Final Disposition (31 page)

CHAPTER 22

      Dr. Elliott Sutta was still staring in disbelief at the swinging stainless steel doors when Cellars entered the Autopsy Center from the prep room doors with a brightly-wrapped package in one hand and a gun in the other … stopped … and stared at the empty middle autopsy table.

      “What the — where the hell is she?” Cellars demanded.

      Sutta pointed wordlessly at the double doors leading to the Morgue’s receiving area with the Mini Stun Baton®.

      “Here, catch … and don’t drop it,” Cellars yelled as he threw the package in Sutta’s general direction, and then immediately disappeared though the double doors.

      Moments later, Cellars could be heard yelling “STOP RIGHT THERE, YOU BITCH!”

      Immediately thereafter, a loud shot rang out.

      A few moments after that, Cellars reappeared, dragging the limp body of Allesandra by the hair and finally dropping it at Sutta’s feet.

      Still stunned and disbelieving, Sutta stared down at the face of the beautiful woman that was now disfigured by the presence of a bright-red-tasseled dart sticking out of her forehead — just above and between her two glassy-purple eyes that were visibly starting to fade.

      For a long moment, the two men simply stared down at the dart.

      Finally, it was Sutta who spoke.

      “What did you shoot her with?”

      “Three milligrams of carfentanil® — according to the instructions, more than enough to drop a moose in its tracks,” Cellars said as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a second red-tasseled dart, removed the protective needle cover, carefully slid it into the chamber of the bulky pistol, and then thumbed the safety to the ‘ON’ position.

      “You don’t think that was a little extreme?” Sutta rasped as he knelt down and felt for a pulse.  “The average moose has to outweigh this woman at least by a factor of ten.”

      “Not as extreme as a 40-caliber hollow-point, which was basically my only other option,” Cellars replied as he set the dart pistol down on the nearby sink countertop.  “And besides, the last thing I want to do is splatter her brain all over your walls.  I need to know what it looks like … so, if you don’t mind, let’s get her back on the table.”

      Working together — Cellars grabbing the limp body by the shoulders while Sutta took her legs — the two men managed to get Allesandra back up on the autopsy table.

      “Does she have a pulse?”

      “No,” Sutta muttered.

      “How about her pupils?”

      “Fully dilated … just like before.”

      The two men stared at each other for several seconds.

      “So, are you going to get back to work, or do I have to pound a stake in her heart first?” Cellars finally asked.

      “Be serious.  Do you really expect me to just pop the top of her skull open after seeing
that
?” Sutta demanded.

      “Depends … is she dead now?”

      “How the hell would I know?”

      “You’re a forensic pathologist,” Cellars pointed out.  “Who else is going to know more about being dead than you?”

      Lisa Marcini poked her head in through the double doors before Sutta could respond.

      “Did I hear a — shot?” she asked, and then furrowed her eyebrows when she saw the red tasseled dart sticking out of Allesandra’s forehead.

      “Yes, you heard a shot,” Sutta replied as he rummaged through a nearby drawer, came up with a stethoscope, put the earpieces in his ears, and began to run the sensitive sound receiver around Allesandra’s left breast, searching for a heartbeat.

      “What did you do to her?” Marcini whispered as she came all the way into the Autopsy center and approached the center table.

      “She woke up from being dead, whereupon your ‘good friend’ shot her in the forehead with a moose tranquilizer dart,” Sutta said, his face still looking decidedly pale as pulled the stethoscope out of his ears and tossed it onto the nearby sink counter.  “She now appears to be dead again … if I were to put any faith in the fact that she doesn’t have a heart beat or a pulse, and doesn’t seem to be breathing again.”

      “What are you saying … that she might
not
be dead, just tranquilized or in some kind of suspended animation?” Marcini said, her eyes widening as she backed away from the table.

      Sutta started to say something, but Cellars interrupted.

“I think it’s safe to say that we’re sailing in uncharted waters here,” he said.  “Dr. Sutta is understandably reluctant to start sawing the skullcap off a body that may sit up on him again … but I desperately need to know what she is, and how she can do what she does.  And I’m assuming that examining her brain close-up might tell us something?”  He turned to Marcini for affirmation.

