Singularity (12 page)

“Autopsy proceedings are based on the remains of Victor Alvarez, Mexican male, age thirty-four, hair color black.” Don reached over and slid a shriveled eyelid up to expose a dark pupil that stared at the ceiling. “Eye color is brown.” Don leaned in and tilted the neck up into the light. “Remains are limited to disembodied head, beginning just above the C5 vertebra.”

A scale hung above one end of the table, and Don placed the head in the tray. Sullivan watched the scale’s needle jump and then
stop
at the ten-pound mark.

“Big melon,” Barry whispered, leaning close to Sullivan. Sullivan shook his head in mock annoyance as Don continued.

“Remains weigh in at ten pounds, three ounces. Victim appears to have died from numerous lacerations and severe blunt-force trauma.”

Don motioned to the nearest tech, and both men began to wash the head beneath the faucet that extended over the table. Blood and gore rinsed free and flowed in a grisly river, disappearing in the drain. Gray-tinged flesh became clear as Alvarez’s head was cleaned, and when Don was satisfied, the remains looked both more and less human. The abject countenance gained distinct features: a smashed nose, puckered eyelids over sunken eyes, and grizzled cheeks ending in broken jawbones.

Don set the wet remains back in the center of the table. “Earlier examination presented no residue of external contaminates. No fingernail marks or hair follicles were retrieved from the victim’s wounds.” He picked up a tool that resembled a flat chisel with a narrow grip from the edge of the table. The tip of the wicked-looking instrument ended in a thin blade, which Don used to poke and probe the wounds on Alvarez’s neck. “Skin and flesh at severe trauma point have been lacerated multiple times.” Don moved closer, and Sullivan could see the man’s eyes narrowing as he focused. “Wounds are indicative of edged weapons varying in lengths and widths. Extreme wound on victim’s right side indicates a drilling mechanism—flesh is curled outward, and in this area missing completely.”

Sullivan and Barry exchanged looks, and even Mooring raised his head to gaze at what was left of the cadaver.

Don brought the edged tool to Alvarez’s lips and began to work the steel between the head’s teeth. Sullivan had to mentally restrain himself from plugging his ears as the sound of steel on enamel filled the room. Slowly, the misshapen lower jaw
sagged
open, and even from where he stood Sullivan saw that there was something inside the mouth. The white end of the object stuck out like a bleached tongue, and when Sullivan glanced up, he saw the same surprise he felt on Don’s face.

“Foreign object inside victim’s mouth.
It looks to be lodged in the back of the throat.” Don looked around at the expectant faces of the group before picking up a forceps in one hand. The steel tongs gripped the object on either side, and after a few agonizing seconds of tugging, Don pulled it free with a wet pop. Sullivan watched as the thing slid free of Alvarez’s throat and dragged across his gaping lips.

The object was nearly five inches long, by Sullivan’s estimate, and viciously pointed at the opposite end of where the forceps gripped it. Jagged edges spiraled down its length and faded into a smooth surface, where it raggedly ended in what appeared to be soft tissue. Don held the object up just below the powerful overhead light and squinted at it, his mouth agape.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Mooring asked from the corner. His face was twisted into a mask of disgust, and to Sullivan it looked like he was about to lose whatever lunch he had consumed earlier.

“
Everett
,” Amanda said in a chiding tone as she tilted her head toward the recording device on the table.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Don said without taking his eyes from the thing in the forceps. “I was wondering the same thing myself.” Don motioned again to one of the techs and the younger man placed a sterile sheet of paper on the surface of the table. Don set the object down carefully, and then peered at it again as he rolled it back and forth with the tool in his hand.

“Foreign object retrieved from victim’s mouth and throat.
Approximately five and a half inches long, white in color.
Surface is dense and hard, almost bone-like. Sharp protrusions line the length and there are multiple grooves on the exterior. Opposing end is fleshy and soft, ending in a jagged tear. Small amount of unidentified fluid is gathered at terminating end.” Don reached over and tapped the recorder with his forefinger, and stepped back from the table, his hands on his hips. The pathologist remained silent until Sullivan cleared his throat, breaking the older man from his reverie.

