Public Anatomy Page 20

They clinked glasses and sipped. Eli liked a cold beer or glass of wine, and he liked margaritas with a rim of salt. But he was less accustomed to straight whiskey. He swirled it around in his mouth and felt his tongue catch fire. Clenching his jaw, he blew out the excess vapor, swallowed, and said, “Tell me about the next killing.”

  Salyer took another generous swig of whiskey as if it were lemonade. “The next death will occur by removal of the brain. A male brain.”

  Eli followed Salyer’s lead. Took another sip. His tongue was a little numb now and the liquor went down smoothly. “I thought you were going to tell me I was right about Vesalius and the pattern of dissections.”

  Salyer lifted his glass in another toast. “You were right about Vesalius, my friend. But you had the wrong manuscript.”

  “Wrong manuscript?”

  Salyer leaned forward. He held his glass with both hands, swirled the liquid, inhaled. “At first, it appeared the killer was following the Fabrica, using it as a guide. The bone from the first victim, the tongue of the second. But then the pattern changed.”

  “Or there never was a pattern,” Eli offered.

  “Oh, but there is a pattern, Eli. I didn’t see it either, when you visited me in Oxford. The order of bone, muscle, stomach—definitely not the Fabrica.” Another swig. “But yesterday, I read in the newspaper about the woman at the planetarium. Bone, muscle, stomach, and then the fourth organ, the Heart. That’s when I knew.”

  Eli shook his head, frustrated. “I’m not following you. Knew what?”

  Salyer placed his empty glass on Eli’s coffee table, stood, and started pacing. Eli saw his persona change to that of teacher.

  “Almost the same time the Fabrica was published, Vesalius published his Epitome, an abbreviated, more reader-friendly version of the Fabrica, if you will. It was good for students, those who wished a quicker reference to human anatomy without the minutiae.”

  “What does this have to do with the killer’s pattern?”

  Salyer poured another glass and gestured the bottle toward Eli.

  Eli let him refill his glass just to keep the man talking.

  “As an abbreviated version of the Fabrica, the Epitome contained only six books, not seven.” Salyer pointed to each organ on himself as he called out the order of the books, much as he did in class for his students.

  Bone, Muscle, Abdomen.

  He next pointed to his chest, then to his head.

  Heart. Brain.

  “You see, the killer’s sequence fits the order of the Epitome exactly.” Salyer sat down to his glass, took a drink, and said, “Basically Eli, you were correct. The reason I’m here now is to redirect you.”

  Eli held his glass to his lips but did not drink. If Salyer was correct and the first four deaths had followed the Epitome, two more would occur. “You said the next book is the brain, but that makes only five. What’s the sixth?”

  Salyer smiled, a teacher reveling in the thoughtful question of a student. “Vesalius proposed that Galen had never dissected a human uterus. So, our anatomist saved the best book for last. His specialty of sorts. His desire to know the feminine mystique deeper than any man had ever known.”

  Salyer dipped his finger in the brown liquid, brought it to his lips.

  “The sixth book takes him deep into the sex of a woman.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The whiskey rolled and so did Salyer. Eli sat back and listened to the professor’s history of Andreas Vesalius. Sort of like being in class except Eli was at home with a stiff drink in his hand.

  The anatomist’s ancestral family came from the town of Wesel near the Rhine River. His forebear, Johnnes de Wesalia, inspired by the town’s name, chose three weasels to represent the family’s coat of arms.

  “Curious animals, those weasels.”

  Salyer placed his glass on the table, a sure sign of more pantomime to come. He stretched forth his arms as though about to leap.

  “The title page of the Fabrica shows the Vesalian coat of arms with the little mammals sprawled out as though dignified.”

  Eli recalled seeing the coat of arms on the mural depiction in the artist’s loft. “Those are weasels?”

  Salyer chuckled. “Vesalius’s biographer described them as coursing greyhounds. By the looks of them, I think that’s more accurate.”

