Public Anatomy Page 13

  A security guard greeted him at the entrance. Lipsky flashed his badge. The guard shifted his eyes side to side without moving his head. Lipsky knew he was reveling in this brush with violent crime, hungry for more than just escorting tipsy gamblers back to their rooms. The guard cocked his right arm and his hand came to rest on the holstered pistol.

  “Follow me, detective,” he instructed Lipsky. “Best keep your profile low.”

  Lipsky splayed his hands out to emphasize his pudgy five-foot-six frame. He cocked a grin. “I’ll do my best.”

  Inside the cool casino, they wove through a maze of slots, blackjack tables, and roulette wheels. Waitresses in short skirts carried trays full of multicolored cocktails.

  From the main floor, Lipsky noticed a man in a tan-colored suit watching them through a full-length second-story window. The security guard took Lipsky up one flight and the man met them at the elevator.

  “I’m Alex Dalhauser.” He extended his hand. “I manage the casino. Glad you could come so quickly. Follow me.”

  Dalhauser led them past conference rooms until the carpeted hallway ended at the health spa. After nights of drinking and draining your bank account, it’s nice to know a treadmill’s close by to whip you back in shape.

  Entering the spa, Lipsky was introduced to the Tunica County police chief and his deputy, a man named Weaver. In the foyer, gilded molding surrounded a central reception desk. Above the desk, a heavy chain dropped from the ceiling, an electrical cord woven inside it, typical for a chandelier except that a black plastic bag had been draped over the light fixture, completely covering it.

  “We’ll come back to this,” the police chief said.

  They moved en masse to follow the manager of Spankin’ Rich. Behind the reception desk, the room opened to an indoor pool with a Jacuzzi off to one side. Lipsky knew immediately that was where the victim had been found.

  The man was dark-skinned, of Indian descent, and overweight. Very overweight. His back lay against the edge of the tub, both arms out, apparently resting in a position of comfort. His head was back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The Jacuzzi jets were still on, churning the bloodstained water, red waves lapping over the sides.

  Lipsky looked at the chief of police, who answered his question without his having to ask it.

  “The Jacuzzi was on when we got here, so we’ve been resetting the timer, trying to preserve the crime scene as close as possible.”

  This never happens, Lipsky thought. The locals always disrupt the scene. He tried to imagine the deputy resetting the timer every fifteen minutes.

  “How do we know it’s a crime scene?” Lipsky asked, just to challenge them. “Maybe his hemorrhoids exploded and he bled out.” Lipsky gave a quick laugh but the others didn’t follow the humor.

  “Turn off the jets,” the police chief said.

  The turbulent water calmed, air bubbles evaporated, and the fluid leveled out until the tub looked like it was filled with Hawaiian Punch.

  “How the hell we getting him out of there?” Lipsky asked.

  The deputy and the security guard stepped forward.

  “Weaver already lifted him,” the chief said.

  The guard chimed in. “Part way.”

  “So you have been in there?” Lipsky asked.

  “Just enough to see what we’re dealing with,” Weaver admitted.

  Like a game show host, Lipsky motioned toward the victim. “Okay, let’s see what we have.”

  Both the deputy and the security guard put on a pair of gloves and approached the body, their shoes sloshing through a layer of bloody water covering the floor tiles. They grabbed the man under his shoulders and hoisted him until his butt came to rest on the side of the tub. It was easy to see where all the blood had come from. The man’s abdomen was split down the middle and his intestines coiled out like loops of spaghetti.

  “What the hell?” Lipsky said.

  The officers turned the man sideways, pulled his legs out of the water, and laid him flat.

  Lipsky crouched down to examine the wound. The incision made a clean cut from his breastbone, around his navel, and stopped just short of his crotch. The wound was remarkable by how straight and precise its maker had been. Not a knife jab and an uppercut. Moreover, none of the intestines appeared to be damaged, even though the coiling mass was displaced from its abdominal home.

  The manager of the casino cleared his throat. “This is very distressing for our casino.”

  Lipsky nodded. “Yeah, for him, too.” He searched the area for a calling card such as was left at the previous two scenes. Finding none, he felt relieved for some reason. He asked, “Did any of you find a card next to the body?” Lipsky made a square with his hands to demonstrate.

