Page 54 of Identity Unknown
CHAPTER 20
Painting the UV light over the hands and arms, I’m surprised that the pi sign tattoo glows a brilliant yellow.
“The ink has some sort of fluorescent additive,” I explain as it occurs to me why Sal might have had the tattoo to begin with.
Maybe the reason wasn’t merely decorative or symbolic. Perhaps holding the tattoo over certain scanners granted access into off-limits places such as Area One storage containers and mortuary drawers. Possibly the tattoo was a form of secret identification, a skeleton key to forbidden knowledge. I propose this to our audience as I continue collecting evidence in the dark, and no one denies or confirms.
“Is there a need for retaining the tattoo?” What I’m asking is if I should excise it, preserving it in formalin. “Possibly there’s a computer chip under the skin or something that should be recovered?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gus says, and if he knows the purpose of the tattoo, he isn’t saying.
I continue searching and collecting, then flip the lights back on, everybody squinting. Picking up a clipboard from the countertop, I begin charting multiple injuries on body diagrams. Ifill more test tubes with blood, and take vitreous fluid from the eyes, now a cloudy grayish blue. I dictate, and Marino writes it down.
Opening what the cops call a rape kit, I swab every orifice as I would a victim of sexual assault. Since I can’t know what Sal was subjected to, I intend to leave nothing to the imagination. If something isn’t done properly, there’s no going back. The time on the old wall clock ticks close to 9:30P.M.as I turn on the faucet in the sink at the foot of the table.
I run my scalpel from clavicle to clavicle, down the torso, detouring around the navel, ending at the pelvis. Reflecting back tissue, I slice through the breastplate of ribs, removing it. Placing the bloc of organs on the cutting board, I cut through connective tissue, rinsing with water I squeeze from a big sponge.
I begin dictating pathological details, the heart within normal limits, the blood vessels patent and clear of plaque. The lungs were punctured by broken ribs, and the spleen is ruptured. I weigh the left kidney, then the right, each 161 grams, I tell Marino. The liver is contused, and I lift it out of the hanging scale, setting it on the plastic cutting board.
I begin slicing with a long-bladed knife, saving sections in a jar of formalin, dropping the rest in the plastic bucket under the table. Retrieving a steel cup from the surgical cart, I measure the amount of hemorrhaged blood pooled inside the empty chest cavity.
“About five hundred milliliters,” I explain. “Or around seventeen ounces. Most likely he was unconscious after hitting the ground and soon after went into shock.”
“Are you finding anything that might make you think he was tortured?” the secretary of state asks. “Why is his skin red? I’m wondering if they burned him.” He’s leaning forward in his chair, looking down impassively at the carnage on my table.
“Who’sthey?” Marino wants to know.
“That is the question, now isn’t it?” Gus answers. Then to me he says, “What about high-energy weapons that could inflict serious pain as a way of extracting information?”
“There’s no way for me to tell,” I reply. “It’s also difficult to determine if the redness of his skin is uniform front and back.”
I explain that after death, blood ceases to circulate. It settles according to gravity, causing areas of the body to turn a dark dusky red easily confused with bruising. The postmortem artifact is called livor mortis. Typically, it and rigor mortis are completely fixed after eight hours, and Sal’s findings are consistent with that. If I press my thumb against his back, the skin no longer blanches, every muscle in his body stiff.
“By all appearances he landed on his right side first, and was on his back from then on.” I continue reconstructing what the injuries are telling me. “His dusky lividity makes it nearly impossible for me to tell if the skin on his back was red prior to death.”
“It would make sense if he was tortured while someone tried to find out what he knew,” the NSA says.
“That while teaching him and others a lesson,” Gus suggests. “Depending on the circumstances.”
“Or it could be from the sun,” I reply. “It might be as simple as that. In the open clearing where he was left, he could have been in the sun for a while.”
“When we found him, it was about three and a half hours after the UAP was picked up by radar and other sensors,” Lucy says. “The clearing was definitely in the sun at that time.”
“Can you get sunburned when you’re dead?” Bella asks.
“The skin might become somewhat discolored,” I reply. “But it wouldn’t turn pink or red because there would be no tissue response. And there’d be no production of the melanin that causes tanning.”
Picking up a pair of surgical scissors, I snip open the stomach, emptying it into a plastic carton I’ve placed on the cutting board.
“That’s weird.” Marino watches with an unpleasant look on his face. “As if everything’s not weird enough already. What time did he eat last night? And do we know what he ordered at the restaurant?”
“He and his two colleagues got the same thing. Barbecue plates with slaw and tater tots.” Lucy repeats what she told me earlier.
“That’s what this is looking like,” I confirm. “And it tells me that soon after dinner he was sufficiently stressed that his digestion completely quit.”
“I didn’t know that could happen,” AARO says.
“Part of the fight-or-flight response. The central nervous system shuts down the digestive system, focusing the body’s resources on the extremities, preparing you to defend yourself or run. And that’s what happened here,” I explain while sifting. “If I didn’t know better I might think he died soon after he ate.”