  There was a rare period of silence from Salyer. Eli watched the man as he swirled his drink, measured his thoughts. Eli hoped that whatever was troubling Salyer pertained directly to the recent murders. It did.

  “Three years ago, I was called to testify in a trial. An employee at the Mid-South Medical College was accused of desecrating cadavers.”

  Eli stopped him. “In my father’s Anatomy Department?”

  “Yes, Eli.” Salyer shifted in his seat, tried to get more comfortable. “But he wasn’t responsible for these events.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You remember the sabbatical your father took? To Europe I believe? This all happened during that six-month period.”

  “Okay, so my father was away. What happened?”

  “The accused was the apprentice of an old colleague of mine, Howard Beezer. He was there during the years you were in Nashville.”

  “I know who he is,” Eli said. “Go ahead.”

  “Beezer hired the young man to process the bodies and arrange cadavers for the medical students’ dissection. He was getting old—hell, Beezer had always been old—and he wanted someone to do his job while he hid out in his office waiting for retirement. He got lucky by hiring this fellow because he had a way with the dead, if you can call that a talent. Seems the young man had some prior training in anatomy, I can’t remember, but nonetheless, Beezer allowed him to assist the students. Had him come in at night and complete the dissections for in-class demonstrations. The next morning Beezer would teach from the dissections as though he had done them himself. Ultimately, though, Beezer would regret giving the young man a key to Anatomy Hall.”

  “Why’s that?” Eli asked.

  “Weird shit started happening.”

  Salyer took a long overdue drink, then added, “The bodies were rearranged.”

  “Rearranged?”

  “Propped up, in poses. A cadaver suspended from the ceiling by chains, for instance, arms spread out, much like Da Vinci’s man. It appeared harmless at first. The students got a kick out of it, thought it was all a prank by one of their fellow classmates. The students would arrive the next morning to find a cadaver wearing a stethoscope, listening to another cadaver’s heart. Then what you might predict next—one cadaver on top of another.” Salyer chuckled and elaborated. “Missionary positions of the dead. The students always returned the cadavers to their original positions before the Beezer arrived in the morning. But then it turned sick.”

  “That’s not sick?”

  “Still thought to be pranks, Eli. You remember how it was in medical school, anything to relieve the stress. Beezer eventually found out about it and hoped it was a joke by the students, but he came to suspect it was his apprentice. By then, Beezer had a good thing going and wanted to keep it.”

  His glass of whiskey in hand, Salyer stood. Without taking a drink, he sat the glass back on the table.

  “Then the dissections and the poses turned very specific.”

  Salyer contorted his body, arms arched overhead as though about to dive. With the choreography of a dancer, Salyer took on the poses of Vesalius’s skeleton man, then a graceful transition to the muscle man—just as Eli remembered from Salyer’s anatomy class, and from the sketches drawn in the artist’s loft. He was quite the performance artist. Eli stopped Salyer before he started removing any clothes.

  “So?” Eli said. “The students had studied Vesalius, some of his most famous sketches are included in standard anatomy texts. They simply recreated those classical poses with their cadavers.”

  “You’re correct, Dr. Branch.” Salyer released his pose. The stoop in his shoulders returned and he retr
ieved his glass. “Harmless poses are one thing. Desecrating a cadaver is entirely different.”

  “Desecrating? You haven’t described desecration.”

  Salyer reclined on the worn couch, propping his feet on the coffee table. “Name the foot bone illustrated in plate four of the Fabrica.”

  “The navicular bone.”

  “Correct. How was the tongue displayed in book two?”

  Eli thought a moment. “Completely detached with the ligaments revealed.”

  “Correct again. Beezer found a series of these dissections, in this order, exquisitely performed.”

  “Exactly as Vesalius described them?”

  Salyer nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Then he turned his apprentice in?”

  “No, Beezer kept quiet. But one of the medical students talked. She claimed she had seen the apprentice enter Anatomy Hall at night and perform the procedures. That prompted an investigation. The dean of the medical school became involved. Beezer’s apprentice was charged with a felony.”

