'Do you want him in the fridge?' one of the squad members said to me.
'No. You can wheel him into the X-ray room.' I unlocked more doors, the stretcher clattering after me, leaving drips of blood on tile.
'You going solo tonight?' asked a paramedic who looked Latin.
'I'm afraid so.'
I opened a plastic apron and slipped it over my head, hoping Marino would show up soon. In the locker room, I fetched a green surgical gown off a shelf. I pulled on shoe covers and two pairs of gloves.
'Can we help you get him on the table?' a paramedic asked.
'That would be terrific.'
'Hey, guys, let's get him on the table for the Doc.'
'Sure thing.'
'Shoot, this pouch is leaking, too. We gotta get some new ones.'
'Which way do you want his head to go?'
'This end for the head.'
'On his back?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you.'
'Okay. One-two-three heave.'
We lifted Anthony Jones from the stretcher to the table, and one of the paramedics started to unzip the pouch.
'No, no, leave him in,' I said. 'I'll X-ray him through it.'
'How long will it take?'
'Not long.'
'You're going to need some help moving him again.'
'I'll take all the help I can get,' I told them.
'We can hang around a few more minutes. Were you really going to do all this alone?'
'I'm expecting someone else.'
A little later, we moved the body into the autopsy suite and I undressed it on top of the first steel table. The paramedics left, returning the morgue to its usual sounds of water running into sinks and steel instruments clattering against steel. I attached the victim's films to light boxes where the shadows and shapes of his organs and bones brightly bared their souls to me. Bullets and their multitude of ragged pieces were lethal snowstorms in liver, lungs, heart and brain. He had an old bullet in his left buttock and a healed fracture of his right humerus. Mr. Jones, like so many of my patients, had died the way he had lived.
I was making the Y-incision when the buzzer sounded in the bay. I did not pause. The security guard would take care of whoever it was. Moments later I heard heavy footsteps in the corridor, and Marino walked in.
'I would've got here sooner but all the neighbors decided to come out and watch the fun.'
'What neighbors?' I looked quizzically at him, scalpel poised midair.
'This drone's neighbors in Whitcomb Court. We were afraid there was going to be a friggin' riot. Word went down he was shot by a cop, and then it was Santa who whacked him, and next thing there's people crawling out of cracks in the sidewalk.'
Marino, still in dress uniform, took off his coat and draped it over a chair. 'They're all gathered around with their two-liter bottles of Pepsi, smiling at the television cameras. Friggin' unbelievable.' He slid a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket.
'I thought you were doing better with your smoking,' I said.
'I am. I get better at it all the time.'
'Marino, it isn't something to joke about.' I thought of my mother and her tracheotomy. Emphysema had not cured her habit until she had gone into respiratory arrest.
'Okay.' He came closer to the table. I'll tell you the serious truth. I've cut it down by half a pack a day, Doc.'
I cut through ribs and removed the breastplate.
'Molly won't let me smoke in her car or house.'
'Good for Molly,' I said of the woman Marino began dating at Thanksgiving. 'How are the two of you doing?'
'Real good.
'
'Are you spending Christmas together?'
'Oh yeah. We'll be with her family in Urbana. They do a big turkey, the whole nine yards.' He tapped an ash to the floor and fell silent.
'This is going to take a while,' I said. 'The bullets have fragmented as you can see from his films.'
Marino glanced around at the morbid chiaroscuro displayed on light boxes around the room.
'What was he using? Hydra-Shok?' I asked.
'All the cops around here are using Hydra-Shok these days. I guess you can see why. It does the trick.'
'His kidneys have a finely granular surface. He's very young for that.'
'What does that mean?' Marino looked on curiously.
'Probably an indication of hypertension.'
He was quiet, probably wondering if his kidneys looked the same, and I suspected they did.
'It really would help if you'd scribe,' I said.
'No problem, as long as you spell everything.'
He went to a counter and picked up clipboard and pen. He pulled on gloves. I had just begun dictating weights and measurements when his pager sounded.
Detaching it from his belt, he held it up to read the display. His face darkened.
Marino went to the phone at the other end of the autopsy suite and dialed. He talked with his back to me and I caught only words now and then. They drifted through the noise at my table, and I knew whatever he was being told was bad.
When he hung up, I was removing lead fragments from the brain and scribbling notes with a pencil on an empty, bloody glove packet. I stopped what I was doing and looked at him.
'What's going on?' I said, assuming the call was related to this case, for certainly what had happened tonight was bad enough.
Marino was perspiring, his face dark red. 'Benton sent me a 911 on my pager.'
'He sent you what?' I asked.
That's the code we agreed to use if Gault hit again.'
'Oh God,' I barely said.
'I told Benton not to bother calling you since I'm here to tell you the news in person.'
I rested my hands on the edge of the table. 'Where?' I said tensely.
'They've found a body in Central Park. Female, white, maybe in her thirties. It looks like Gault decided to celebrate Christmas in New York.'
I had feared this day. I had hoped and prayed Gault's silence might last forever, that maybe he was sick or dead in some remote village where no one knew his name.
'The Bureau's sending a chopper for us,' Marino went on. 'As soon as you finish up this case, Doc. We gotta get out of here. Goddam son of a bitch!' He started pacing furiously. 'He had to do this Christmas Eve!' He glared. 'It's deliberate. His timing's deliberate.'
'Go call Molly,' I said, trying to remain calm and work more quickly.
'And wouldn't you know I'd have this thing on.' He referred to his dress uniform.
'You have a change of clothes?'
'I'll have to stop by my house real fast. I gotta leave my gun. What are you going to do?'
'I always keep things here. While you're out, would you mind calling my sister's house in Miami? Lucy should have gotten down there yesterday. Tell her what's happened, that I'm not going to make it down, at least not right now.' I gave him the number and he left.
At almost midnight, the snow had stopped and Marino was back. Anthony Jones had been locked inside the refrigerator, his every injury, old and new, documented for my eventual day in court.
We drove to the Aero Services International terminal, where we stood behind plate glass and watched Benton Wesley descend turbulently in a Belljet Ranger. The helicopter settled neatly on a small wooden platform as a fuel truck glided out of deep shadows.