“Sorry, never seen anything like it,” Don said.

Sullivan walked around the table and bent close to the object on the paper. The smell of blood was stronger here and he swallowed the revulsion he felt. The thing on the paper looked like a bone-white seashell he had seen before.
An auger shell?
Was that what they were called? He looked closer and could see bits of tissue clinging to the spiny edges lining the thing’s length. It looked dangerous and
organic
. He could almost feel those tiny blades cutting into his skin. How would it have felt in his mouth?

Sullivan straightened up and stepped away from the table. “What do you think, Don?”

The pathologist shook his head. “I have no idea, but it looks almost like bone here,” he said, gesturing to the pointed end. “Then it transitions to something cartilaginous, and finishes in some kind of meat.”

“Meat?”
Barry echoed from across the table.

Don shrugged. “Looks like lobster or crabmeat to me.”

Mooring laughed in the corner and his head dropped forward, obscuring his face. Sullivan frowned at the officer, and then looked back to Don. “What’s it doing in our guy’s mouth?”

“Not sure of that either. To me it looks like it was shoved in and twisted around. Then maybe Alvarez bit it off?”

Sullivan looked at the head with its mouth open lying on the table. He didn’t have to look inside to imagine the carnage the thing would have created in the soft tissue.

Don touched the recorder again and resumed his position. With gentle hands he began to explore the mouth and throat. “Examining the interior damage of the victim’s mouth, assumedly caused by unknown object found within. Gums and rear of the throat have extensive
tr
—
aaahhh
!
”

Don’s words were lost in a bellow of pain as he stood straight up, his eyes bulging behind his glasses. The cry caught everyone by surprise, and Sullivan saw each person react. He and Barry stepped forward, while Amanda flew backward with her own short scream. Mooring only flinched. Both techs may as well have been statues, as little as they moved. When Sullivan looked down at the table and saw what had caused the pathologist to cry out, it took a moment for him to process what he was seeing. When the scene finally registered in his mind, he nearly screamed himself.

The head’s jaws had clamped down and were biting through Don’s first two fingers on his right hand.

Don lurched back and pressed his free hand against Alvarez’s face. Sullivan heard a distinct snapping sound, and he watched as the disembodied head and Don both fell to the floor. The head rolled under the autopsy table, and the aging pathologist fell against the cabinets behind him and slithered down to a sitting position, his left hand cupped protectively around his right.

Sullivan and Barry hurried to Don’s side and crouched next to him, both men’s guns drawn, although they didn’t really know in which direction to aim them. Amanda emitted a few choked sobs and pressed a whitened hand to her mouth. Mooring leaned over and stared under the table with narrowed eyes, his own sidearm not yet out.

“What the fuck was that?” Sullivan asked
,
gazing down at Don’s injured hand. Don was breathing heavy and pinching his index and middle fingers tightly with his left hand, staunching the blood flow, which nevertheless still leaked out from the severed stumps. Sullivan saw the white edge of bone glisten in the bright lights and his stomach lurched involuntarily.

“Should have known.
My fault, my fault.
I’m okay.
Cadaveric
spasm.”
Don uttered the last statement as if it should explain everything.

“You
two,
get some gauze and a clamp over here,” Barry yelled at the two stunned technicians. The men rifled through the nearby drawers for the supplies, as Sullivan focused again on Don, whose face had paled further.

“What are you talking about?” Sullivan asked as he shot a glance under the autopsy table. He could see the outline of the head lying there. Thankfully the face was turned away toward the far side of the room.

Don blinked and heaved in a great breath like a man treading in deep water. “It happens sometimes. Bodies, their muscles spasm and stiffen when they die in an extreme bout of physical anguish. That’s what happened. God, I think I’m going to be sick.”

