Page 59 of Identity Unknown
The vintage embalming machine resembles a large white enameled blender, and lining a shelf are glass jars, flasks and antique tins of Morticians Powder that helps with odors. On a hospital cart are a jumble of forceps, scissors, retractors, catheters, hypodermic trocars, a bone handsaw that I suspect haven’t been used in many years.
“Related to animals that have gone into space?” I ask. “Is that the purpose?”
“For handling biological materials or purported ones and such.” She continues being evasive.
“It certainly looks like they were dissecting and embalming something down here.” I prod for answers she’s not going to give. “While other things have been kept frozen in drawers?”
She opens another door to a rush of heated air and the muffled roar of an inferno. Tron is waiting for us inside the crematorium room, flames showing orange around the edges of the oven’s iron door, square with an arched top like a medieval castle portcullis. Propped nearby against a brick wall are long-handled clean-out brushes and other tools.
Sal’s pouched body awaits on top of a gurney that’s at least as old as the blockhouses, the metal patinaed, the wheels hard rubber with white rims. I place my bags on a pitted zinc countertop. Above it on a shelf are cardboard urns similar to what my anatomical division uses when we cremate donated bodies after medical schools finish with them.
“You sure about this?” Tron asks me.
“I’m sure.”
She hands me a clipboard, and I sign an evidence form verifying that the body is Salvatore Dante Giordano.
“What’s the temp?” I ask.
“Nineteen hundred degrees,” Tron says.
“That’s good.” I begin filling out a provisional death certificate.
… Date of death April 15… Time of death approx. 8 a.m.…
“Don’t know when it was used last but it fired up just fine…,” she’s saying.
… Place of death Oz…
“I’m told there’s plenty of propane in the tank. Thank God…”
… Born in Rome, Italy…
“If the fire went out that would be bad…”
… Residence Old Town Alexandria, VA…
“I wonder if that’s ever happened…,” Lucy adds as I continue filling in the blanks.
… Parents Mario and Gloria Giordano…
I write that Sal died from blunt force trauma due to a vertical descent from a flying object, identity unknown. I have little doubt that he’s an assassination, a hit perpetrated by another human being or perhaps more than one. I return the clipboard to Tron, and we put on heat-resistant gloves.
“Maybe we turn him facedown,” I suggest, and we do it.
But it makes me feel no better, quite the opposite, not that this could be anything but awful. He won’t lie flat due to the awkward angles of his rigorous limbs. His familiar wavy gray hair and dusky red back show through plastic, and I experience an unexpected shock of panic that just as quickly passes.
We turn the body face up again, and it’s as stiff as a mannikin, thudding against metal, the barely open eyes cloudy andstaring blindly. His body is clenched rigidly like a fist, almost pugilistic, as if he’s offended and resisting mightily. Or maybe he would find all thisFar Sidefunny. It’s anything but that to me.
“The damn see-through pouches.” I find myself perseverating. “They should make them plain black. Or white. Or red, orange, yellow, I don’t give a damn. Anything but transparent.”
“I agree,” Tron says. “It seems disrespectful.”
“Because it is,” Lucy replies. “No matter what we do it’s a fucking indignity.”
Tron rolls the body closer to the oven, the wheels creaking and chattering over the brick flooring.
“Death is an ugly fucker.” Lucy grabs a long, hooked tool leaning against the wall.