  “Yes,” the deputy said. “In the reception area.”

  They turned away from the tub, and Lipsky followed them back to the health spa’s entrance.

  Behind the reception desk, Lipsky noticed a pool of blood that had coagulated on the floor. Above it, the police chief reached up and removed the black plastic bag from the light fixture. Suspended from the chandelier was a glistening piece of pale-colored meat. It was oblong and round, forming a tube.

  “They cut his damn stomach out,” Lipsky said.

  Then the deputy spoke, again. “I’ve seen a lot of crazy things but this beats all.”

  Lipsky thought about what the deputy might have seen out here in the Delta. Dead cows bloating in the road, someone stealing a tractor. At most, a nice clean bar fight turned homicide, if the deputy was lucky.

  Lipsky moved closer, but not under the line of dripping blood. I’m the one who sees crazy things. That should’ve been my line. But Lipsky had to admit, piece of a man’s gut cut out and hung from a chandelier was weird as hell.

  He looked at the reception desk. There it was, leaning against the lamppost. From where he stood, Lipsky could make out the sketch of a stomach on the card he had asked about.

  “Is someone usually sitting there?” he asked. “Maybe they would have noticed their work space being adorned with human organs.”

  The casino manager stepped forward, reluctantly. “There’s an attendant on duty from ten a.m. to ten p.m., Dalhauser said. “But after hours, a guest can enter with a room key.”

  Lipsky thought about that. “So potentially, if no one else chooses to spa in the middle of the night, the killer could have taken his time carving up his artwork.”

  Dalhauser cleared his throat. “A guest came in at six this morning to use the treadmill and found Dr. Singh.”

  Lipsky caught the prefix. “Doctor?”

  The manager left the reception foyer and returned to the body. Lipsky and the others followed him.

  “He was a regular here,” Dalhauser said. “Dr. Singh was one of our best customers.”

  “How regular?” Lipsky asked.

  “Drove down from Memphis once a week. Took off from his medical practice. Very faithful.”

  Lipsky thought faithful was an interesting way to describe a gambling habit. “What kind of doc was he?”

  “Anesthesiologist, I believe.”

  Lipsky looked down at the body. “He’s put his last patient to sleep, that’s for sure.”

  “He was well-liked around here,” the manager said. “Very generous with his money.”

  “I guess that will boost one’s popularity at a casino,” Lipsky said. “Wife? Anyone come down with him?”

  “No, he came alone but usually ended up with a friend here.”

  “Friend?”

  The casino manager looked at the police chief who looked away. “A lady friend. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Lipsky turned to face the manager. “We got a dead body and I need to talk to the last person who saw him alive.”

  Dalhauser remained silent.

  Lipsky told the police chief, “You need to get a crime-scene tech in here. Start taking samples.”

  The police chief glanced at his deputy who just shrugged his s
houlders. “Our tech quit a few weeks back,” the police chief said. “The guy who’s supposed to replace him is not answering our calls.”

  Lipsky punched numbers into his cell phone. A few seconds later, “Basetti, I need you down here in Las Vegas South.” Lipsky turned away from the others. “Got some more twisted shit. Bring your camera.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Salyer’s student’s car had been parked in front of the Rebel Yell for only five minutes and already the vinyl seats were too hot to touch. Salyer climbed in the backseat and lay down on it long ways. He said nothing during the short drive back to his office. Eli didn’t know if he was hiding, trying to nap, or what. When they arrived, Salyer told the graduate student to take the afternoon off. Eli followed the professor into Ventress Hall. He was surprised by how easily the man took the stairs after several midday drinks. Once inside his office, Salyer locked the door behind them. Then, he removed a key from the back of his desk drawer and opened the closet he’d converted into a shrine to the sixteenth century anatomist.

  During his college year abroad in London, Eli learned the history of Vesalius, anatomist from Brussels, author of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librim Septum, the fabric of the human body. Little did Eli know that a series of murders would bring him back to Vasalius’s work.

