Free Come Little Children by D. Melhoff Page B

letter beginning on either shoulder, then meeting below his sternum and running all the way down to his pelvis. The autopsy cut had been sewn closed with thick, heavy stitches, similar to the seams on a baseball, but Camilla thought the threading looked embarrassingly loose.
    The coroner could learn a thing or two from the craftsman who stitched together the six-year-old boy
.
    Instantly the little boy’s scar seared to the front of her thoughts again, staring at her like the slit of a bloody, baleful eye. That sewing was tight and professional. Continuous threads, clean ends.
What’s behind those seams…What’s hiding?!
    “Any time,” a voice scowled.
    Camilla blinked away from the flashback to see that Moira and Lucas were already working contrapuntally, going about their own tasks while managing to stay out of each other’s way. She didn’t know where to jump in—two was company around the slim station, three seemed a crowd.
    Lucas gave a tap on the porcelain. “I’ll unlace the torso,” he said, “if you set the features.”
    Thanks
, Camilla mouthed, and Lucas nodded back.
    She moved to the top of the table and examined the man’s head, noting again a lack of effort in the autopsy stitching. Trading her trocar for a scalpel, she sliced her way through the poorly laced incisions and suctioned out the excess fluid, then padded it with fresh cotton before resetting the skullcap and sewing it back together. Next was the mouth. Forgoing an air gun, she found a needle and a roll of wax thread and began weaving it expertly through Mr. Gall’s gum lines just like she’d done a hundred times in school.
    She breathed a little easier.
    It was a relief to be doing something that she was actually good at. It took her mind off everything else and reassured her that, contrary to a certain funeral director’s opinion, she wasn’t a total idiot. As her hands piloted the thread, she even caught Moira giving a small nod of approval.
Hell hath frozen over
.
    “Here we go,” Lucas warned. “Hold your breath.”
    He dug his fingers into the man’s stomach and gave a forceful tug, pulling back the skin to reveal Mr. Gall’s rib cage and abdomen all at once.
    But the organs weren’t where they should have been. The body was hollow with the exception of a clear, plastic sack—the viscera bag—lumped in the pelvic area. All the entrails were pooled into this one sack, stewing in their own fluids like bowel casserole.
    Moira barely looked. She was flipping through the man’s chart, checking the list of personal items that the hospital had sent over.
    “Any idea why he did it?” Camilla asked.
    “Take his life, you mean?” Moira said. “That’s not our concern.”
    “Of course not. I’m just—just curious.” Camilla’s eyebrows furrowed as she ran a hand over the corpse’s head. His hair was extremely healthy and still carried the pleasant scent of a strong citrus conditioner, which she assumed wasn’t widely available in prison. There were no signs of self-harm anywhere on his body.
    “Depression doesn’t always leave footprints,” Moira said, ostensibly reading Camilla’s thoughts. The old woman paused, finishing her checklist, and held up a clipping from the autopsy folder. “Last Friday police responded to a call south of Road 16. They found a child in the ditch near a hatchback and Gall asleep at the wheel, seats soaked with pilsner and another case open in the box. It doesn’t take a two-hour autopsy to see what caught up to him.”
    Lucas and Camilla looked at each other, perplexed. Moira sniffed and spelled it out for them: “Guilt.”
    She stowed the autopsy report back in its folder before Camilla could lean in and get a peek.
    What if
—Camilla’s mind raced, spiraling out of control again—
what if that picture’s the missing piece? The little boy had scrapes. Bad ones. Not hit-by-a-hatchback bad…but maybe…maybe they’re worse than I remember?
    “That’s insane,” Lucas said,