Page 9 of A Wolf's Heart

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LILA

“Earlier assessments of the heart being cut from the chest cavity have been ruled out.” I stared at the dead body before me where it lay on the table as I spoke into the recorder.

“Autopsy report describes injuries as ripping. While the edging flesh of the wound remains smooth and cut lines consistent with a knife being used, autopsy suggests a small peri knife. Pooling of blood within the cavity suggests this was a perimortem injury.”

I stepped back from John Doe number one. His face was in perfect condition. A middle-aged male, neatly cut brown hair, body fit and flawless. No signs of struggle. “You were awake while your heart was ripped from your chest… Why didn’t you struggle?” I whispered to him.

“Well, I asked myself the same thing,” Patty, the elderly mortician, stated. Patty was a forensic pathologist in her prime. She’d stepped down from her position and ran the local funeral home with her eldest son. Now and then, the town employed her to examine bodies, if bringing a pathologist from the city wasn’t feasible. “At first, I figured drugs were involved.”

“The toxicology report came back negative,” I said. I had read it the moment it came in weeks ago. John Doe number one was about to be buried in an unmarked grave tomorrow, which was why I was in today—to get one more look at him.

“Yes. As did John Doe number two. Now, that doesn’t mean they weren’t drugged. It simply means drugs weren’t detected in their system. There are a number of drugs with anesthetic qualities that are not detectible.”

“So, we are right back to the start. All we know is this man went into the woods willingly or heavily sedated, had his chest cut open, his ribs broken, and then his heart ripped out.”

Patty frowned. “I wrote in the report about his ribs, did I not?”

“Yes.” I picked the report back up and thumbed through it. “They had been broken and pushed outward, right?”

“No, my dear.” She tapped on the page that held the information. “The ribs moved; they aren’t set anatomically properly. At first, I concluded he must’ve had them broken at some point and they didn’t heal correctly. That was, until John Doe number two came in.”

I glanced up at where John Doe two lay under a white sheet on the table next to us. “What was wrong with him?”

Patty opened her mouth to answer when banging at the front door caused us to jump. “My heavens. One minute, dear.” She rushed out of the room to answer the front door.

I turned back to John Doe one, pressing on his ribs. My eyes went wide as they moved under my fingertips. Patty was wrong. There was no injury. His ribs moved willingly, as if they were designed to be rearranged.

I rushed over to John Doe two, but before I could pull back the sheet, chaos ensued.

Two large men wearing black suits burst into the autopsy room with a very angry Patty on their heels.

“Excuse me!” she yelled at them. “Have you no manners?”

“We are not going to run through this again,” one of the men said. “Lila Evans, you are to remove yourself from this room, so these bodies can be properly relocated.”

“Relocated?” I stepped to the side, blocking one of the square doors to the refrigerators that was currently labeled John Doe three.

He held out a stack of papers. “These men have been identified and will be relocated to their respective homes, so they can be buried where the family requests.”

I quickly flipped through the papers. “Who are they? How were they identified?” No key information was listed, just a notice of seizure.

“That is classified.”

“Classified?” I scoffed. “It’s my case.”

“Not anymore.” He covered up the cadavers with the sheet. Four more men pushed their way into the room, pulling gurneys with them, despite poor Patty’s objections.

Behind my back, I pulled the label off the refrigerator door. “This is ridiculous,” I argued with them.

“This case is now being taken over on a federal level,” he stated.

I tried to rein myself in, since I could feel my heart rate increasing, my body itching for a change. These guys definitely were not feds. Before I could do something that would put everyone in the room in harm's way, I left.

“Lila!” Patty ran after me.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. It had been nearly a decade since I’d lost my temper and shifted. Luckily, back then, I had made it into the forest before anyone could see.

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