  The renegade, Renaissance anatomist had published the seven books that comprised the Fabrica in 1543, the same year Copernicus published his heliocentric theory De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, on the revolutions of the celestial spheres. Just as Copernicus had proven that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe, Eli learned that Vesalius had proved Galen wrong in many aspects of anatomical dissection. He knew that Galen’s anatomical teachings were based on his observed dissections in dogs and monkeys, for instance, whereas Vesalius performed the dissections on humans, often executed criminals he pulled from the gallows himself.

  Centuries later, the Fabrica’s woodcut illustrations were considered works of art. And Salyer’s passion. Eli knew the anatomist-turned-history-professor never missed a chance to lecture. As though giving a confessional, Salyer faced the iron-gated door and spoke of just these Vesalian details.

  Standing behind Salyer, Eli glanced at his watch. He was scheduled to work a graveyard shift in the ER and hoped to return to Memphis a few hours before it started. At this rate, that would not happen. Finally, Salyer unlocked the door.

  The tiny room allowed Eli to enter only a couple of steps, more step-in closet than walk-in. The Fabrica rested on a podium of sorts that slanted forward to display the over four-hundred-year-old masterpiece, which was measured at least three times larger than a dictionary and twice as thick. Salyer turned on an overhead light that illuminated the book’s magnificent cover. Tiny illustrated scenes, each no larger than a postage stamp, were carved into tanned vellum. Eli squinted to see the details, one scene showing a priest kneeling and ministering to the sick.

  Salyer had pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. He opened the cover to the title page, a magnificently detailed rendering of Vesalius at a public dissection. The drawing showed the anatomist in the center of an outdoor theatre framed by a semicircle of Corinthian columns. A host of onlookers surrounded him: scholars, students, and rogues who had ventured in to see the spectacle. Next to the depiction of Vesalius lay a female, nude, her abdomen open, organs on display for the pleasure of the audience.

  Salyer’s voice pulled Eli out of the mesmerizing picture. “Tell me why you must view the Fabrica.”

  “I’m not quite sure myself,” Eli said. He reached in, bare-handed, and Salyer slapped his wrist. Eli slipped on a glove provided by his professor and then gently turned the pages of the Latin text to the illustration on Plate 4. At the bottom of the page, an oval, boat-shaped bone was displayed. The bone was cut through the middle and cracked open to reveal the spongy marrow inside.

  Eli swept his index finger over the bone’s image as though touching the fabric would make a full confirmation. He could sense Salyer’s growing unease. The professor didn’t allow anyone to touch the pages of the Fabrica, even if latex should block the transfer of noxious oils from human skin.

  “That’s amazing,” Eli said. The resemblance to Lipsky’s photo was striking. The killer had reproduced the image perfectly.

  “Yes, it’s all quite amazing,” Salyer said, distracted.

  “The photo was exactly like that.”

  “What photo, Eli? What the hell is this about?”

  Eli owed his professor an explanation. He was deciding where to begin when his cell phone rang. He had a beeping ringtone, no pop music melody or angry rap. But the electronic tone in this small chambered room, with its ancient holding, seemed absurd. Eli answered quickly to stop the intrusion.

  Lipsky’s voice grumbled and cracked. “Sorry to interrupt your golf game, Doc.”

  To avoid Lipsky’s joke, Eli snapped, “What do you want?”

  “I’m down in Tunica—”

  Before he could continue, Eli interrupted the detective. “How are the slots going? Your pockets full of quarters?”

  “Good one, doc. I’ll tell you what, though. We’re both taking a gamble.”

  Eli watched Salyer, his white gloves gently turning the Fabrica’s pages in admiration of the text.

  “Someone’s a bit displeased with your profession.”

  “What else is new?” Eli responded, as Salyer passed through the Fabrica’s second book. He caught a glimpse of the tongue illustration, a thick slab-like muscle splayed across the page, identical to Lipsky’s photo of the killer’s drawing, and to the specimen Meg had showed him in the morgue. Eli motioned for Salyer to linger on that page. The detail of the drawing was exquisite, down to the ligamentous attachments, little horns retracted against the meat of the tongue.

  Lipsky went on.