  “And they called you to testify because you’re an expert in Vesalius.”

  Salyer bowed his head. “Yours truly.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Lipsky turned onto the grounds of Shelby Farms. He looked at the open space, the trees, the lakes.

  What was the word for it?

  Pastoral.

  That’s it, Lipsky thought, proud of his vocabulary.

  No grime, no crime, no Dumpsters spilling garbage. He passed two horses loping in a field and wondered why he had never driven out here before. But the answer came quickly. He went where murder called him. Up to now, Shelby Farms had been sheltered from homicide hell.

  He passed a field of grazing cows. Morning mist hovered ghostlike in patches a few feet off the ground. As he drove closer, he could see that the animals weren’t cows at all. Looked more like buffalo. He had a vague recollection that a herd of bison lived at Shelby Farms. Buffalo, bison, what the hell’s the difference?

  And why the hell is someone dead out here?

  Of all places.

  Then he thought of the Zante Repository death. That was weird. The whole damn thing was weird. Whatever happened to the good old Saturday night gunfight? Messing with somebody’s woman, a couple of bottles of liquor.

  Boom.

  Someone takes it in the gut.

  Crimes of passion. Got the motive, the weapon, the perpetrator usually too inebriated to get very far. Lipsky had built his career on that stuff.

  Now things were too complicated. Doctors and nurses getting killed at random. But it wasn’t random, was it? Anything but. These deaths were serial killings. Not that this was his first encounter with a serial killer. He’d done that before, several times.

  First time was June of ’95. Got the call that a serial killer was possibly headed to Memphis. Joined the national search. One big community. But this current investigation was different. Lipsky had little experience with psychological-pattern killers, although he’d taken a crash course the last few days.

  He feared more “experience” was waiting for him when he spotted two Memphis police cars parked beside the pavilion. Officer McCormick was talking to an older man wearing a jogging outfit. Questioning the witness. Lipsky parked alongside the patrol cars, took a deep breath, and pulled himself out of the car.

  “What we got, McCormick?

  The officer wrote down the man’s phone number and dismissed him.

  Then he greeted Lipsky. “We got a mess in there.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Officer McCormick led Lipsky into the pavilion at Shelby Farms. In the cool, dark foyer, photos of the park’s animals hung on the wall. A small herd of bison in a layer of morning fog. Ducks on Patriot Lake. For bird enthusiasts, a brilliant shot of a cardinal perched on a limb. Lipsky didn’t look at any of it. He was focused instead on bloody footprints that led down a central hallway.

  McCormick opened the door into a changing room. Lipsky nodded to a young police officer he didn’t recognize. The officer had stayed there to guard the body. The body wasn’t going anywhere.

  Two low wooden benches ran the length of the room, between a row of coin-operated clothes lockers along one wall, and on the opposite wall, a toilet stall and two sinks in a countertop. Between the sinks lay a rounded heap of bloody tissue about the size of a cantaloupe.

  Lipsky approached the benches first. A young male, well-built, naked except for a towel across his waist, lay on his back on one of the benches. He was positioned so that his head lay at the end of the bench. Directly below on the floor, a tray of surgical instruments lay in disarray. Dried blood coated the instruments, which had apparently been used to perform complicated state park brain surgery. Except, as best Lipsky could tell, the brain was no longer home. The skull lay open and the three law officers stared into its deep, vacant, bloodied bowl.

  Lipsky pointed at the head, then at the sinks.

  “You got it,” McCormick said.

  The organ had been placed on a layer of paper towels. A blood-tinged ring of moisture had spread on the paper from whatever fluid oozed from the brain tissue. A cutout sketch of the brain, in the tradition of Vesalius, Lipsky guessed, was tilted against the mirror behind the dissected body part.

  Lipsky marveled at the specimen before him. Deep ridges cut into the brain, the surface laced with tiny blood vessels. The whole of a man’s knowledge, all of his thoughts, right here.