      “We should pull blood and tissue for DNA and hemoglobin testing, at minimum,” Marcini said after a long moment, “but to do a detailed examination of her brain structures, we definitely need to either dissect it … or get it under an MRI.”

      “And I assume you don’t have an MRI in this place?” Cellars said to Sutta.

      “Never had a need for one until now,” the pathologist retorted.

      “So how do we get her into one?” Cellars asked.  “The local hospital?”

      “Absolutely not … much too dangerous,” Sutta said, shaking his head.  “If she ever woke up again like that — in a public setting — my God.”   He left the rest of the nightmare unspoken.

      “The obvious solution is to take her to our clinic, and use the diagnostic instruments there,” Marcini said to Cellars, “but I don’t think you’d ever get past the guard gate, much less MacGregor if he found out you were back on base.”

      “Actually, if I’m to believe their commanding officer, MacGregor and Harthburn aren’t going to get all that upset if they happen to see me again,” Cellars replied, “but I don’t know that I want to put that to a test if they find me on base with a dead body of a naked woman in the back of my SUV.”

      “We definitely can’t use your SUV to transport her,” Marcini said.  “What about a County vehicle?”  She turned to Sutta.

      “We have a hearse that you’re welcome to use —”

      “Can it hold three people up front?” Cellars asked.

      “It would be a little crowded, but — hey, wait a minute, I’m not —!”

      “We need you there to maintain official chain-of-custody of the body,” Cellars pointed out.  “I’m an OPS crime scene investigator.  I’m not supposed to be running around all over southern Oregon with a dead body in a County hearse.”

      “You’re not supposed to be doing a lot of things you do,” Sutta reminded pointedly.  “Take Nick with you.  He can drive the hearse while you two try not to get naked again and —”

      “Are you kidding?” Cellars exclaimed.  “That kid can barely stay awake out there.”

      “And besides, I’m going to need some help with the MRI,” Marcini added.

      “What are you talking about?” Sutta demanded, his voice starting to rise dangerously.  “You’re the neuropsychologist.  I haven’t the slightest idea how to use one of those infernal machines.”

      “No, but you’re an unquestioned expert on the three-dimensional structure of a human brain,” Marcini argued.  “I understand the neural interactivity of the brain parts, but I’m not necessarily going to recognize the fact that a part is larger or smaller than it should be … not to mention a lesser structure that maybe should or shouldn’t be in a specific location.”

      “And how often are you going to get the chance to actually see an extraterrestrial brain, doc?” Cellars added.  “Come on, you can’t tell me you aren’t curious. You’ve gotta be.”

      “Okay, I am curious,” the supervising pathologist conceded, “but what happens if she wakes up again while we’re driving her to the clinic?”

      “I’ve got three more darts filled with carfentanil®, Lisa’s got her Taser® and the last four cc’s of Farmington-U Cocktail … and, as a last resort, I’ve got twelve forty-caliber hollow-point rounds in my pistol, and twenty-four more in my extra mags,” Cellars replied.  “That ought to be enough to keep her down and out.”

      “That does sound … sufficient,” Sutta agreed uneasily.

      “Sufficient or not, she sure as hell won’t be sitting up and walking out on us again,” Cellars said.  “But, the thing is, we can’t all be in the back of the hearse keeping an eye on her.  Somebody’s got to follow behind in the SUV.  I’ve got a lot of stuff in there that I can’t just leave sitting in your parking lot.”

      “And I can’t leave the Morgue unattended either,” Sutta added.  “We’re short-staffed today; just Nick, Bucky and I … and she won’t be back for at least another hour in this weather.”

      “So leave Nick here,” Cellars suggested.  “He’d be the most freaked out of any of us, anyway, if she wakes up and tries to get away … or manages to shape-shift again,” he added with a shudder.

      Sutta took in a deep breath.

      “Okay, I’ll come with you,” he said, looking at Marcini.  “We can strap her down tight onto one of the old pegged-wood and canvas stretchers we’ve got in storage.  They’re old and about half-rotted, but they should do the trick.  And, once we get there, we can put her and the stretcher on a non-metal table, strap her down to that table, and then cut away the stretcher handles.  That way we won’t have to un-strap her to shove her head into your MRI.”

