Jan 5, 2013

  The definition of a medical examiner is as follows: A medically qualified government official whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occurs under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions, can initiate certain inquests

  Usually, such officers are dispassionate, detached, and entirely professional when dealing with the public and law enforcement officials. The medical examiner of Elmira NY, Jonathan Needham, embodied none of these qualities, but at least he shows up to work on time.

  “Now I’m only going to give you one guess. So, you better make it count.”

  Buried on the lowest floor of this turn-of-the-century hospital sat two, rarely used, stainless steel examination tables. Between them, the county M.E. stood looking out at a group of bewildered high school students. His question lingered over the nervous group like a thundercloud from an old Saturday morning cartoon.

  Each student knew it was there, knew it was going to drench them eventually, but no one quite knew which one would be struck by lightning first.

  Near the middle of the group, Jonathan noticed a few students hadn’t paid attention to anything all morning. Satisfied with simply texting their lives away, these teenagers spent little of their academic time interacting with anything not involving social media. The M.E. pitied them for not knowing the delights that anonymity could bring or a life where they could disappear any time they wanted to.

  “Fucking Facebook…” the aggravated examiner cursed under his breath. He knew the government couldn’t go around putting chips in people’s heads because that would be both ridiculous and insidious. No, it was far easier to get them addicted to something with a chip already in it. He often referred to this tactic online as, “the end around without the reach around.”

  Jonathan Needham, the county medical examiner, didn’t trust anyone.

  “So…” The clock on the wall ticked by at a snail’s pace. “No one wants to give it the old college try… no one?” Not that any of these Rhodes Scholars would be going to college, he thought to himself. Even Elmira Community College, his old Alma Marta, had some standards after all.

  “Anyone?” A sea of blank looks greeted his second prodding. Distracted, he searched for his coffee cup while fighting back a yawn. The damn thing always went missing just when he needed it the most.

  Still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, Jonathan’s imagination had been on fire ever since the game warden’s late-night visit. So, ignoring the student’s dull looks, he dove back into his newest assignment. In particular, the anomalies he’d found in the young woman’s x-rays. They had been nagging at him all morning.

  He was in the process of logging onto a new website when one of the students found it necessary to deposit her still undigested breakfast into the nearest trash.

  Unlike the others, Jonathan didn’t recoil from the sound of her hurl or the smell that followed. He merely shook his head disapprovingly. Why did they continue to bring children here? This office was not a place for the weak.

  “Good try.” Driven by a sense of morbid fascination, he tore his attention away from his screen long enough to acknowledge a blond girl with her head buried in the bin. “Substantive, encompassing, thoughtful… but ultimately it’s not the correct answer to my question, miss…” He screwed up his face, trying to remember her name, “Whatever your name is. And by the way,” the group, even the texters, waited to see what he would say next. “You would be surprised how often that doesn’t happen around here.”

  One of the puking girl’s friends bent down and carefully tried to pull her hair back. But three seconds later, she almost threw up from the smell herself.

  “My god, Yvette,” she gagged with a hand over her mouth and nose. “I thought you were on a diet.”

  Yvette, who was still dry heaving over the trash can, could only manage a feeble moan in response. One of the guys, a dark-haired jock wearing a letterman’s jacket, must have thought the whole situation was utterly hilarious because he proceeded to laugh and point at the sick girl mercilessly.

  Yvette’s friend shot him a look like a snake preparing to strike. Upon seeing this, the kid jerked back out of instinct. With a horrified look, he silently mouthed the words “I’m sorry.”

  One of his friends saw him capitulate and coughed the words, “pussy-whipped” in response.

  After the drama played itself out, a Goth girl with jet black hair and nose ring, decided to hazard a guess. “The deer,” her voice was barely above a whisper. “The deer is the stranger option between the two.”

  Since no one else in the group had the guts to offer an answer, they waited with bated breath for Jonathan’s response. It wasn’t much. “No.”

  “This is a coroner’s office… isn’t it?” Her voice was straining under the pressure of speaking in front of everyone. “This is a place where you investigate how people die… right?”

  Her question annoyed him, but not enough to care. There was something specific he was looking for, and these kids wouldn’t distract him from finding it. Eyes glued to the screen, he said, “That was the destination listed on your permission slips?” Everyone in the group nodded, even the Goth girl. Jonathan continued in a monotone, disinterested voice. “So, I don’t understand the question.”

  The Goth girl’s voice began to strengthen with every word she spoke.

  “My question is, why is a dead woman stranger than a dead deer? And since when does a coroner’s office do autopsies on animals anyway?” She mockingly pointed to both bodies lying motionless on the steel tables. “Are you that hard up for business?”

