Public Anatomy by Pearson A. Scott Page A

what he was about to find. He looked at the younger officer, whose crew cut was so close Lipsky could see his scalp.
    “We haven’t touched it.”
    Lipsky reached for the corner of the handkerchief. His stomach drew tight up in his chest.
    Beside old cigarette butts, an oval-shaped piece of meat lay on the sand. Smooth on the surface and rounded on one end, it was the size of a four-ounce steak. A jagged cut had severed the other end, and nubbins of tissue, like ligaments, splayed across the sand.
    McCormick leaned over the table to get a better look. “What the—?”
    “It’s her tongue,” Lipsky said. The drawing on the thick paper card depicted exactly what Lipsky saw in the bucket.
    Crew cut pulled his head back quickly and let out a long grunt. “Her tongue?”
    “Yeah.” Lipsky pointed at the tissue attachments. “It’s been cut way back at the base.”
    “What the hell’s that about?” McCormick asked.
    Lipsky said nothing. He thought about the warehouse victim. How a bone from the foot had been cut out and set apart, as if on display. Similar type case. Except this was a female, missing her tongue.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    At five a.m., Thomas Greenway parked his Mazda on the side street beside Liza’s house. Looking west, toward the river, he saw a blue-gray hint of dawn surfacing at the horizon. But among the houses of Victorian Village, night still dominated. Greenway did not ring the doorbell. He didn’t knock. Nor did Layla let him in. The chief resident entered Liza’s house with a key given to him by its owner. He climbed the stairs to the third-story office, not pausing at the bedroom of Layla, whom he assumed was fast asleep.
    The door to Liza’s office was cracked open, a faint light from inside. Liza sat at her desk wearing a fleece robe pulled close to her neck. Both hands were wrapped around a cup of coffee, as though it were mid-winter and not the middle of a heat wave. She showed no surprise upon seeing him.
    “What did you tell them?”
    He stepped inside the room and closed the door. “I told them you were a hot piece of ass.”
    Liza sipped her coffee. “They already knew that. What else?”
    “That you liked it when I—”
    “Shut up and just tell me.”
    He sat in a chair in front of her desk. She, the attending surgeon. Him, the resident reporting for duty. He leaned over the desk, arms folded across a thick slab of dark oak.
    “I told them the death occurred because of an equipment malfunction. Device failure. ‘The robot,’” he put that term in quotation marks, “did not respond to your input, doctor. Isn’t that what you told me to say?”
    “And their response?”
    He shrugged. “They’re a bunch of damn lawyers. They just wrote in their yellow notebooks. What did you expect them to say?”
    “Do you think they bought it?”
    He leaned back in the seat. “Yeah, I think they did.”
    This seemed to please her. Liza stood. She walked to the front of her desk and sat sideways with one foot on the floor, one foot dangling. Her robe parted up to her hip. “Did you tell them what else I liked?”
    His eyes followed the curve of her thigh until it was obvious the robe was all she had on. She twisted, raised her foot off the floor until it rested in his lap. Using the tips of his thumbs, he kneaded the ball of her foot, slow circular motions that made her writhe.
    Liza pressed the tips of her fingers into her lower abdomen and straightened her back, took a few shallow breaths through pursed lips.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    Liza relaxed her shoulders and exhaled. “I’ve had a few sharp pains.”
    “You should have it checked out.”
    “I did,” she said. “I had Brenner do an ultrasound in the clinic.” She rubbed a spot at her waistline and smiled. “Everybody’s fine.”
    Liza continued to smile at him.
    “What?”
    “You’re worried about us.”
    “Look, Liza. I’m glad for you. I really am. But for me, it was a business transaction. Nothing more.