Free Random Victim by Michael A. Black Page B

Then he’d
     laughed as Leal subsequently covered the sidewalk with remnants of his scrambled eggs.
    Leal glanced at Hart to see her reaction at the room full of black body bags, stacked on carts and shelves around the room.
     She seemed to be concentrating on just staring straight ahead, but he could see that her bare arms were already getting goose
     pimples from the cool temperature. Her nipples were starting to stand out, too.
    I should have told her to keep her jacket on, thought Leal.
    “Keep breathing through your nose,” he said. “You’ll get used to it quicker.”
    “You’re supposed to get used to this?” she said.
    Leroy, the attendant who was leading them to Dr. Sprinklien, turned and grinned, showing his gold capped front tooth.
    “We got a bunch of bodies from a fire,” he said. “Them extra crispies don’t smell real bad as a rule.”
    Leal chuckled. Morgue humor. He forgot how much he missed it.
    The refrigerated room opened into a hallway, and another set of doors. Leroy pushed through them and they were all suddenly
     in a large autopsy room with several steel tables butting up against sinks and small desk areas. Numerous dead bodies lay
     naked on top of steel carts, lined up in haphazard order. Dr. Sprinklien looked up from over one of them, the body of a huge
     black man. The body’s midsection had been sliced open, exposing layers of yellowish, waxy fat between the skin and organs.
     The doctor’s half-glasses sat upon his rather longish nose. A blue cap covered his hair and a surgical mask hung around his
     throat. He looked to be in his late sixties or early seventies, and his face seemed slack and droopy.
    “Ah, guests,” he said as he finished snapping on a new pair of latex gloves. “To what do I owe this distinct pleasure, Officers?”
    Leal introduced himself and Hart and said they were working on the Miriam Walker case. He noticed that Sprin-klien took an
     unusually long time eyeing Hart. Maybe the doc’s got the hots for her, he thought.
    “We wanted to know if you had a few minutes to go over your file, Doctor?” Leal asked.
    “Ah, most certainly,” Sprinklien said. His speech had a distinctly foreign accent, although Leal couldn’t quite place it.
     “Just give me a few minutes to complete some notes on this fellow.” His gloved hand patted the distended stomach, causing
     it to jiggle lugubriously. Leal noticed that the dead man’s flaccid penis was uncircumcised and looked like a dead anteater.
     He glanced over at Hart.
    So far she hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t thrown up, either. Maybe she was tougher than he thought.
    Leroy pushed though the double doors, carrying a small baby by the feet. He swung the dead child up and dropped it on an adjacent
     steel table.
    “Got your next one, Doc,” he said.
    “Thank you, Leroy,” Sprinklien said. He was bending over the steel counter, writing on a plastic clipboard and talking alternately
     into a small pocket-sized tape recorder. After a few minutes he turned to them. Leal noticed that Hart hadn’t taken her eyes
     off the baby’s corpse.
    “A child abuse case,” Sprinklien said, nodding at the small body. “Those are always difficult. Now, which of my cases did
     you say you were interested in?”
    “The Miriam Walker case,” Leal said. “Lady judge, found in the water stuffed in a trunk in early July.”
    “You have the file, I take it?”
    “Yes, sir,” Leal said, handing it to him.
    Sprinklien adjusted the glasses on his nose and opened the manila folder. As he read he motioned to Leroy to set up the baby
     for an autopsy. Leroy, who was also in green scrubs, adjusted a mask over his face and moved the cart with the child over
     toward one of the sinks. Hart seemed to recoil visibly.
    “Oh, yes, I do remember this one,” Sprinklien said. “She was quite a mess. We estimated that she’d been in the water a few
     months.”
    “She disappeared in April,” Leal said. “You listed the cause