      “That sounds good to me,” Marcini nodded agreeably.

      “And there’s not enough room for two of us in the back of that hearse with one of those old stretchers anyway,” Sutta went on.  “Barely enough room for one … and it’ll be a tight fit.  But I think we can rig up some cushions so that whoever’s back there won’t be too uncomfortable.  No safety belts, unfortunately, and there aren’t any lights back there either.  So one of the difficulties will be to keep a flashlight on her face the entire time, to watch for signs that she’s regaining consciousness … and then be ready to react in time with the Taser® and drugs.”

      Sutta looked at Cellars and Marcini, both of whom were nodding agreeably.

      “So the question is: who gets that lovely job?”

      “I’m the one who has the history with this broad … and my Sig as a last resort, if things really go to shit,” Cellars said with a shrug.  “I’m fine with being back there, as long as both of you are okay with the idea of driving out to the base in this weather.”

      “But if things do go to shit, and you lose control of her
and
your pistol, what’s our plan B?” Sutta demanded.

      Cellars frowned.

      “I’ll stay in the back with her,” Marcini said.  “I’m younger and more flexible than either one of you characters, so I’ll fit into that small space better.  And besides, I’m still pissed about her smacking me across the head with my expensive bottle of wine, and then spilling it all over my apartment.  If her eyes pop open again, I’m not going to hesitate a second to put the bitch down with whatever it takes.”

      “Must have been a nice bottle,” Sutta commented as he glanced wistfully over at the dark red liquid that was still seeping out of the brightly-wrapped package that Cellars had tossed in his general direction before running after Allesandra — and now lay crumpled and shattered under the autopsy sink.

      He hadn’t even come close to catching it.

      “A nineteen-ninety-nine Valley View Cab, Reserve Lot,” Marcini said, not seeing the wine spill under the sink, or making the connection.  “It was a graduation gift from one of my favorite aunts.  I was saving it for a special occasion … which sure as hell didn’t include her.”

      “Bitch,” Sutta muttered, looking properly offended as he glared over at Allesandra’s stretched-out body on the nearby autopsy table.

      “Are you sure you’re going to be okay with that?” Cellars asked Marcini, ignoring the wine bottle commentary.

      “I’m fine as long as I’ve got my Taser® charged up —,” she replied evenly, gesturing with her head at the Mini Stun Baton® lying on the table next to Cellars with its charge-cord plugged into a nearby wall socket, “— and you keep that SUV tight on our tail.  I just don’t want to be left out there by ourselves … and especially not with her.”

      “Fair enough,” Cellars agreed, and then looked over at Sutta.  “You ready, doc?”

      “It ought to be an interesting experience for you, Cellars,” Sutta commented as he walked over to a wall intercom and ordered Nick to bring one of the old stretchers to the Autopsy Center.

      “What’s that, driving out there by myself?”

      “No,” Sutta muttered, his grey eyes filled with skepticism, “actually following instructions for a change.”

*     *     *

      Fifteen minutes later, Sutta, Marcini and Cellars had Allesandra re-wrapped in Marcini’s bed sheet … her arms tightly secured to her upper torso and her legs bound together with about twenty loops of wide nylon strapping tape … her entire body strapped face up onto an old wood-and-canvas stretcher with another thirty loops of the extremely tough tape … and the stretcher strapped down to the back floor of the hearse next to four cushions from the reception room that had been jammed in place to form a make-shift lounge chair.

      It was — as Sutta predicted — going to be a tight fit, but Marcini didn’t appear to be concerned.

      The hearse was parked in the Morgue’s receiving bay next to the SUV.  Both heavy vehicles had their engines running, the exhaust pipes sending out clouds of rapidly condensing vapor into the extremely cold air.  Nick Grange, the yawning white-coated attendant, stood at the open receiving doors, trying not to look too grateful to be left behind.

      “Okay, that ought to do it,” Cellars said, turning to Marcini.  “You’ve got the Taser® and the syringe with the four cc’s of carfentanil®?”

      Marcini held the tranquilizing implements up in her steady hands.

      “And you’ve got the dart gun and the three extra darts?” Cellars asked, turning to Sutta who was now standing at the driver’s side door of the hearse.