A Beautiful Poison

He was also becoming increasingly rattled by the same things that attracted him. He didn’t yet possess the ability to unpack and understand the center of his discomfort. He wanted this, after all. He knew certain details repelled him—like the chewed hangnails and fingernails on a corpse, bitten to the quick just like his own. Or a child’s curled eyelashes that reminded him of a porcelain doll of Allene’s. Consciously, these things shouldn’t matter. He could handle them. He should handle them.

He pushed it aside as he always did and followed Dr. Gettler down to the morgue. There, they found Hazel’s body on the third table near the door. One of the other bodies, recently fished out of the East River but not recently dead, inhabited the table next to hers. It was putrefying. The odor was worse than dead fish stuffed with feces and fermented amongst garbage on the most humid day of summer. What was worse was an unexpected hint of sweetness. Jasper swallowed hard and put on a poker face.

They looked at Hazel’s medicine bottles, which the charge officer had been careful to procure and label. Jasper studied the nearly full bottle that Hazel had likely last drunk from, the same one whose label Allene had torn a corner from.

“Tincture of opium. Usually about a hundred grams of opium per liter.” Gettler pointed to Hazel’s old, empty bottles. “These are paregoric. Camphorated tincture of opium, four grams per liter. Straight off, she probably mistook one for the other and overdosed. Seen a lot of babies dead this way. They start off colicky, and Ma kills ’em with stomach medicine because they’re wailing too much.”

Jasper nodded in agreement. Dr. Gettler rolled the tray of autopsy instruments next to Jasper and stepped back. Neither of them moved. Finally, after too long of an uncomfortable moment, Dr. Gettler pointed.

“I want every specimen labeled. Every step of the process documented in her file. We’ll need her entire stomach, ligated at both ends to save the contents. Blood samples, urine . . . make special note of the state of her brain.” When Jasper still didn’t move, he asked, “Haven’t you been assisting the staff here on the autopsies?”

“Yes.”

“Have you done one yourself?”

“Well.” Jasper scratched his head. “Altogether, no. But I’ve done every step a handful of times with Dr. Samuels on his shifts—”

“But have you done one entirely by yourself?”

“No,” Jasper admitted. Only the fully fledged pathologists were responsible for the autopsies, beginning to end, head to toe, dermis to marrow.

“Well. Time to start.” Dr. Gettler walked to the door and left Jasper there, agog.

“Sir? But I thought you—”

“I’m a toxicologist, not a pathologist. I’m going to go place my bets. Hopefully it ain’t too late. Get the samples. In a few hours, we can really work.”

The door shut behind him, and Jasper was alone with what was left of Hazel Dreyer. She was looking, though dead, more like Birdie than he had ever noticed. The same fine, straight nose; the same rosebud lips, though slightly thinner than Birdie’s. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. His hands shook, though he touched nothing but the reeking air about him. He stared at Hazel, and Hazel stared at nothing.

“Hello, Mrs. Dreyer. How did we get here, you and I?” Jasper asked, somewhat politely. He couldn’t bear to say anything further in the cavernous morgue, as if his words might insult the corpse. Well, he thought, you’re just a body now. You might as well help my career. I’m sorry, but it’s my time now.

Hazel didn’t respond to his words or his thoughts. So Jasper picked up a scalpel to seek out the answers imprisoned beneath her cold skin. His nose began to run, and he wiped it off on his sleeve. And all the while he worked, he apologized in the silence of his own mind, over and over and over again.




Jasper had tried. He had been able to perform the incisions and inspections of the body organs, but he had failed when it came to sawing the skullcap off. This was how Dr. Gettler (who was rather merry now that his bets were safely placed) found Jasper, past midnight. Sweating, quietly frantic, overwhelmed, and not so delicately traumatized. Gettler stared at him hard and then sighed in sympathy.

Jasper knew what he was thinking: that he had talked the talk, but when it came down to it, he was too young, too inexperienced, and too close to the victim. It had been a mistake to think he could do an autopsy alone, despite his enthusiasm and Gettler’s willingness to let him try. Gettler put a sheet over Hazel, then shooed him back upstairs to the lab. Gettler followed, carrying the enameled tray heavily burdened with specimens and numerous glass bottles containing body fluids.

Once he was upstairs, he barked at Jasper, “Go home. Tomorrow’s draft registration, ain’t it? You don’t need to come in.”

“No,” Jasper said doggedly. He began setting up the usual extraction apparatus in the lab for the samples.

“It was my mistake. You’re just a kid. You don’t know enough.”

“Then teach me,” Jasper said, trying not to clink the glassware as he screwed a round-bottom flask into place with a clamp.

“What’s the damn rush?”

Jasper wouldn’t look at him. He felt the circling of a tighter noose around him as the minutes ticked by. The letters. Florence and Hazel. The bills that were stacked so high on his uncle’s desk that they were starting to fall to the floor like inglorious confetti. General Pershing, ever hungry for more doughboys.

He didn’t answer Gettler, instead continuing to construct the extraction apparatus. He could feel Gettler staring at him hard. Jasper knew they had something in common. Not on the surface. Jasper was far more handsome, and he knew it. He was taller, with that wellborn upbringing he couldn’t hide, even when his shoes were so worn the stitching had come undone around the toes. It was something so familiar that he didn’t see it until it was painfully obvious. Gettler said it before he could mold it inside his mind.

“Be careful, boy. When you’re this thirsty, you can reach for water, or you can reach for gasoline. One will kill ya, but you won’t know the difference until it’s too late.”

A thrum of energy was back inside Jasper’s heart; he’d gotten a second wind. Oh, he heard everything that Gettler was saying, but there was nothing like a warning—a locked door, or a restraining arm—that made him feel like pushing harder and lighting some TNT.

“Morphine extraction,” Jasper said, as if they’d been discussing it for hours. “We can use the Marmé-Warnecke method or Tauber’s. I’m good with either.” He looked grimly at Gettler, who sighed. Cut from the same cloth, Jasper thought. Gettler returned his appraisal but instead of appreciation, there was a small dose of awe and fear. Gettler pushed away from the table.

“Fine. Let’s get started.” He strode toward the chemical supply room, stretching his stiff neck. The last thing Jasper heard him say before disappearing: “Those better be some damn good doughnuts you bring me.”




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