  “Got a dead doctor down here. Had a little mishap in a hot tub.”

  Salyer moved on to the third book—The Vascular System. Eli thought of arteries and veins, delicate, tubular channels that Vesalius had dissected and displayed so elegantly. If the killer, for some reason, followed the order of Vesalius, a bone from the first victim, muscle from the second, then the vascular system would be next. Something superficial, easy to remove.

  “Someone cut out this guy’s—”

  “Veins?” Eli asked, interrupting Lipsky. “Stripped the veins out of his leg?”

  Salyer shot a glance at Eli and turned the pages of the Fabrica to the illustrations of the venous system.

  “Sorry, doc,” Lipsky said. “I’m not too good with the blood and guts, that’s your department.”

  Salyer closed the book and was removing his gloves. He motioned for Eli to step back. The small space was too cramped and they both wanted out. Just before Salyer locked the door, Eli looked again at the Fabrica. Three deaths in three days. If the pattern of deaths could be predicted by the seven books of this ancient anatomy text, there would be four more killings. Four more unsuspecting doctors or nurses or take your pick of healthcare workers.

  “Did you say veins?” Lipsky asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m no genius, but I think this guy’s missing his stomach.”

  Salyer had returned to his desk. He opened the bottom drawer and placed a half-empty bottle of George Dickel on the desktop.

  Eli repeated what he heard. “Stomach?”

  Salyer filled a shot glass.

  The stomach, an abdominal organ, did not fit the pattern. Organs of the abdominal cavity were addressed in Vesalius’s fifth book. At once, Eli felt the whole thing was preposterous. This was police business. Murder, no less. What was he doing in the middle of it?

  Salyer appeared irritated at Eli’s prolonged phone conversation. In unison with swirling his glass, he shook his head.

  “Lipsky, I’m in Oxford. Just an hour or so east of you.”

  “I remember,” Lipsky said. “You’re an Ole Miss boy. I probably disturbed your reunion. Old fraternity buddies back in for a
throw down.”

  Eli ignored all this. “I want to see the body. Can you wait for me?”

  “Sure, Doc. I’ve got time. Might just visit those slots after all.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Eli told Salyer all he knew about the three murders. The professor sat behind his heavy oak desk and listened. He didn’t interrupt with history lessons or other professorial words of wisdom. When Eli told him of the photos and the odd resemblance to Vesalius and the Fabrica, Salyer filled another shot glass, turned it up, and filled it again.

  A glazed expression gradually took over Salyer’s face, and it became progressively stone-like after each glass until Eli lost count and departed for Tunica, the besotted professor still sitting at his desk.

  Lipsky wasn’t at the slots. Eli found him at the crap table, and from the looks of his stack of chips he’d done pretty well.

  “Thought you had to stay at the crime scene.”

  Lipsky looked up. “That’s the beauty of deputies, doc. You know about that, don’t you? Hierarchy? Hell, I thought surgeons invented that shit.”

  Lipsky’s cursing was definitely for the benefit of his onlookers. A small group of retirees had gathered to watch a consistent winner play. They enjoyed the detective’s banter, but two younger women, dressed in short, tight skirts and sipping umbrella drinks, got bored and turned to leave.

  As if their lost interest were his cue, Lipsky collected his chips and said, “Got to go.”

  He led Eli through the casino and into the spa, where two officers guarded the entrance. They moved aside when Lipsky flashed his badge. Inside the yellow tape, Eli saw Basetti bent over the body, collecting samples. Eli recognized the Memphis crime technician’s ankle-high black sneakers crimped at the toes just inches from the obese body lying flat and nude on the tile floor. The water in the hot tub was still pink, with frothy bubbles along the edge. Eli crossed under the yellow tape and stood over the body.

  “Well, if it ain’t Doc Branch,” Basetti said, like Festus in an episode of Gunsmoke.

  To Eli, Basetti looked like he should be in college. But with his youth, Eli guessed, came technical craftiness, in a television forensics sort of way. Basetti ran a Q-tip inside the victim’s mouth. Eli doubted the importance of this step to the investigation, especially when the lethal abdominal wound was so obvious.