In one corner of the loading dock I noticed an empty plastic trash can lying on its side. I picked it up and handed it to Emert. “Take good care of my baby,” I said. He laughed as he put it in the trunk.
Emert patted down the clothing thoroughly with evidence tape. The tape’s sticky side would pick up hair and fibers, much like the lint roller I had at home. I’d seen evidence tape used many times, but Emert’s variety had a plastic backing I hadn’t seen before. “This is a fairly new kind,” he said. “The plastic’s water-soluble. Once I’m through, I put it in warm water to dissolve the backing. That leaves the hair and fibers in the water. Pour the water through a coffee filter, and voilà—everything’s together in one nice, neat place.”
Once Emert was satisfied that he’d gone over the clothing thoroughly, he began checking the pockets of the pants. Easing a gloved hand into each of the front pockets, he extracted a set of keys and a few coins. Then he felt the seat of the pants—left, then right—to check the rear pockets. The left hip pocket was empty, but I saw him smile when he felt the right pocket. Un-buttoning the closure carefully, he slipped a hand into the pocket and fished out a worn leather wallet. He laid it on an absorbent pad and unfolded it gently.
His eyes widened. Looking down to see what he’d seen, I made out the familiar markings of a Tennessee driver’s license through a clear plastic window in one side of the wallet. “Wow,” Emert said. “No wonder he looked familiar.”
“Who is it?” Instead of answering, Emert held the wallet up so I could take a close look. LEONARD M. NOVAK, the small print on the license read. “Novak,” I said. “Rings a bell, but only vaguely.”
“Dr. Leonard Novak is a living legend in Oak Ridge,” he said. “Or was, anyhow. He was one of the top scientists back during the Manhattan Project. He played a big part in making the atomic bomb possible. Last picture I saw of him was probably taken twenty years ago. Back when he was a fresh-faced kid of seventy-something.”
“A big fish,” I said, “in that small, frozen pond.”
“Very big,” he said.
“But nobody’d reported him missing?”
“No,” he said. “The only missing-person report we’ve had in the last six months is a runaway teenager.”
“Be hard to mistake this guy for a teenager. Was he married?”
“I don’t know,” Emert said. We both glanced at the dead man’s left hand, which had no wedding ring. “Maybe not. Maybe a widower. Must not have had anybody checking on him regularly.” With a gloved finger, he poked the corpse gently, in the thigh and in the abdomen. “You sure our bird’s thawed out enough to autopsy?”
“If he were a Butterball turkey,” I said, “I’d be preheating the oven right now.”
He gathered up the evidence bags containing the coins, the keys, the wallet, and the evidence tape, and ran them out to his car at the loading dock.
CHAPTER 4
SHALL WE BEGIN?” IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION— even as he said the words, Dr. Garcia was already pressing the scalpel to Leonard Novak’s scalp—but it served to focus everyone’s attention on the tip of the blade. Garcia was suited up in a blue surgical gown with a mask, a plastic face shield, and two pairs of purple gloves. So was Miranda, who was serving as his assistant, or Diener: a German word that literally translates as “servant” or “slave”—not the sort of job description that would normally sit well with Miranda, who sometimes chafed beneath her title of “graduate assistant.” I was wearing scrubs, as was Emert, although as far back as the detective was hovering, he would probably have been safe in a white linen suit. “Call me if there’s something I need to see,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ll be over here hanging on to my lunch.”
Normally Garcia would have begun the autopsy by making a Y-shaped incision to open the chest cavity and abdomen. But Novak had a gash on the left side of his scalp, high on the left side of the forehead. The wound didn’t look serious—an oval contusion a couple of inches long by an inch wide, and more like an abrasion than a cut—but it was the only visible trauma to the corpse, so it was a place to start. The old man’s body, naked and thin and ashen, looked sadder and more vulnerable, somehow, than most bodies I saw.