The Fourth Courier: A Novel by Smith Timothy Jay

Author:Smith, Timothy Jay [Smith, Timothy Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Mystery, Historical
ISBN: 9781948924122
Goodreads: 42119651
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2019-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THEIR TIRES RUMBLED ON THE girdered Poniatowski Bridge. Dark clouds extinguished the dying sun on the horizon.

The driver had to concentrate on staying between lane markers that had been worn away. “If you sick, you should go to better hospital,” he advised Jay.

“My guy is already dead, but thanks.”

As they cut through Praga’s back streets, the driver pointed out landmarks of the who-slept-here variety, but in his account, it was where Solidarity’s leaders had been arrested, held indefinitely, or assassinated. He pulled to a stop and asked how long to wait, and Jay told him to return to the embassy.

The hospital’s glass doors reflected the gray dusk. Too often he was in hospitals interrogating the dying or IDing the dead, and knew the antiseptic-smelling foyer all too well. He crossed to the information desk. Someone at the embassy had written morgue in Polish for him on a slip of paper, which he now showed to a woman far too big for her schoolgirl’s desk. The note earned him a wave through a set of swinging doors. Then he was lost and showed the note to anyone who looked employed, following their vague directions into the hospital’s dungeon-like bowels, where he turned a corner and breathed embalming fluid. He didn’t need Detective Kulski pacing in the corridor to tell him that he had found the morgue.

“Dr. Nagorski is waiting,” Kulski said.

Jay followed him inside. The room was cold. Bloodied bandages had been discarded on the floor. A fluorescent light, hanging from two short steel chains, illuminated the dead man on a metal trolley. He was shadowless, bone white. A violent red wound, carved and raggedly resewn, bisected him from his Adam’s apple to the patch of hair in his groin.

He shook hands with the pathologist. Dr. Nagorski was eighty at the youngest, and impatient in a way that could be mistaken for spry. “Shall we begin?” he asked. “I speak English, Mr. Porter, and will make my summary in English. Unless you prefer Polish?”

Jay knew the Polish words for many body parts, yet they hardly seemed meant for the same species, so crudely were they rendered on the trolley. “English, please,” he said.

The doctor picked up calipers and positioned himself at the victim’s head. “Caucasian male, it is obvious, late sixties. Two hundred ten centimeters tall and approximately eighty-five kilos.” Tall and skinny, Jay translated, and listened as the doctor inventoried routine characteristics: general state of health (fair), distinguishing scars (none), no missing limbs. “I estimate his time of death between midnight and four. With the cold, it is difficult to be more precise. He died from a bullet wound to his heart.” The doctor touched the calipers to the chest wound. Made at close range, it was clean, the flesh below it discolored from the heart’s last explosive pulse.

Dr. Nagorski grasped the victim’s ruined cheek with the calipers. “He was dead before his face was cut. There is little bruising and he swallowed no blood.” Before relinquishing the cheek, he added, “The dental work is Russian.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.