He thought of Hazel lying inside the city morgue. Her eyes would no longer be pinpoints from the morphine. He itched to run his fingers over her file. It would read of how she was found, the wheres, whys that were dull details for the police but not for Jasper. There would be information on Birdie and Holly, and the bottle of laudanum used. Somewhere in that building was that killer bottle of opium.
The memory of Florence’s autopsy was fading fast. But now there was Hazel. He was enamored by what Hazel could do for him, even lifeless on that marble table. He could almost smell the caustic soaps and the inescapable essence of human fat gone rancid. He thought of what he needed to do: get paid, apologize to his boss, pay his uncle’s mounting bills, snip pieces from Hazel Dreyer’s dead body (this time, the autopsy would be official, and he would be there no matter what), climb another rung of the ladder in his department. Not necessarily in that order.
Once inside Bellevue’s gate, he jogged to the pathology building and took the stairs two at a time. By the time he reached the laboratories, he was fully winded, and intention sparked and snapped in his eyes. He pulled on the door to Gettler’s lab, but it was locked. He shook the door to be sure.
“Damn,” Jasper muttered.
“Your mother teach ya to talk like that?”
He turned to see Dr. Gettler in his overcoat, cigar clamped in his mouth and a recent copy of the Daily Racing Form in his hand. The man loved to gamble.
“Uh, no sir.”
He pointed his cigar at Jasper’s head. “That was one helluva lunch hour you took. I’ve been working longer than you, and I ain’t played hooky once yet.”
“Well, you see, someone died,” Jasper began to explain.
“And the sun rises and sets, what else is new? We had ten bodies come in today to be processed. Two drug out from the East River.” He pointed rudely again with that cigar. “And you weren’t here.”
“Hazel Dreyer came in today.”
“To take you out to your extravagant six-hour lunch?”
“No sir. She’s my friend’s mother. She died earlier today. We think she took too much laudanum.”
Gettler’s face clouded over. “I see. Accident?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Suicide?”
Jasper shook his head. “Doubtful.”
Dr. Getter fumbled with some keys in his pocket. He walked toward Jasper and pushed him aside to unlock the lab. Dr. Gettler flicked on the suspended lights that cast a bright, warm light over the central table loaded with shelves and laboratory equipment. The faint buzz from one of the bulbs was a comforting welcome.
“Wasn’t there another lady who came through here a few weeks ago, one you thought was murdered?” Gettler asked.
Jasper nodded.
“You, boy, need to stop spending so much time with these people. If your friends all end up dead, the police start wondering what’s the matter with you.” Gettler’s tan overcoat was off now, hung lifelessly on a peg. He yanked on his stained lab coat.
“But I’m not guilty,” Jasper blurted out, far too swiftly to sound innocent.
“In this business, words don’t matter much. You got enough money, you can pay anyone to pipe up an alibi. But this”—he swept his arm around the lab—“tells the truth like nobody can.” Gettler stared at him, his eyes bulging out a bit. “Well?”
“Sir?” Jasper hated to look like a fool, but he was too tired to be clever.
“Are you going to get your coat off and get to work? That lady friend of yours is waiting in the morgue, and you’re gapin’ like a trout catching flies.”
Jasper shed his coat and put on a heavy apron he used around the lab. “Thank you, sir! I don’t know how to repay you.”
Gettler snorted. “Buy me a doughnut tomorrow. Three, actually. The twisty ones with sugar glaze. I like them the best.”
Jasper grinned. They rolled up their sleeves and went to work.
Dr. Gettler went painfully by the book. Before they could autopsy, they had to telephone the police station to bring over the paperwork. But now, Jasper could read about the details of the crime scene from another perspective.
Found lying on bedroom floor. No signs of trauma to body. No bruising. Apartment in same order as before, no signs of forced entry, though door left open. No signs of burglary or struggle. Daughter corroborates the above. Empty bottles and glasses of whiskey but appear to be over twelve hours old. Habitual opium ingestion. Question of overdose. Medicine bottles taken as evidence for testing.
There were lists of witnesses, mostly the landlady, Birdie, and Holly.
Gettler thumbed through the pages. “Hmm. They almost didn’t call the ME.” He closed the files and put them on the table in front of Jasper, then headed for the door. When Jasper still stood there, staring at the file, Gettler spoke to him more gently (as gently as that ungentle Brooklyn accent could deliver).
“Son. It’s one thing to do an autopsy on a Jane Doe. It’s another to cut into someone you know. You sure you can handle this?”
Jasper didn’t look up. He was thinking of Florence and the sight of his scalpel pressing against her milky-white abdomen. He remembered the sensation in his hands when the violation of metal on flesh occurred, the precise moment when the tip of the blade sliced into her, like an oar in calm water. It had bothered him. He just hadn’t known it until right now.
Jasper betrayed nothing. “I can handle it. Let’s go.”
It was odd to be in the building at night. Not that Jasper wasn’t used to it. He used to stay after hours and scrub the dirtied corners of this very building. But he’d felt like a peasant then, someone who was smaller and less consequential than even the wastepaper baskets.
Now, all was different. Over a few short weeks, he’d become an essential member of the medical examiner’s department. The sound of Dr. Norris’s shoes pacing his office was a comforting heartbeat. Dr. Gettler’s curses were poetry. The laboratory fumes and the scent of the Bunsen burners blended into a perfume, repellent and improbably enjoyable. The other chemists and pathologists worked at a feverish pace, and they yelled at Jasper to order this, answer that, fetch those, catalogue these, and cook something down to a syrup of human and chemical sludge that just might reveal how the person had died. Here, he revealed the souls behind the crimes—the real ones, not hidden by suits and smirks and rolls of cash. Here, money and names didn’t matter. Right and wrong were dictated by chemical truths.
The city morgue had become intensely alluring, and he couldn’t get enough of it.