Cleopatra's Needle: Maelstrom by Tony Kayden

Author:Tony Kayden [Kayden, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

TACEAT COLLOQUIA

EFFUGIAT RISUS

HIC LOCUS EST UBI

MORS GAUDET

SUCCURRERE VITAE

T hose were the words inscribed on the marble wall of the lobby outside the door of the office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Translated they said: “Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.”

Morton Tobolowski saw more bloodied corpses and violated bodies than anyone in the history of New York City. An elfin man, with an avuncular manner, he moved slowly and talked slowly, yet this was deceiving because behind those yawning eyes burned a bright light and a keen, razor-sharp mind. As Chief Medical Examiner, it was his duty to investigate the circumstances and determine cause of death in the thirty percent of the annual 100,000 deaths in New York City. They couldn’t be certified by a physician, because they were either unattended, suspicious, violent or traumatic. He had held the job for over thirty-six years.

At age sixty-seven, he had seen a lot of unusual, gruesome things: A mobster with two ice picks stuck through each of his eyes, and two more stuck in each of his ears; a young boy struck by lightning, half of his entire body skinless, scarred raw like a tree whose bark had been burned away; a prostitute who had been cut cleanly in two at the torso, a votive candle stuck up her joy vagina; a Portuguese sailor, tattoos covering every inch of his skin, who had been walking around with malignant tertian malaria, his entire body infected with parasites. The city morgue was a museum of the macabre.

Tobolowski just stood there shaking his head. Nothing, in all his years as Chief Medical Examiner, had prepared him for the ghastly sight of Debbie Renfro, whose body lay atop the cold steel autopsy table. He had read the night report, re-examined the body, and was still unable to establish the cause of death. It was by far the most intriguing death he had ever come up against. He had seen many murder victims whose throats had been slit. Death was instantaneous due to severing of the carotid artery. But Debbie Renfro was dead on her feet before she crashed through that glass display case. Strangely enough, when he had cut the radial of her left wrist during his preliminary autopsy, no blood had spurted. He cut the femoral on her right leg and it didn’t bleed. Her entire vascular system was clotted with a grainy, sand-like substance. There was no explanation for it.

Ever since Robert Kraft’s body had turned up, Biggs had been trying to make sense of it. He had written Kraft’s name down on a piece of paper, along with Toby Willet’s, and had drawn a line from each of their names to the dead homeless man, trying to connect the dots. When he got the phone call earlier that morning, he headed right over to the morgue. Sally arrived shortly after, having contacted Toby Willet’s doctors, Daniel and Susan. They were huddled around the body, each hoarding his own sanity as they tried to decipher its form and meaning.

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