Sullivan saw Don’s eyes flutter, and in a matter of seconds the pathologist’s hand fell away from his wounded fingers as he passed out. Fresh blood flew out of the amputated stumps and splashed down onto the white tile of the floor in brilliant red streams. Sullivan grabbed Don’s bleeding fingers and pressed them tight in a grip he feared might actually snap the already traumatized bones. After a moment, Bob and Gene knelt next to him, and then Amanda was there too, seemingly having shaken off the shock, her doctor’s instincts taking over. Sullivan released his hold on Don’s hand and watched as the two techs, directed by Amanda, clamped off the injuries with a thick elastic band, followed by a dose of antiseptic and a tight wrapping of sterile gauze.

Sullivan and Barry backed away and circled the table. Reluctantly Sullivan holstered his .45, and knelt as he stared into the shadow cast by the steel platform above. His gorge rose in his throat as Barry and Mooring leaned closer to him and took in the sight that he wished he could run away from. Alvarez’s head lay on its left cheek. Its eyes were still mercifully shut, but that wasn’t what abhorred Sullivan to the point of sickness.

The muscles in its jaw were still clenching, the teeth partially visible in the mouth as the head bit again and again on Don’s fingers.

Chapter 6

“Fuck me sideways.”

Barry fell into the chair to Sullivan’s left and placed his face in his hands. The two sat side by side in the interview room off the prison’s lobby. Everything had become a blur after Amanda and the two techs successfully stopped the bleeding. Don woke in a bleary daze and threw up violently on the floor, the vomit mixing hideously with his drying blood. Sullivan and Barry had offered to try to retrieve the fingers from Alvarez’s mouth, but Don merely shook his head and replied that he didn’t want them back after where they’d been. Dr.
Rabbers
was notified and a report had been filed. Afterward, Mooring left for Singleton and returned with the ATV he’d been driving earlier that day. Don rode back in comfort, cradling his right hand and grimacing whenever the vehicle went over a bump. Officer Bundy had pulled the prison’s boat around, and Gene, Bob, and Don were all loaded inside and whisked away down the watery roadway, back to the crime-scene van. The last thing Sullivan saw as he stood on the bank below the fence was Don’s attempt at a smile, which looked more like a scowl, fading in the waning light of the evening, and then they were gone around the bend.

Barry sat back in his chair and looked over at Sullivan. “Have you ever.
In your life.
Seen anything.
Like that before?”

Sullivan rubbed his face and turned toward his friend. “Have I ever seen a decapitated head bite off someone’s fingers?
No, not that I can recall.”
Sullivan’s guts churned, but for some reason he felt laughter tightening his stomach, and he shook his head as the first chuckles fell from his mouth. Barry glanced over at him and made a gagging sound, and Sullivan realized the other man was trying to keep from laughing also. Tears sprang to Sullivan’s eyes as he bit down on his lower lip to keep the insane giggles from spilling out, but it was no use. Soon, he and Barry were slumped back in their chairs, twisting and turning under the thumb of the hideous humor that gripped them. It was minutes before the laughter eased off and Sullivan was able to look through the glass walls to make sure they were still alone in the interview area.

“Jesus, what are we laughing about?” Barry said as a few remaining giggles slipped out.

“It’s this day, my friend. This is by far the strangest shit I’ve ever been witness to, and I think it’s just an overload.”

“Must be, because I nearly puked just now thinking about what happened back there in that
room,
and laughing only made it worse.”

Sullivan nodded in agreement. Visualizing Alvarez’s head biting down on Don’s fingers and the sound it had made—the cracking of bone being sheared through, the smell of blood—was enough to sober him once again. Sullivan shifted and felt something poke him through the material of his slacks. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag that contained the object that had been removed from Alvarez’s mouth. In the haste and panic that followed Don’s injury, he’d put the bag in his pocket and simply forgotten about it.