declares loudly: “Nice. Very nice.”
I stare at Anja. At first I think that she must be dead, because she does not move. The man
doesn’t even glance back at her, but reaches into a backpack for a water bottle. He takes a long
drink. He does not see Anja come back to life.
Suddenly she rises to her feet. She begins to run.
As she flees into the desert, I press my hands against the window.
Hurry, Anja! Go. Go!
“Hey!” one of the men yells. “That one’s running.”
Anja is still fleeing. She is barefoot, naked, and sharp rocks are surely cutting into her feet. But
the open desert lies ahead, and she does not falter.
Don’t look back. Keep running! Keep . . .
The gunshot freezes my blood.
Anja pitches forward and sprawls to the ground. But she is not yet conquered. She struggles
back to her feet, staggers a few steps like a drunken woman, then falls to her knees. She is
crawling now, every inch a fight, a triumph. She reaches out, as though to grab a helping hand
that none of us can see.
A second gunshot rings out.
This time, when Anja falls, she does not rise again.
The van driver tucks the gun in his belt and looks at the girls. They are all crying, hugging
themselves as they stare across the desert toward Anja’s body.
“That’s a waste,” says the man who raped her.
“Too much trouble to run them down,” the driver says. “You still have six to choose from.”
They have tried out the merchandise; now the men begin to barter. When they have finished,
they divide us up like livestock. Three girls in each van. I do not hear how much they pay for
us; I only know that I am the bargain, the one thrown in as part of another deal.
As we drive away, I look back toward Anja’s body. They have not bothered to bury her; she
lies exposed to the sun and wind, and already hungry birds are circling in the sky. In a few
weeks, there will be nothing left of her. She will vanish, just as I am about to vanish, into a
land where no one knows my name. Into America.
We turn onto a highway. I see a sign: US 94.
TWO
Dr. Maura Isles had not smelled fresh air all day. Since seven that morning she had been
inhaling the scent of death, an aroma so familiar to her that she did not recoil as her knife sliced
cold skin, as foul odors wafted up from exposed organs. The police officers who occasionally
stood in the room to observe postmortems were not so stoic. Sometimes Maura caught a whiff
of the Vicks ointment that they dabbed in their nostrils to mask the stench. Sometimes even
Vicks was not enough, and she’d see them suddenly go wobbly and turn away, to gag over the
sink. Cops were not accustomed, as she was, to the astringent bite of formalin, the sulfurous
aroma of decaying membranes.
Today, there was an incongruous note of sweetness added to that bouquet of odors: the scent
of coconut oil, emanating from the skin of Mrs. Gloria Leder, who now lay on the autopsy
table. She was fifty years old, a divorcee with broad hips and heavy breasts and toenails
painted a brilliant pink. Deep tan lines marked the edges of the bathing suit she had been
wearing when she was found dead beside her apartment swimming pool. It had been a bikini—
not the most flattering choice for a body sagging with middle age. When was the last time I had
the chance to put on my bathing suit? Maura thought, and she felt an absurd flash of envy for
Mrs. Gloria Leder, who’d spent the last moments of her life enjoying this summer day. It was
almost August, and Maura had not yet visited the beach or sat by a swimming pool or even
sunbathed in her own backyard.
“Rum and Coke,” said the young cop standing at the foot of the table. “I think that’s what she
had in her glass. It was sitting next to her patio chair.”
This was the first time Maura had seen Officer Buchanan in her morgue. He made her nervous,
the way he kept fussing with his paper mask and shifting from foot to foot. The boy looked
way too young to be a cop. They were all starting to look too young.
“Did you retain the contents of that glass?” she asked Officer Buchanan.
“Uh . . . no, ma’am. I took a good whiff. She was definitely drinking a rum and Coke.”
“At nine A.M.?” Maura looked across the table at her assistant, Yoshima. As usual, he was
silent, but she saw one dark eyebrow tilt up, as eloquent a comment as she would get from
Yoshima.