  “Maybe road kills are considered felonies now.” A prepubescent voice chirped from somewhere near the back of the room. The silly joke broke through the morning’s tension, and for the first time, the whole group laughed.

  Jonathan did not.

  Emboldened by their response, the Goth girl continued. “And why is there a sheet draped over the deer? Isn’t that creepy?”

  Jonathan took a moment to study the young woman before he answered. “Because… Anne Rice,” he stifled a laugh as he leaped from his stool and hovered above the animal’s carcass like a third-rate magician. “She,” he gently stroked the deer’s face. “Should be treated with the same dignity as anyone else who graces these cold, clinical premises, don’t you think?”

  The group stopped laughing except for a chubby kid wearing a tee shirt with the phrase TRUTH IS ONLY THE LIE EVERYONE ELSE CHOOSES TO BELIEVE stenciled on it.

  Jonathan could relate.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Besides, kids your age shouldn’t be exposed to any of her lady deer parts.” The M.E. sat back down on his stool. “Are there any other questions?”

  The Goth girl spoke one more time. “You still didn’t answer the question. Why is a woman in a morgue stranger than a deer in a morgue?”

  Past caring about this governmental circle jerk, Jonathan opened another window on his laptop, and his fingers furiously flew over the keys to narrow his search. The answer was here and in another moment he would have it. He was about to dismiss them when a much deeper voice repeated her question.

  Curious, Jonathan tore his attention away from his computer to see who had grown a pair. In the middle of hanging up his jacket on the small, metal coat rack near the door, the Sheriff glared at him. How long had he been standing there watching? Without waiting, he repeated his question.

  “Why is a woman in a morgue stranger than a deer in a morgue?”

  “Kids,” Jonathan closed his laptop and laid it down on the table. “The field trip is over.”

  Shannon Meadows waited patiently for the last of the students to file out of the examination room. This exodus took a bit longer than expected because tee shirt guy and Goth chick decided to linger around for an answer from the examiner. Meadows found this extremely funny, given that Jonathan hated talking to most people.

  “I can’t believe you were that nice to them.” The sheriff commented after the kids high tailed it out the door. “That’s usually not your style.”

  “The kid with the tee shirt kind of reminded me of me at that age.” Jonathan pried open his laptop and continued his search unabated by the sheriff’s question. “Plus, the county director thinks these little excursions are good for our annual begging trips to the budget committee. Besides, I didn’t have an answer to the question.”

  He finally opened the web page that he had been looking for all morning. Near the bottom of the screen, buried in a heap of extraneous facts, was the information he’d been exhaustively seeking.

  “But I think I do now.” With a press of a button, the printer in the next office sprang to life. “So, what can a humble scalpel scrounger do for you this morning?”

  Meadows yanked at the sheet covering the deer. It slid easily off the animal and fell limply to the floor. The idea this animal should get the same amount of respect as a person was something the Sheriff found distasteful. “What have you found out?”

  “You mean in the whole twelve hours since you dropped them off?”

  Everyone in the department knew about Jonathan’s twisted sarcasm, and usually, the M.E. was afforded a wide birth in these matters. But something was different about this case. Something that made playing games irrelevant. “Yes,” He tried to control his growing anger. “Isn’t that enough time for a preliminary report?”

  “Preliminary… yes, definitive… no. The blood samples I drew won’t be back until late this afternoon.” Jonathan pointed his finger at the deer. “My cursory examination of Bambi was normal. Well, at least as normal as an exam performed on a dead deer can be without any signs of wounds.”

  Spreading the sheet back over the deer, Jonathan opened one of the freezers then pushed its body unceremoniously inside. “She’ll start stinking up the place in a couple of hours if I leave her out.”

  Sheriff Meadows ignored Jonathan. His attention was squarely on the young woman. “Did you run her prints?”

  “Through every database, I have access to.” The medical examiner’s face betrayed a twinge of guilt. “Even a few we don’t. But I still came up with nothing informative. She’s not a criminal, at least not one that’s been caught yet.”

  The sheriff waited by the exam table for Jonathan to remove the white sheet from the young woman’s torso. From the amount of bruising on her tiny body, it was evident that Meadows had underestimated the damage the accident had wrought. Sticking out from all this damage was a rather large Y-incision down the middle of her sternum.

  “I ran the contents of her stomach. Nothing unusual popped, and her blood alcohol level was at baseline. As for drugs,” With business-like precision, he pulled the sheet back up to her chin. “I’ll get the toxicology results later in the week. But from what I see, most of her injuries are consistent with a car accident: broken bones, lacerations, bruising... the regular stuff.”

  Jonathan moved toward the opposite end of the table and pulled the sheet back far enough to uncover her legs. “This…” A scar ran the length of her right shin. Within that scar ran a fresh incision. Skin and muscle were drawn back far enough for bone and something shiny to be visible. “This is something else entirely.”

