Big Blue Sky: Five

It occurred to Molly that a morgue ought to smell like something. There should have been some hint of death or sickness layering an artificial chill to the air. There should have been the pungent bite of ammonia and disinfectant, but there was nothing. It was as if the living were as transient in this place as the dead, and perhaps less welcome. Federal Agent Molly Karaman was certainly use to feeling unwelcome. For the last two years she had bounced around half the Middle East consulting on Terrorist bombings. Too often she suffered the ambient and overt distrust of cultures that viewed America ultimately as an adversary, but which also saw the necessity of short term cooperation, like riding a tiger to cross a swollen river. That she was a professional woman in a patriarchal world only complicated matters.

She waited at the door for the guard, staring into her reflection from the thick security glass. Molly was disarmingly pretty, with long wavy black hair, normally worn up and more official looking. For this call it didn’t seem to matter. Her skin was fair with deep green exotic eyes, the blessing of her Latin and Turkish heritage. But at thirty-seven Molly helped shadowed by the unjust conventions of society that believed men age with distinction while women simply age, becoming less substantial and less important. Her mother always told Molly she had her father’s looks. Truth was, she had never known him, except from a hand full of scratched and faded Polaroids taken when he and Molly’s mother were courting. All she knew was that they met in Paris where Molly’s mother was visiting relatives. Two weeks after their wedding he was knifed in a mugging and died alone in an alley. Molly’s mother flew home to New York where she learned soon after she was pregnant.

The guard opened the door, tearing Molly from thoughts of her childhood, and what might have been. The guard was a young marine corporal. He dutifully checked her FBI identification and waved her through. It was a quick walk down another sterile hallway and through second set of set of doors. Here was the low scent of death and blood and disinfectant, and Molly almost felt rescued for it.

Arpel Bernstein lay naked upon the cold steel examining table, well beyond all modesty. His flesh was ashen in color and drawn. The only color was at the giant “Y” incision across his torso and round belly, and the tuft of pubic hair. At a glance he seemed like some hastily re-stuffed toy. The flesh of his head, like some thick rubber mat, had been neatly cut and was rolled down over his eyes. The top of the skull had been removed, exposing the grayish pink brain within. Leaning over the body was a heavy set balding man that Molly knew only too well. His expression was fixed as he peered at the scribbled notes of an autopsy report through a pair of heavy framed eyeglasses.

He was Doctor Caspar Asgari, a man of gruff manners and meticulous standards. In court, often called upon for his expertise, Asgari’s reputation was unassailable, respected by both the prosecution and the defense alike, which is what made his expression so vexing for Molly. She pursed her lips and took a deep breath, as though preparing herself. She had a feeling that what should have been a simple case was about to become something more.

“Hello, dear,” he said, without looking up from the report. His accent was still thick, and layered with British, though he had fled the Shah’s Iran almost forty years earlier. Asgari turned the page and scratched the back of his neck. He liked her. He liked her complexity and how she was less interested in law enforcement than justice. As for Molly she sometimes liked to imagine her father would have been something like Caspar Asgari.

“Don’t like that look,” she said.

“The face I was born with, I’m afraid.”

She was looking for anything that might indicate the incident with the water had contributed to the Congressman’s death. For the moment she was still be held for “psychiatric evaluation.”

“Is there a case here, Caspar?”

He shrugged, thoroughly stumped. “In my opinion he was not a healthy man to begin with. The Congressman had severe arterial blockage, aggravated by dangerously high hypertension, but that did not kill him.”

“What does that leave?”

“Something…strange, I don’t…come take a look at this.”

He drew back the folded flesh at Arpel’s temple. With two fingers Asgari pointed to a reddish sort of blister, no more than an inch in diameter.

“Looks like a burn,” she remarked.

“In fact it is. I thought perhaps it had happened in the ambulance or at the hospital, but then I decided took a look at his brain, believing that he had died from an aneurism.”

“That was my first thought when I saw the news footage.”

“Indeed,” he said, wagging a finger knowingly. “But when I opened the brain cavity a great deal of blood poured out.”

“So it was a hemorrhage?’

“Ah but here.” Asgari bulled back the spongy brain and ran a long cotton swab along the inside of the skull. He held it up. It was stained rust red with blood, but also with a charcoal black substance.

“There, you see?” he said.

“What is that?”

“Come,” he said. She followed him across the room to two large x-ray images at a small desk. He held one of them up against the light for her to see. Tree-like blood vessels showed up as solid black. Limbs and branches converged then came to a sudden stop, appearing as though they had dissolved. Molly leaned closer, squinting at the image.

“That would be…”

“The hemorrhage,” Asgari finished the sentence. From the table he produced several other X-rays. They were similar, showing blood vessels of the brain. Except in these other images there were tears or bubbles at the point of rupture, but nothing like in the first image.

“These are normal hemorrhages,” he continued. “But in Bernstein’s X-ray it, the, the blood vessels were burned away.”

“From inside.”

“I believe so,” he said.

“Is that possible?”

He chuckled darkly. “That isn’t even the strangest part.” He produced two more X-rays. Each showed the same dissolved pattern as Bernstein’s.

“These are also his?”

He pointed to the image on the left. “This is of an Army Colonel from the Pentagon Accounting and procurement office who died suddenly three weeks ago.”

Molly pointed to the second image. “And this one?”

“A US Attorney who, coincidentally, was working closely with Bernstein.”