“She didn’t get down too much of it,” said Officer Buchanan. “The glass was still pretty full.”
“Okay,” said Maura. “Let’s take a look at her back.”
Together, she and Yoshima log-rolled the corpse onto its side.
“There’s a tattoo here on the hip,” noted Maura. “Little blue butterfly.”
“Geez,” said Buchanan. “A woman her age?”
Maura glanced up. “You think fifty’s ancient, do you?”
“I mean—well, that’s my
mom’s
age.”
Careful, boy. I’m only ten years younger.
She picked up the knife and began to cut. This was her fifth postmortem of the day, and she
made swift work of it. With Dr. Costas on vacation, and a multivehicle accident the night
before, the cold room had been crammed with body bags that morning. Even as she’d worked
her way through the backlog, two more bodies had been delivered to the refrigerator. Those
would have to wait until tomorrow. The morgue’s clerical staff had already left for the evening,
and Yoshima kept looking at the clock, obviously anxious to be on his way home.
She incised skin, gutted the thorax and abdomen. Removed dripping organs and placed them
on the cutting board to be sectioned. Little by little, Gloria Leder revealed her secrets: a fatty
liver, the telltale sign of a few too many rums and Cokes. A uterus knobby with fibroids.
And finally, when they opened the cranium, the reason for her death. Maura saw it as she lifted
the brain in her gloved hands. “Subarachnoid hemorrhage,” she said, and glanced up at
Buchanan. He was looking far paler than when he had first walked into the room. “This
woman probably had a berry aneurysm—a weak spot in one of the arteries at the base of the
brain. Hypertension would have exacerbated it.”
Buchanan swallowed, his gaze focused on the flap of loose skin that had been Gloria Leder’s
scalp, now peeled forward over the face. That’s the part that usually horrified them, the point at
which so many of them winced or turned away—when the face collapses like a tired rubber
mask.
“So . . . you’re saying it’s a natural death?” he asked softly.
“Correct. There’s nothing more you need to see here.”
The young man was already stripping off his gown as he retreated from the table. “I think I
need some fresh air . . .”
So do I, thought Maura. It’s a summer night, my garden needs watering, and I have not been
outside all day.
But an hour later she was still in the building, sitting at her desk reviewing lab slips and
dictated reports. Though she had changed out of her scrub suit, the smell of the morgue still
seemed to cling to her, a scent that no amount of soap and water could eradicate, because the
memory itself was what lingered. She picked up the Dictaphone and began to record her report
on Gloria Leder.
“Fifty-year-old white woman found slumped in a patio chair near her apartment swimming
pool. She is a well-developed, well-nourished woman with no visible trauma. External exam
reveals an old surgical scar on her abdomen, probably from an appendectomy. There is a small
tattoo of a butterfly on her . . .” She paused, picturing the tattoo. Was it on the left or the right
hip? God, I’m so tired, she thought. I can’t remember. What a trivial detail. It made no
difference to her conclusions, but she hated being inaccurate.
She rose from her chair and walked the deserted hallway to the stairwell, where her footfalls
echoed on concrete steps. Pushing into the lab, she turned on the lights and saw that Yoshima
had left the room in pristine condition as usual, the tables wiped down and gleaming, the floors
mopped clean. She crossed to the cold room and pulled open the heavy locker door. Wisps of
cold mist curled out. She took in a reflexive breath of air, as though about to plunge into foul
water, and stepped into the locker.
Eight gurneys were occupied; most were awaiting pickup by funeral homes. Moving down the
row, she checked the tags until she found Gloria Leder’s. She unzipped the bag, slipped her
hands under the corpse’s buttocks and rolled her sideways just far enough to catch a glimpse of
the tattoo.
It was on the left hip.
She closed the bag again and was just about to swing the door shut when she froze. Turning,
she stared into the cold room.
Did I just hear something?
The fan came on, blowing icy air from the vents. Yes, that’s all it was, she thought. The fan. Or
the refrigerator compressor. Or water cycling in the pipes. It was time to go home. She was so
tired, she was starting to imagine things.
