Page 26 of What Happened Last Night

“Right,” I said, giving her a final smile and moving past her desk and into the carpeted hallway.

I had attended enough autopsies to know exactly where I was going. The room where the autopsies took place was at the end of the hallway. It was a cold room, clinical and bare, and even after all this time, it made me shudder to think about it. Stepping into the room from the warm hallway was like stepping into another world. And yet, Dr. Karloff always seemed most at home in that room. I reached the door to the cold room, as I called it, and tapped on it.

“Come in.” Dr. Karloff’s voice floated out to me, his Russian accent coming through slightly in his speech. His accent wasn’t strong enough to make his words difficult to understand, but it was strong enough to leave no question as to the fact that he had grown up in Russia.

“Hey,” I said as I pushed the door open and stepped into the cold room.

I felt goosebumps race over my body with the intense coldness of the room. Dr. Karloff looked up from the metal tray he was examining as I entered and grinned at me, his gray eyes sparkling above his face mask. His bald head caught the bright lights above him and shone.

I bit back the comment I wanted to make. Dr. Karloff was good-natured about the teasing he suffered at my hands about his looking like the typical mad scientist in his white coat and mask, but it didn’t seem right to stand laughing and joking over the body. Even after all these years, I wasn’t exactly comfortable making light of anything while I was in the autopsy room.

“Let’s get started then,” Dr. Karloff said.

I nodded, signaling to him that I was ready, and he pulled aside the sheet that covered Candy where she lay on a metal table in front of him. I swallowed hard at the sight of her blue-tinged skin and lips. Dr. Karloff was whistling a tune as he rolled his sleeves up, exposing arms covered in scars from the Cold War. He pulled a metal trolley loaded with instruments closer to himself, making me jump as the instruments clanged together. He caught me jumping and laughed softly.

“Relax, Jamie. It’s not like she can hurt you,” he said with a soft laugh. His eyes twinkled mischievously as he went on. “Unless, of course, she’s possessed or something, but that’s pretty rare.”

I ignored the comments and stepped closer to the body, steeling myself for what was to come. Dr. Karloff switched on the voice recorder that was positioned above his table, and he began narrating what he did as he looked over the body.

“The cause of death has been established as blunt force trauma to the back of the cranium, a result of falling from a second-story window,” he said. “Now let’s see what secrets Candy’s body holds.”

He started on her head, cutting away the skin and peeling back her scalp. I had to look away, but I could still hear the slurping sound of flesh being pulled back from bone. The whirring of a power saw started up, ran for a few seconds, and then stopped again. Dr. Karloff was still whistling, stopping only to announce the weight of Candy’s brain as he plonked it on a metal scale.

“Normal weight for her age,” he announced.

He replaced the brain in her now open skull, closing it back up as casually as if he were closing a suitcase, and then he moved his attention further down her body. He looked up at me and smiled.

“You’re looking a little queasy there, Jamie,” he said with a wink. “Do you need a glass of water or something?”

“No. I’ve seen worse,” I said.

It was true. I had, but this still turned my stomach. Candy was just so young. Her death seemed like such wasted potential. And although autopsies often proved crucial in homicide cases, it always felt to me like desecrating the dead. I guess that was my abuela’s influence.

“Here’s something you’ll want to see. I promise it’s not too gory, even for the delicate eyes of a sensitive little flower like you,” Dr. Karloff said with a grin.

I frowned at him as I stepped forward, but I refused to take the bait and bite. He pointed to Candy’s hand, all business as I got as close as I needed to get to see Candy’s hand. I breathed through my mouth, not wanting to smell any hint of blood, or dead flesh, or most likely, formaldehyde.

“See this cut here?” Dr. Karloff said, pointing to Candy’s right palm.

I looked where he was pointing. The cut was ragged looking, and it was almost black around the edges. I nodded my head, not trusting my voice to sound entirely even and knowing Dr. Karloff would never let me live it down if he heard a tremor in my voice.

“A knife wound,” he said. “And I’ve cross-referenced the blade that made this cut with what was found at the scene. This cut wasn’t made by any of the knives in the house.”

I felt my eyes open wide, and I looked up at Dr. Karloff in surprise. This meant there was a weapon somewhere that we had missed.

“What kind of knife are we looking for?” I asked.

“Perhaps a standard kitchen knife. Perhaps something a little bigger. But the blade would be serrated. And none of the knives found in the house had a serrated edge,” Dr. Karloff replied.

“Noted,” I said, making a mental note to have someone go out to the property and find that damned knife.

It was probably too late now, but if the amnesia that William and Carlotta claimed to be suffering from was true, then there was every chance that it could be hidden somewhere in the house or garden without either of them remembering hiding it. And if we found prints on it belonging to only one of the couple, then it could be a breakthrough for us.

Dr. Karloff carried on with his grisly work, making a T-shaped cut on Candy’s chest. He began pulling out each of her internal organs in turn and weighing them on the scale. As he worked, he talked to me, interrupting himself now and again to call out a weight.

“Candy’s blood work came back this morning. At the time of her death, there was alcohol in her system. Perhaps not enough to make her blind drunk, but certainly enough to impair her judgement,” he said.

And perhaps enough to make her unsteady on her feet to the point where a defensive push could send her sprawling out the window, I thought.

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