Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set by Eric Van Lustbader Page B
Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
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grave.
That was the last time Jack could remember really being with his daughter. After that, what happened? She grew up too fast? They grew apart too quickly? He was at a loss to understand where the time had gone or how Emma had changed. It was as if he had fallen asleep on a speeding train. He might never have woken up if it hadn’t been for the crash.
Schiltz opened the door in response to Jack’s pounding. His rubber gloves were slick with unspeakable substances.
He moved away from the door so Jack could come in. “You look like roadkill. What happened to you downstairs?”
Jack, immersed in the horror of his own personal prison, almost told Schiltz about his ghostly visitations, but he had a conviction that they weren’t visitations at all, merely wishful thinking, as if he could wish Emma back to life, or some transparent semblance of life. On the other hand, who but Egon, seeing God’s hand in the incredible, the unexplainable, might understand. Nevertheless, Jack chose to keep silent on the matter. It was too personal, too humiliating—he’d seem like a child lost in a ghost story.
“I ran into something that disagreed with me.” Sharon constantly accused him of hiding his true feelings behind sarcasm. What did she know?
The offices were shadowed, hushed. Carpeted and wood-paneled, they were a jarring contrast with the banks of stainless steel deathbeds, sluicing hoses, giant floor drains, vats of chemicals, rows of microscopes, tiers of body blocks used to elevate the cadavers’ chests for easier entry, drawers filled with the forensic implements of morphology and pathology: bone saws, bread knives, enterotomes, hammers, rib cutters, skull chisels, Striker saws, scalpels, and Hagedorn needles to sew up the bodies when work was done. Jack and Egon skirted the X-ray room and the toxicology lab, went through the standards room, as refined as a Swiss watchmaker’s, as blunt as a butcher shop, where cadavers as well as their major organs were weighed and measured. Even in the short corridor they felt the icy breath of the cold room, dim, blued, impersonal as a terminal, hushed as a library.
“So what brings you back? Nowhere else to go on a rainy December night?” Schiltz gestured at the wall of cadaver containers. “SinceI’m not full up, I could give you an overnight berth in my Japanese hotel. It’s quiet as the grave and a gourmet continental breakfast is served in the autopsy room starting at eight. Would you like an upper or a lower berth?”
Jack laughed. Egon had the uncanny ability to dislodge his depressions.
“I’m interested in whichever berths the two Secret Service men are in.”
“Ah, yes,” Egon said. “The men in black.”
Having a sense of humor—the darker the better—was essential for an ME, Egon once told Jack. “Professional detachment only gets you so far, because eventually someone gets under your skin,” his friend had once told him. “After that, it’s every macabre jokester for himself.”
Schiltz moved Jack along the rows of gleaming stainless steel containers, opened two side by side at waist height. “In my fascination with your floating island, I forgot all about them. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do the original autopsies. The law now mandates that in cases of deaths of federal officials, pathologists from the Army Forces Institute of Pathology do the work.” He shrugged. “Idiotic, if you ask me, but that’s the government for you.”
The two cadavers lay on their backs, even features waxy, doll-like, their chests cut and sewn back up in the autopsy T-scar that went from just beneath the collarbone to the lower intestine. “The pathology is yesterday’s paper so far as your new compadres are concerned. They came, they saw, they were dead-ended.”
“Nothing at all?” Jack said.
“I performed my own autopsies just to make certain. Not so much as a partial print, a stray hair, a scrap of skin, paint or dirt under the nails. No hint of
That was the last time Jack could remember really being with his daughter. After that, what happened? She grew up too fast? They grew apart too quickly? He was at a loss to understand where the time had gone or how Emma had changed. It was as if he had fallen asleep on a speeding train. He might never have woken up if it hadn’t been for the crash.
Schiltz opened the door in response to Jack’s pounding. His rubber gloves were slick with unspeakable substances.
He moved away from the door so Jack could come in. “You look like roadkill. What happened to you downstairs?”
Jack, immersed in the horror of his own personal prison, almost told Schiltz about his ghostly visitations, but he had a conviction that they weren’t visitations at all, merely wishful thinking, as if he could wish Emma back to life, or some transparent semblance of life. On the other hand, who but Egon, seeing God’s hand in the incredible, the unexplainable, might understand. Nevertheless, Jack chose to keep silent on the matter. It was too personal, too humiliating—he’d seem like a child lost in a ghost story.
“I ran into something that disagreed with me.” Sharon constantly accused him of hiding his true feelings behind sarcasm. What did she know?
The offices were shadowed, hushed. Carpeted and wood-paneled, they were a jarring contrast with the banks of stainless steel deathbeds, sluicing hoses, giant floor drains, vats of chemicals, rows of microscopes, tiers of body blocks used to elevate the cadavers’ chests for easier entry, drawers filled with the forensic implements of morphology and pathology: bone saws, bread knives, enterotomes, hammers, rib cutters, skull chisels, Striker saws, scalpels, and Hagedorn needles to sew up the bodies when work was done. Jack and Egon skirted the X-ray room and the toxicology lab, went through the standards room, as refined as a Swiss watchmaker’s, as blunt as a butcher shop, where cadavers as well as their major organs were weighed and measured. Even in the short corridor they felt the icy breath of the cold room, dim, blued, impersonal as a terminal, hushed as a library.
“So what brings you back? Nowhere else to go on a rainy December night?” Schiltz gestured at the wall of cadaver containers. “SinceI’m not full up, I could give you an overnight berth in my Japanese hotel. It’s quiet as the grave and a gourmet continental breakfast is served in the autopsy room starting at eight. Would you like an upper or a lower berth?”
Jack laughed. Egon had the uncanny ability to dislodge his depressions.
“I’m interested in whichever berths the two Secret Service men are in.”
“Ah, yes,” Egon said. “The men in black.”
Having a sense of humor—the darker the better—was essential for an ME, Egon once told Jack. “Professional detachment only gets you so far, because eventually someone gets under your skin,” his friend had once told him. “After that, it’s every macabre jokester for himself.”
Schiltz moved Jack along the rows of gleaming stainless steel containers, opened two side by side at waist height. “In my fascination with your floating island, I forgot all about them. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do the original autopsies. The law now mandates that in cases of deaths of federal officials, pathologists from the Army Forces Institute of Pathology do the work.” He shrugged. “Idiotic, if you ask me, but that’s the government for you.”
The two cadavers lay on their backs, even features waxy, doll-like, their chests cut and sewn back up in the autopsy T-scar that went from just beneath the collarbone to the lower intestine. “The pathology is yesterday’s paper so far as your new compadres are concerned. They came, they saw, they were dead-ended.”
“Nothing at all?” Jack said.
“I performed my own autopsies just to make certain. Not so much as a partial print, a stray hair, a scrap of skin, paint or dirt under the nails. No hint of
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