request.”
“Well, we’re awfully sorry for the inconvenience we’ve caused, Doctor, but I thought you might be glad to help save a woman’s life,” Clegg said.
Cartwright cleared his throat, fanning out his long, thin fingers and then closing them into a tightly balled fist, one finger at a time. “Well, I’m speaking without a filter,” he said. “I’m glad to be of help, though less pleased to be back here at midnight, Officer.”
“Detective,” Clegg said.
“Is the plan for us to receive the body after you . . . do what has to be done?”
“That’s the plan,” Clegg said. “The medical examiners will contact you when the body needs to come back.”
Cartwright said, “From what I understand of this plot, the body will need to be cremated as it will no longer be of use to our students.”
“Speaking of students, you know you can’t talk about this to anybody,” Clegg said. “It would be considered obstruction of justice.”
“Of course,” Cartwright said, somewhat indignantly. “I was well informed of my obligation on this sensitive matter. Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”
Cartwright nodded his good-bye and shuffled on ahead, moving quickly to catch up with the medical examiners wheeling the stretcher that would carry out Ruby’s only hope for survival.
“He’s trying to help us, David,” I said, wanting to settle him, though not at all surprised by Clegg’s harshness. When agitated, Clegg could be downright ornery, and we were all highly agitated. I, for one, was definitely ready to snap. But I dug deep, finding the strength to keep moving ahead, one foot in front of the other.
Chief Higgins wasn’t faring much better, at least according to Clegg. Apparently, even with the task force working nonstop and bulletins cast out to every law enforcement organization from here to Fresno, nobody had been able to locate Carl Swain or Edwin Valdez, aka the purse snatcher.
Clegg and I passed through a set of double doors that opened into a large room kept meat-locker cold. Racks of bagged bodies entombed in white plastic shells, four long rows worth, rested atop metal trays. Rollers beneath the trays made body retrieval easier. The overpowering smell of preservative, formaldehyde perhaps, hit me like a sucker punch, causing my eyes to water, my breath to quicken.
“Now, that’s a scent only a mortician could love,” Clegg said as we caught up with Cartwright at the end of a row of dead people.
“This is yours,” Cartwright said, rolling out the tray on which the cadaver rested. “We’re going to arrange for cremation, but you have instructed the widow that she’ll need to pick up the remains, have you not? We can’t ship human ashes, you know.”
“Yup, that’s all set. Thanks, Doc,” Clegg said. “We’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, I’m sure you will.”
Cartwright slunk out of view, and Clegg looked pleased.
“Why are you giving him such a hard time?” I asked. “He’s trying to help us.”
“That guy,” Clegg said, “didn’t want to give up this body. I had to go to the dean to get Cartwright to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s wishes. The dean, it turns out, was a lot more understanding.”
An ME unzipped the bag and nonchalantly pried open the sides like it was just another day at the office for him. It was time for me to do my job.
Someone had to make the call that the body would fool the Fiend. To my surprise, Higgins had asked Clegg to include me in this gruesome show-and-tell. The plan was mine to begin with, and it was my wife in jeopardy, so maybe that was why Higgins wanted my input. Maybe he worried a preserved body would look too different from a freshly killed one. Maybe he just knew that Clegg would bring me along regardless.
It looked like a wet and heavy cloth had been overlaid on an old and withered frame, but the counters were all there, the basic scaffolding of features that defined a face. He had caterpillar eyebrows, wisps of gray hair, and wrinkles that spoke of a long and fulfilling life. His arms were two twigs, chest sunken, a body ravaged not by disease, but by the aging process alone.
“Who is he?” I asked. “I need to know about him.”
“He’s an eighty-two-year-old retired pharmacist who wanted to donate his body to his alma mater. He was a pilot, a war vet, and from what I read in his file, an all-around nice fellow.”
“Was it hard to get the permission?”
“Not hard,” Clegg said. “We found the right person. There was a lot of paperwork to fax back and forth. Mrs. Grayson’s son helped her do it. It took a while, but we got it done.”
“Why’d she agree to do this?” I asked.
“The Graysons had a daughter,” Clegg said.
“Had?”
“Had, as in the daughter’s dead.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said in a respectful tone, as though expressing my condolences. “How did she die?”
“She was murdered,” Clegg said. “About twenty years ago. When we told the wife we needed to use her husband’s body, but we couldn’t say how or why—police business was all we could tell her—Mrs. Grayson wasn’t too keen on helping. Then we told her about Ruby, or more specifically that a young woman’s life might be saved, and she agreed to help, whatever it took. We had a lot of people making a lot of calls, John. For a while there, I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
I nodded, feeling a reverent appreciation for the Graysons’ sacrifice.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now you tell me if you think our killer is going to believe that you took out an old guy.”
“I think he’ll believe that the most,” I said. “I took a life at the end of a life. Yeah, this will work.”
“He looks a bit like a marinated olive to me,” Clegg said. “We’re going to need to get some blood to add a bit of realism here.”
“Will he be on the news?”
“Not his face, just a news report,” Clegg said.
“We’ll need proof.”
“The profilers at the FBI think he’s going to contact you after the news breaks. We’ll get you a video clip you can send him. That should work.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Clegg said. “Then we’re a go. I’ll prep it.”
Without warning, Clegg hoisted up one of the man’s frail arms and splayed open the fingers of his bony hand. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand and removed a pair of spring-loaded pruning shears.
“I hope this works,” Clegg said, snipping off one of the man’s fingers as nonchalantly as an ME opening up a body bag.