Page 56 of Manner of Death
“Hi,” she said with a small smile when she saw him. “Please tell me he hasn’t gotten into another bar fight.”
All the words, all the choices, all the thought Sawyer had put into preparing himself for this moment vanished. He was left unable to speak, staring at Molly desperately as he willed his voice to cooperate.
“Sawyer?” Molly lowered the footrest of the recliner and sat up. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head, helpless. Acrid tears sprang up in his eyes, and when Molly reached out a hand toward him, he went to her. Her grip was nothing like Bashir’s; her skin felt almost as cold as Kurt’s must have been, but it was strong. Painfully strong.
“Sawyer…please.”
“Molly,” he managed at last. His voice sounded nothing like it usually did, low and gritty. The women behind them went silent. “I’m so sorry.”
“No.” She shook her head, slowly at first, then wildly. “No, no, no…”
Sawyer’s throat had tightened up again. He nodded, then braced himself as Molly collapsed into him, her hands claws against his back as she wailed.
All Sawyer could do was hang on.
Chapter 15
The autopsy should have waited until the next morning. That was standard procedure, apart from bodies that came in before about noon.
In the case of Detective McKay, it had been after eight in the evening when he was finally transferred into the morgue. Literally no one would have faulted Bashir for putting the body into the cooler and coming back in the morning, after a solid night’s sleep, to autopsy him along with the other two bodies that had come in this evening. In fact, anyone who knew how the morgue did things would be shocked to see anyone still here at all for anything other than dropping off a body.
But here he was, standing beside the table at almost nine o’clock, steeling himself before getting started.
He was hardly squeamish about autopsies, and he could usually compartmentalize enough to begin working without flinching on even the most disturbing of cases. That was a job requirement—a pathologist had to be able to put aside their emotional responses enough to get the job done, but still hold on to those emotions enough to remain human. Some people thought doing this job meant being completely numb and detached, but that wasn’t true. When someone could autopsy a child without feeling anything, it was time to find another line of work.
Doing the job meant feeling those emotions, acknowledging them, but proceeding with the task robotically. Empathize, be horrified by what happened to the person, have sympathy for their loved ones… but still confidently cut into skin and unflinchingly saw through bone.
Standing beside Detective McKay’s body… Bashir wasn’t so sure he could pick up the scalpel or the bone saw.
The man lying on the table was not a man Bashir had particularly liked in life, and he didn’t apologize for that. McKay had always been one of those cops who made Bashir rethink his career choices; the blowflies at death scenes were less annoying than cops like Detective McKay.
But that didn’t mean he’d deserved this, whether “this” turned out to be suicide or murder. His family—his dying wife—didn’t deserve this.
His partner didn’t deserve this.
Bashir closed his eyes and sighed behind his surgical mask. That was the issue, wasn’t it? Bashir faced down the results of cruelty and tragedy every day in this cold place. He was as accustomed to it as anyone could ever be without emotionally flatlining.
But he wasn’t used to being so close to someone who loved the decedent.
Under normal circumstances, it was understood that everyone in the morgue could bow out of participating in an autopsy on someone they knew. Boyce had stepped in when a friend of Bashir’s had passed away last year. Bashir had performed the post-mortem on Boyce’s cousin. Tami had taken the day off when a friend from high school had arrived at the morgue following a car accident.
There were times when it couldn’t be avoided, of course. Two years ago, a friend of Bashir’s had died under questionable circumstances. Being the medical examiner and the only forensic pathologist within a hundred miles, Bashir couldn’t completely escape that one. Since he’d have to sign off on it either way, he’d gone ahead and performed the autopsy himself. His friend’s family and girlfriend were still angry that he’d ultimately ruled the death as natural causes when they’d been convinced he’d been murdered.
Was that why he was hesitating now? Because he was afraid he’d have to tell Sawyer and the grieving, dying widow that McKay had killed himself? Or that someone had murdered him? Neither outcome was going to bring a lot of peace to anyone in McKay’s orbit. Would Sawyer blame him? Resent him?
And since when was any of that reason to hesitate on doing his damn job? Bashir’s duty was to the person on his table and to the truth. Be respectful of the family and of any traditions surrounding death and funerals, but first and foremost—respect the deceased by finding and telling the truth about their death.
Not everyone took that well. Grief was a bitch of an emotion, and shooting the messenger (metaphorically, in most cases) was not uncommon.
Bashir closed his eyes and exhaled behind the mask. Maybe he should wait until morning after all. He needed sleep. He needed distance. He needed—
Sawyer.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered into the stillness of the morgue. He was a mess, and that meant the last thing he should be doing was an autopsy. And no one would fault him if he followed standard operating goddamned procedure by waiting until tomorrow morning.
But am I going to be able to sleep? Am I really going to be any more together in the morning?