Page 24 of Cold, Cold Bones

Bunching and tossing the bag, wrappers, and uneaten fruit, I shot to my feet. Totally pumped, I hurried across the building and into the bio-vestibule, snagging the eyeball from its cooler on my way.

In the autopsy room, once again properly garbed, I clamped a movable magnifying lens to one side of the autopsy table, then positioned a cutting board below it. After illuminating the fluorescent ring, I transferred the eyeball from its Tupperware container to the board.

Selecting a scalpel from a surgical kit, I made my first delicate cut.

My second.

Almost shouted hallelujah!

I understood why the eyeball was so much better preserved than the skull.

6

Nguyen killed the saw in her hand. The blade stopped oscillating and the whining cut off. The small room hummed with sudden silence.

Nguyen’s eyes studied me from over her mask, the irises a brown so deep they almost blended with the pupils. Her brows, drawn with surgical precision, were canted in concern. Or confusion.

“Please repeat that?” she said.

The guy on the table said nothing. His face was peeled down to his chin, the top of his skull gaping wide.

“The eyeball was frozen,” I said. “The tissue is milky and—”

“This makes sense.” Soft accent. Mostly Boston, with a hint of something more exotic.

“I was eating defrosted grape—”

“One mustn’t freeze grapes.”

“I know. Do you want details?”

“Later, please. Right now, I must finish with this gentleman.”

“What happened to him?”

“He fell from a zip line.”

“Cause of death?”

“Acute numerical assumption.”

I just looked at her.

“His number was up. His heart had stopped.”

I returned to my own tile, glass, and stainless-steel chamber. Cut slivers from the eyeball, sealed them in a vial, and labeled the cap. Placed the vial in the cooler beside tissue taken from the privy head before maceration.

The knife and plastic bag had already followed the box and paper toweling to the crime lab. After jotting a note to Hawkins concerning DNA processing of both sets of samples, I returned to my office.

First, I called Henry. Got voice mail.

My iPhone showed the time as five-fifteen.

What the hell?

I hit a speed dial button.

“You got nothing better to do than harass my ass?” Again, it sounded like Slidell was on the road.