Free No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella by Barbara Seranella Page B

said.
    "You're late," he said. "They've
already gone down."
    "Down?"
    "To the autopsy suite," he said.
    "Yes, yes, of course." She pushed the
button on the elevator. "I'll just catch up to them."
    "It's not that easy" the rent-a-cop said.
"We have security measures here."
    Munch's stomach lurched and her resolve wavered once
more. It wasn't too late to just turn around and go. What had she
done so far? Just said that she was looking for the CSI class, not
even a lie really Then she got angry with herself. The whiny voice
inside her head disgusted her. It was time to get off the goddamn
fence.
    "You need a special key to get off at that
floor," he said, looking her up and down. "Kinda warm for
gloves, isn't it?"
    She smiled her best Danielle-smile at the guard. "You
know what they say: Cold hands, but a warm heart."
    The guard took a breath that puffed out his chest. "
think we can let you slide this one time."
    She hoped she wasn't laying it on too thick as she
ran her hand through her hair and said, "Well, aren't you just
the nicest thing?" The last was a patented Deb line, some of
that Southern sugar she dispensed to bend men to her will.
    They rode down to the next floor in silence. She was
conscious of his eyes and grateful that the majority of his attention
was not directed at her face. He used his key to open the elevator
door. She gave his arm a squeeze on her way out.
    "Thanks again."
    "Good luck," he said and pointed down the
hallway indicating where she should go. The hallway took her past
several closed office doors, then opened to become what appeared to
be a waiting room. Several vinyl chairs lined the wall; worn issues
of Good Housekeeping magazine were fanned across a small coffee
table.
    She passed a wax mannequin covered with a plastic
sheet and laid out on a steel gurney Only the yellowish feet of the
mannequin showed. She supposed the dummy was used as some sort of
teaching aid, like one of those visible V-8's they had at the trade
school. A man in a white smock came along and whipped off the tarp
with a magicians flourish. She saw that the figure on the table was
female and very detailed, right down to her pubic hair.
    "Oh," she said.
    "What?" asked the man.
    "She's real, isn't she?"
    He chuckled and made a notation on his clipboard.
Munch realized the dead woman was on a scale. The corpse weighed
ninety-eight pounds. She looked at the cadaver's face and asked,
"How'd she die?"
    The man consulted his clipboard. "Overdosed on
booze and Methaqualone. See how emaciated she is? Thats how these
alcoholics get. They stop eating and do nothing but drink."
    "Terrible," Munch agreed.
    "You here with the class?" he asked.
    "The guard said I'd find everybody down here,"
she said.
    He indicated a doorway
    "Thanks."
    He nodded and went back to his work.
    She pushed through the thick rubber flaps and they
shut automatically after her. The room in which she found herself
hummed with a subdued energy She had expected it to be colder. The
smell of blood and raw meat was overpowering. She had no association
to match the odor to, but she was sure she would never forget it. She
made her way over to the group of men who surrounded a fixed steel
table. They glanced up at her as she approached, then turned their
attention back to what they had been observing.
    There was a cracking noise and then she saw another
man in a white smock with the words MEDICAL EXAMINER stenciled across
the back manipulating the handles of a pair of large garden loppers.
The clippers reminded her of the ones Jack used to trim the trees
around the shop. She stepped in closer to see what he was doing. A
man in a green shirt moved aside, making room for her. She discovered
that the man in the white smock was snipping through the rib cage of
a large black man. The skin of the dead man's torso had been cut from
his throat to his pubis and pulled to the side, exposing his rib cage
and stomach cavity
    "Jesus," the man in the green shirt
muttered.
    Another man