Open Season by Archer Mayor Page B

away whatever fluid she might give up.
    She was an enormous woman, gray-haired, lightly mustached, with heavy, unpleasant features. She reminded me of those discontented travelers I’d seen on buses or trains, their sleeping faces reflecting all the inert unhappiness of their lives. I also noticed, for no reason whatever, that she had incredibly unattractive toenails, yellow and gnarled in contrast to her pasty-white rubberlike skin.
    Hillstrom picked up a scalpel and quickly made a long curved incision from shoulder to shoulder. She then intersected the slit just below the throat and cut a straight line between the breasts down to the groin, creating a slightly rounded T.
    “Were you the officer at the scene, Corporal?” Hillstrom asked without looking up.
    Evans, his eyes glued to the scalpel, swallowed hard. “Yes.”
    “Could you give us the circumstances?” She buried her hand into the cut near the breast and pulled the thick outer layer of skin away from the body, cutting the few small pieces of tissue that still connected the two as she went and revealing the lungs underneath. The large flap in her hand consisted of two to three solid inches of bright yellow, glistening fat. A cloying, nauseous odor filled the room.
    I could hear Evans’s breath coming in short and rapid gulps. “She was, ah, crossing the street… legally. You know, a crosswalk. Car should have stopped…”
    “Why don’t you have a seat? No point standing around getting sore feet.”
    “Okay.” Evans gratefully took a seat and leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees, the perfect image of studied casualness.
    “You might also want to get your camera gear ready.” She motioned to Harry, who picked up Evans’s camera bag and placed it on the floor between his feet. Evans bent further forward to unzip it and rummaged among its contents.
    “Was the driver intoxicated?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” His voice was distinctly clearer. “She became hysterical at the time of the accident, so we haven’t been able to question her yet.”
    Having folded both breasts back under the body’s arms, Hillstrom started examining and removing the organs, as carefully as she might have unpacked a duffel bag filled with china. The odor was absorbed by the ventilating system.
    “You might want a shot of this.” Evans, steady once more, slowly approached the table, camera in hand.
    “She’s suffered a punctured aorta, in itself enough to cause death, although possibly not the primary cause here; and right behind you can see where her spine is broken. I can get you a clearer view of that later.” Hillstrom placed her pale hand behind the aorta to give the picture more contrast. Evans focused and shot.
    “You might want to add, by the way, that so far we also have a punctured lung, several broken ribs, a ripped diaphragm, and an entire pelvic area that looks shattered beyond belief. Also a perforated bowel. Did she go under the car, do you know?”
    “I don’t know. We found her with her head resting on the curb in front of the car.”
    “Yes, I noticed that.” She moved to the body’s right side and slipped her finger deep into a hole hidden in the hair above the ear. “Your primary cause may be lurking under here.”
    Evans sat down.
    The autopsy continued for another hour and a half, during which Harry retrieved vitreous fluid from the body’s eyeballs with a syringe, and Hillstrom cut around the back of Mrs. Ricci’s head, peeled her forehead down over her nose like a rubber mask, and revealed the naked skull. She used a hand-held vibrator saw to remove the top half of the cranium and established that a broken brain stem had been the elusive primary cause of death. Both events sent Evans back to his chair.
    Hillstrom’s prowess at this was impressive. She cut, sawed, and sliced with absolute grace, never nicking a wrong part, never hesitating once she’d started. It made me realize that, had Mrs. Ricci been alive, she could have done a