“Yes. For two years.” I had mentioned my teaching assistantship once, in passing, during a conversation shortly after Garcia and I had met. I was surprised he remembered it. “But that was a long damn time ago, Eddie. A pathology resident would be much better qualified, I’m sure.” The phone fell silent except for the tinny background noise.
“Of course. I understand, Bill. I did not mean to impose.” He suddenly sounded defeated, and I wished I could take back my words. In my rush to downplay my own abilities, I’d failed to consider how difficult it must have been for him to ask for help with an autopsy he was no longer capable of doing himself. He could have let one of the contract M.E.’s handle the case. After all, for the past two months his caseload—dozens of unattended deaths and even several murders—had been farmed out to contract pathologists or sent to the state M.E.’s office in Nashville. He’d finally been ready to take a step toward returning to work, and I’d failed to recognize the significance of what he’d asked of me.
“Eddie?”
I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. If not for the background noise, I’d have thought he’d hung up. Finally: “Yes, Bill?”
“You’re not imposing, Eddie. That’s not it. I just don’t want to let you down. If you think you can guide me through it—if you trust me not to make a mess of things—I’d be honored to help.” The phone fell silent again, and I hoped what I’d said wasn’t too little, too late.
“How many years since you were in graduate school, Bill?”
“A lot,” I said. “Thirty? No, wait—only twenty-nine.” I laughed. Where had the time gone?
He laughed, too, and the significance of this moment, at least, was not lost on me: It was the first time I’d heard him laugh since his injury. “Thirty, that would be too many,” he said. “But twenty-nine?Bueno. Perfecto. You have got the job.”
THE ENVELOPE IN MY MAILbore the return address, “Barbara Pelot, Knoxville City Council,”
along with the City-County Building’s street address. Inside was a handwritten note from Barbara. “Dear Dr. Brockton,” the note read, “I’m sorry to say that we’ve not found any funding in the city’s coffers that we can steer your way. Like UT, the city, too, is stretched pretty thin this year. I hope the enclosed will be of at least some help, however.” Tucked into the envelope behind the note was a check for a thousand dollars—a personal check from Barbara herself—made out to UT and designated for the Body Farm. It wasn’t enough to fill the cavity in my budget, but it was enough to fill me with gratitude. And it was a heck of a lot more than her husband’s dental practice had made by cleaning my teeth. I made a mental note to eat more M&Ms and to floss less rigorously.
“SHALL WE BEGIN?”
I’d heard Dr. Edelberto Garcia begin half a dozen autopsies, maybe more, with those three words. Always before, though—before his hands had been destroyed—he’d said them as a statement, a command swiftly followed by a Y-shaped incision into a chest cavity or an ear-to-ear scalp incision, followed by a saw cut into a skull. This time, for the first time, he was asking the question as if he didn’t know the answer. In fact, as I glanced across the autopsy table at Miranda, I guessed that as he was posing that single, simple question to us, he was asking himself a multitude of other questions, far more complicated:How can I work as a medical examiner without hands? Will I be able to contribute anything here today? Am I an asset or a liability in this case? Am I an asset or a liability to my family, and in this world?
And this time, for the first time, I was the one gripping the scalpel as Garcia posed the question. “I’m ready if you are,” I said. I looked over my left shoulder at him, and he nodded. Across the table Miranda nodded slightly, too, and I followed her eyes down to the dead woman on the table. A sixty-one-year-old white female, she was fairly tall—five feet eight inches—with the sort of lean, willowy frame shaped by years of yoga or running or swimming. The hair on her head was long and wavy, an elegant silvery gray that contrasted sharply with the still-black triangle of pubic hair. Her face wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but her coloring and features—olive skin, brown eyes, and a wide, full mouth—would have made her a handsome woman in life.