Again she turned to leave.
Again she froze. Turning, she stared at the row of body bags. Her heart was thumping so hard
now, all she could hear was the beat of her own pulse.
Something moved in here. I’m sure of it.
She unzipped the first bag and stared down at a man whose chest had been sutured closed.
Already autopsied, she thought. Definitely dead.
Which one? Which one made the noise?
She yanked open the next bag, and confronted a bruised face, a shattered skull.
Dead.
With shaking hands she unzipped the third bag. The plastic parted, and she saw the face of a
pale young woman with black hair and cyanotic lips. Opening the bag all the way, she exposed
a wet blouse, the fabric clinging to white flesh, the skin glistening with chilly droplets of water.
She peeled open the blouse and saw full breasts, a slim waist. The torso was still intact, not yet
incised by the pathologist’s knife. The fingers and toes were purple, the arms marbled with
blue.
She pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck and felt icy skin. Bending close to the lips, she
waited for the whisper of a breath, the faintest puff of air against her cheek.
The corpse opened its eyes.
Maura gasped and lurched backward. She collided with the gurney behind her, and almost fell
as the wheels rolled away. She scrambled back to her feet and saw that the woman’s eyes were
still open, but unfocused. Blue-tinged lips formed soundless words.
Get her out of the refrigerator! Get her warm!
Maura shoved the gurney toward the door but it didn’t budge; in her panic she’d forgotten to
unlock the wheels. She stamped down on the release lever and pushed again. This time it
rolled, rattling out of the cold room into the warmer loading area.
The woman’s eyes had drifted shut again. Leaning close, Maura could feel no air moving past
the lips.
Oh Jesus. I can’t lose you now.
She knew nothing about this stranger—not her name, nor her medical history. This woman
could be teeming with viruses, yet she sealed her mouth over the woman’s, and almost gagged
at the taste of chilled flesh. She delivered three deep breaths, and pressed her fingers to the neck
to check for a carotid pulse.
Am I imagining it? Is that my own pulse I feel, throbbing in my fingers?
She grabbed the wall phone and dialed 911.
“Emergency operator.”
“This is Dr. Isles in the medical examiner’s office. I need an ambulance. There’s a woman here,
in respiratory arrest—”
“Excuse me, did you say the medical examiner’s office?”
“Yes! I’m at the rear of the building, just inside the loading bay. We’re on Albany Street, right
across from the medical center!”
“I’m dispatching an ambulance now.”
Maura hung up. Once again, she quelled her disgust as she pressed her lips to the woman’s.
Three more quick breaths, then her fingers were back on the carotid.
A pulse. There was definitely a pulse!
Suddenly she heard a wheeze, a cough. The woman was moving air now, mucus rattling in her
throat.
Stay with me. Breathe, lady. Breathe!
A loud whoop announced the arrival of the ambulance. She shoved open the rear doors and
stood squinting against flashing lights as the vehicle backed up to the dock. Two EMTs jumped
out, hauling their kits.
“She’s in here!” Maura called.
“Still in respiratory arrest?”
“No, she’s breathing now. And I can feel a pulse.”
The two men trotted into the building and halted, staring at the woman on the gurney. “Jesus,”
one of them murmured. “Is that a
body
bag?”
“I found her in the cold room,” said Maura. “By now, she’s probably hypothermic.”
“Oh, man. If this isn’t your worst nightmare.”
Out came the oxygen mask and IV lines. They slapped on EKG leads. On the monitor, a slow
sinus rhythm blipped like a lazy cartoonist’s pen. The woman had a heartbeat and she was
breathing, yet she still looked dead.
Looping a tourniquet around one flaccid arm, the EMT asked: “What’s her story? How did she
get here?”
“I don’t know anything about her,” said Maura. “I came down to check on another body in the
cold room and I heard this one moving.”
“Does this, uh, happen very often here?”
“This is a first time for me.” And she hoped to God it was the last.
“How long has she been in your refrigerator?”