The Collector by Anne Mette Hancock

Author:Anne Mette Hancock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER

27

SCHÄFER SCANNED THE row of white rubber boots lined up below a garland of chainmail gloves. Various names were written with a Sharpie on the ankles of the boots, and he reached for the pair on the far right.

They were labeled Erik Schäfer.

He slipped the boots on and walked down the long hallway of the autopsy room. He passed the isolation room, where some poor guy who had died of meningitis or the plague or some other barbaric bacteria was being autopsied. The next four tables in the autopsy room were empty and clean, and Oppermann stood at the fifth and last one up to his elbows in Thomas Strand’s internal organs.

“Well, Doc, what do you say?” Schäfer came to a stop next to the autopsy table and nodded at the bullet hole in Thomas Strand’s face. “Did he die of natural causes or what’s your verdict?”

John Oppermann looked up from the open ribcage without lifting his head.

“Very funny.”

“You know I admire you for the way you don’t cut corners.” Schäfer smiled. “Even when a man’s been shot in the face, you won’t determine a cause of death until he’s been checked for pneumonia and syphilis. I mean, that’s thorough!”

Oppermann ignored him and continued working in silence.

Schäfer watched the man’s experienced hands and recognized the procedure: Oppermann made a Mercedes incision over the victim’s heart, three incisions that met in the middle, like the car logo.

“What are you looking for?” Schäfer asked.

“Scars in the heart.”

“Scars in the heart,” Schäfer repeated and happened to think of what Heloise had said about soldiers with PTSD. Those were the words she had used to describe their situation, that they had scars in the heart. But wouldn’t anyone have scars in their heart if you looked closely enough?

Scars from trauma? Scars from grief?

He knew that if he dissected his own heart, it would be full of scar tissue, old scars from old battles.

“Some scars are visible to the naked eye,” Oppermann explained, as if he could read Schäfer’s mind. “It could be from an old blood clot or other heart disease. Other scars are harder to see. It could be like the ones that …” He paused for a moment, trying to find the right way to express it.

“Like the ones that we have, from Kosovo?” Schäfer suggested.

“Yes,” Opperman agreed somberly. “Like the ones we have from Kosovo.”

Opperman moved on to the head. He made an incision with the scalpel from ear to ear over the crown of Thomas Strand’s head and everted the skin forward. Then he began sawing the cranium open.

Schäfer’s gaze fell on the bloody blob at the top of Thomas Strand’s neck, where his face had been turned inside out, and he thought of Lukas Bjerre’s Instagram photos.

“Are you familiar with something called pareidolia?” Schäfer had to raise his voice to be heard over the wail of the Stryker saw Oppermann was using to cut the cranium open with.

The medical examiner stopped the saw and looked up at Schäfer. “What was that?”

“Pareidolia,” Schäfer repeated.

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