  Jonathan procured a clean scalpel from one of the many drawers underneath the exam table. With the blunt end facing down, he lightly tapped on her exposed shinbone. This strike produced a high-pitched metallic sound which echoed throughout the office. With a fresh cloth, he wiped the bone clean of blood to reveal a polished strip of metal.

  “She’s had a metal rod inserted, probably the result of a childhood accident.”

  Sheriff Meadows barely batted an eyelash as he acknowledged the diagnosis. “So, she broke her leg as a child. Why is that so strange?”

  “By itself, it isn’t. But check this out.” Attached to the wall was an old x-ray viewing station. With a sheet of film already in place, Jonathan flipped a switch on the machine’s base, and a fluorescent bulb crackled to life. “See, it’s a metal rod.” he eagerly pointed to what appeared to be a twelve-inch piece of metal attached to her tibia by a series of small screws. “But this isn’t your ordinary metal rod. It’s special.”

  “What’s so special about it?”

  “Stainless steel sheriff, the rod is made of stainless steel.” Jonathan’s face was having trouble containing his excitement. “I mean. You can imagine the possibilities this brings up.” The sheriff felt his temples begin to throb. He hated when Jonathan talked in riddles. “Sheriff, when someone needs a metal rod attached to a piece of bone, do you know what it’s made of?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Titanium. Today’s surgical rods and screws are constructed from a titanium alloy derivative. What’s strange is this young woman’s metal rod is made from stainless steel.” Jonathan looked totally impressed with himself, but the sheriff wasn’t. “Don’t you see what this means?”

  “No,” he said utterly in the dark. “I really don’t.”

  Jonathan had to remind himself that not everyone was as detailed orientated as he was or as well educated.

  “Sheriff.” The young M.E. ducked out of the room to retrieve the paper he had just printed up. Upon returning, he thrust it into Meadow’s hand. “Look down at the bottom of the page, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  Without bothering to look at the paper, the sheriff crumpled it up and tossed it into the trashcan. “You’re the medical examiner. Explain it to me.”

  “Fine.” Jonathan retrieved the discarded piece of paper, smoothed it out, and placed it on the table. “Stainless steel has a nasty little habit of rusting inside a person’s body. That’s why they stopped using the material for implants back in the early seventies.

  “Back in the seventies?” Sheriff Meadows searched the woman’s face for any sign of a wrinkle. Even under her many wounds, he could see that she was barely in her twenties, max. Much too young to have been alive when those implants were phased out. His mind seized upon a radical idea.

  “Could she be a foreign national? Most third world countries have shitty health care systems. Maybe there’s a place in the world still using stainless steel.”

  Jonathan had already run down the merits of that possibility.

  “There are a few countries still using stainless steel. But those places are deep in the third world. The victim looks more at home in the Scandinavian countries.”

  “She could have been visiting.”

  “Possible.” Jonathan yawned. “There’s no way of telling until we find out her identity.”

  Meadows regretted asking the question before it was even out of his mouth. “Do you have any theories?”

  The medical examiner practically bit his tongue in two. Jonathan’s imaginative theories often reared their heads during the less conventional cases. On these occasions, the sheriff warned him about “theories” with no basis in fact. He also made abundantly clear that supposition had no place in law enforcement.

  “Nothing which would live up to your lofty standards, Sheriff.”

  Meadows solemnly regarded the broken and battered body for a moment before retrieving his coat from the rack. “I need this handled carefully, Jonathan. If she’s here illegally, we’ll need everything covered in case homeland security decides to pay us a little visit.”

  “Agreed.” Jonathan finally found his coffee cup under a pile of discarded autopsy reports. “I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. I promise.” He took a sip of the cold coffee. “At least until I have some concrete evidence either way.”

  The sheriff knew the M.E. could be passive aggressive when it came to shit like this, so he would have to watch out. “Call me as soon as the blood tests come back. I don’t care what time it is… ok?”

  “Yes, sheriff.”

  Then, Shannon Meadows left as silently as he came.

  “I hate lying to him, but...” Jonathan eased the sheet back over the woman until she was completely covered up. Not for privacy sake, but for the fact that her weird ass haircut was creeping him out. “I need a fresh perspective on things.”

  Jonathan opened a new tab on his computer. Then, he accessed his lengthy favorites list. There, third down from the top, sat a link the paranoid examiner frequented very often: Everyone’s Out To Get you.

  A quick tap on the trackpad and his computer instantly redirected itself to the web page’s forums link. Filled with hundreds of faceless seekers, this harbor of the weird completely understood the problems lying silently on top of his exam table.

  So vetted or not, Jonathan was going to use these denizens of the net to solve them.