  Other than the expected calling card, the dissection was not the tidy presentation of the earlier scenes. The Organist must have been rushed this time. Blood was splattered about, and his instruments had been left behind. At each of the previous four sites, hardly a trace remained other than a sketch of the organ. He—or she, Lipsky thought, in a rare gender-equal correction—must have gotten spooked. Lipsky looked back at the shoe marks. A blood-stained exit pattern was highly uncharacteristic.

  “At least Basetti will have something to work with this time,” Lipsky said.

  McCormick agreed. “Surely there’ll be some prints on those.” He pointed to the tray of instruments.

  “Did your witness have anything?”

  “Yes, he did, actually. Turns out he knew the guy.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. The witness said the victim’s name is Thomas Greenway. Says he works out here all the time, training for a triathlon.”

  “What else?”

  “Said the young man worked at the—”

  Lipsky cut him off. “Let me guess. He’s a doctor at the medical center.”

  McCormick nodded. “OB/GYN, the witness thought.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  Lipsky shook his head. “The baby poppers are having a tough week.”

  “I don’t know about that, but there’s more to the story.”

  “Bring it.”

  “Seems this doc is the star of some TV show,” McCormick checked his notebook. “Secret Lives of Doctors. Ever hear of it?”

  “No. I only watch reruns of Barney Miller and Kojak.”

  “Man. Telly Savalas,” McCormick said. “He was the best.”

  “Total kick-ass,” Lipsky agreed.

  “Even with those little lollipops.”

  They took a moment of silence, out of respect, or hero worship.

  “Anyway,” Lipsky said, snapping out of it, “Days of Doctors Lives or what was it?”

  “Secret Lives of Doctors.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Turns out this guy was a male model.”

  Before Lipsky could respond to that, his cell phone rang, set to the theme song of Kojak.

  “You weren’t kidding about being a fan,” McCormick said.

  Lipsky stepped away and flipped open his phone. “Who loves you, baby.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Eli was ready to leave his house early the next morning before Salyer awoke. They had talked for hours, until nearly dawn. After many glassfuls, the pr
ofessor eventually lay his head back on the couch and fell asleep mid-sentence. Now, as Eli crept passed him toward the door, he saw Salyer curled in a fetal position, his overcoat pulled about his head.

  At seven thirty, after circling the block three times, Eli at last found an empty parking meter at the medical center. How nice it had been a few weeks ago to have access to the Gates’s parking garage.

  He had planned to arrive at the morgue by seven, before Meg started the day’s autopsy barrage. But his head still pounded from the night before and only now could he fully open his eyes.

  Miss Conch protested as he passed through the reception area into the autopsy room. Meg hovered over an intact body, knife in hand. He interrupted her.

  “I need your help for a few minutes.”

  “Good morning to you too, and take a number.” She pointed to a sheet-covered corpse on a gurney. “He beat you here by just a few minutes.”

  Eli nodded to the deceased. “I’m sure he’ll understand.” Then, to Meg, “Log me on. We’re about to find out who the next victim is.”

  Exasperated, Meg dropped the knife on the instrument table. Steel clanging against steel made a statement. She walked toward her desk but stopped short in front of Eli.

  “You look like warmed-over shit.”

  “Thanks, I feel like it.”

  Meg typed in her passwords. “What are we looking for today, nuclear launch codes?”

  Eli leaned closer to the screen. No matter how much death surrounded them, Meg always managed to smell fresh and sexy.

  “Go to the OR files like we did before.”

  A few clicks later she asked, “Do you even know how to type?”

  “Yeah, but I like to watch you do it.”

  She gave him a look, started to say something, then accessed the requested files.

  “Now, put in the names of the first three victims plus the latest, the Zante Repository nurse.”

  Meg copied the names from the white board while Eli wrote the fourth name at the bottom of the list.

  “If what I’m thinking is right, by entering these four names, the first operative death will be displayed.”