Page 18 of Dead Mountain

She went to the wardrobe and suited up in full surgical scrubs, gown, gloves, mask, goggles, and haircover. And then, with a certain trepidation, she unzipped both body bags and gazed at the cadaver of the person Sharp had informally identified as Paul Tolland. She had removed the wallet from his back pocket while still in the cave, and it was now in the adjacent evidence container. While that seemed to check all the ID boxes, it wasn’t sufficient for a legal identification. As she gazed at the mummified face illuminated under bright lights—withered cheeks, shrunken neck cords like a hangman’s noose, dark craters where the eyes should be—she knew there would be no point in asking the family to identify it. Which meant either fingerprints or dental records would be necessary.

She sighed again. Part of her was curious as to what she might find, but another part shrank from the gruesomeness and invasion of bodily privacy. She reminded herself she’d seen more than her share of cadavers: time to suck it up and get to work.

She turned to a small A/V console and started the video. A red light went on in the camera mounted above her head. She walked around Tolland’s gurney, commenting for the record on what she observed, focusing on the blade that was protruding from his breast. It sure looked like a fatal blow, having gone through the ribs and probably into the heart. The fingers clasped around the hilt of the knife looked like cheroots.

She took a step back. Wright was wearing boots on both feet, while Tolland had a boot on one foot and a valenki on the other. Wright was wearing gloves, but Tolland’s hands were bare. As she turned to lean over Wright’s corpse, she noted aloud that he had what appeared to be significant defensive knife wounds to his hands, cutting and slashing through the gloves. Tolland’s bare hands, clutched around the knife that was buried in his own ribs, showed no defensive cuts. His body showed no obvious cuts or slashes either—just the one fatal blow.

What had happened here? Only one knife had been recovered at the scene, and it was sticking out of Tolland’s chest. Had a third party attacked and stabbed them to death? Or was it possible they’d fought with each other? If the latter, the defensive wounds on Wright implied Tolland had attacked him first, cut the hell out of him, before Wright managed to wrest the knife from Tolland and kill him with it. Of course, that assumed the attacker wasn’t someone else. Corrie knew these questions couldn’t be answered until the autopsies were completed, but she couldn’t help pondering them as she walked around the cadavers, keeping her commentary strictly observational, without evaluation or speculation.

It took about thirty minutes to complete the anterior examination of the dressed corpses. Now she had to turn them over and describe the posteriors. The corpses were much lighter than they would have been if fresh, but they were still too heavy for her to properly roll over on her own. She’d have to get help. She was about to exit the lab to find Nate when the door opened, revealing Agent Sharp.

“Good afternoon, Agent Swanson. How are you faring?”

“Very well,” she said. “I’m in the middle of the preliminary examinations.”

“Interesting?”

“It certainly is, although it’s too soon to draw conclusions. Would you, ah, care to watch?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“In that case, sir, would you mind gowning up? And then I could really use your help flipping these cadavers.”

“Flipping them?” He smiled at the terminology. “Gladly.”

She watched him eye the two bodies for a moment, one eyebrow raised, then he turned to get gowned up. It didn’t surprise her in the least that he wasn’t squeamish.

He returned looking a lot less intimidating in the puffy white outfit than when dressed in one of his elegant suits. Above the mask, his eyes looked, as usual, sleepy yet disturbingly alert.

“Show me how to flip a cadaver,” he said. “I can only assume no spatula is required.”

“Put your hands underneath, here and here,” she said. “We’ll gently but firmly roll it over, then slide it back to the middle of the gurney.”

He nodded, placing his gloved hands where indicated. The body of Tolland was rolled over neatly, the posterior side now revealed. Since it had been lying on its stomach all these years, the back showed less deterioration, with the exception of rodent and insect activity.

“Turn the next one?” Corrie asked.

“There’s nothing I’d rather do.”

This body was more complicated because Wright was frozen in a semi-fetal position. But with Sharp’s help, she managed to turn him over with minimal trouble.

“Thanks,” Corrie said. “Now, I need to finish the preliminary examination under the watchful eye of that.” She pointed at the camera. “Then after the examination, I’ll have to cut off the clothing and do it all over again.”

“What about legal identification of the remains?”

“Since we already more or less know who they are, I think dental X-rays are the best way to go. We could rehydrate the fingers, but because of their youth and lack of criminal records it’s less likely their prints will be on file. As you can see—” she pointed to their mouths, gaping in profile— “they’ve both had dental work.”

Sharp nodded. “And you’ll X-ray them here?”

“Yes. We don’t have a dental setup, per se, but the new X-ray machine will do just fine. We’ll have to send the X-rays with the old dental records off to Quantico. Once we ID them, we’ll have to inform the families.” She hesitated. “Um, sir, I’ve not encountered that situation before. Who will do that?”

Sharp gazed at her. “The families will each be paid a courtesy visit.”

“Yes, sir.”

He didn’t say who’d be making those visits. Perhaps he didn’t yet know.

“And the autopsies?” he asked, intruding on her thoughts.

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