The basement of Morton’s funeral home was as creepy as one would have expected. It was dark and damp and smelled of chemicals and death, a smell that Jack had become all too familiar with in his years as a detective. This was a place he had hoped he would never find himself again. He thought he would be handing out speeding tickets and breaking up fights at the local roadhouse. Kinda funny how life works out. As he followed the florescent light to the back corner of the basement, the concrete block walls leaked moisture like open wounds. Jack had a terrible, gnawing feeling his day was about to get even worse. He opened the door to the embalming room to face whatever the Fates had in store for him next.
The room was much larger than one would have thought from the outside. It was lit by several overhead fluorescent lights and was painted an almost cheerful light blue colour. At one end there was the small crematorium and at the other, the service elevator, that was used to bring the dearly departed downstairs from the garage. In the middle there were two embalming tables; one was empty, the other occupied by the body bag, with a small, elf-like man standing beside it. Doctor Howard resembled a cartoon character more than a physician. He reminded Jack of one of the seven dwarfs from Snow White.
“Hello, Chief,” the white haired gnome said without looking up from the table.
Kenneth Robert Howard had lived and practised medicine in this town and county all his life. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He always bragged that he had delivered almost every baby in the county for the past 30 years. Yes, he was getting older and he did look like a short Mr. Magoo just a little bit, but he was still sharp as a scalpel and a very kind and decent man, not to mention the only doctor for over 50 miles.
“Thanks for coming down so quick, Doc. I really appreciate it, I know you're the town physician as well as the coroner so your hands must be full.” Jack walked over to the table to see the body bag completely unzipped for the first time.
“I believe the correct nomenclature is Medical Examiner but I still like the old terminology.” The old man smiled under his mask. “I know you haven’t had a lot of time, but is there anything you can give me?”
“I have a lot,” he said looking up from the corpse. “Where would you like me to start?”
“C.O.D. would be wonderful for a start.”
“That, I can’t tell you yet… there are no obvious signs of trauma or disease and I can’t be sure how long he'd been in the water or…”
“What can you tell me ?... Let's start there.” Jack cut him off.
“I can tell you this is the body of a well developed male in his late teens or early twenties. He appears to be Caucasian judging from the facial structure. He has had no major surgeries or dental work done. He was naked inside the bag with no ID or dog tags”
“No guess as to how long he'd been in the swamp?” Jack asked as he approached the table and got a good look at the body lying on it. He was shocked.
“That’s the funny thing,” the doc said, looking down at the body. “It almost appears that he was mummified, then put into the water.”
Jack’s day was getting worse. “Explain this to me as you would to someone who doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about, because I don’t.” Jack was frustrated.
“It’s all about decay,” he began with glee in his voice. “When one dies in a climate like this, there's bloating and a liquifying process that occurs we call putrefaction. You add in water with all the various critters out in the glades and a body would be just bones and soup in less than a week. It doesn’t add up for me.” His eyebrows raised.
The doctor walked around the table and pointed to the bag the body had been found in. “This is not air tight enough to explain why our friend is in the condition he’s in.”
“Let me get this straight…you're saying that this guy had been dead... mummified, and then put in a body bag and taken into the middle of the everglades and dumped?”
“An oversimplification, but essentially…yes.”
The two men stood looking at one another for what seemed like a very long time before Jack spoke.
“What about the body bag? Is there any way to trace where it came from?”
“Well, as you know, it's the kind the United States military uses and beyond that, there are no
serial numbers or tags of any kind. I’m sure that someone from the military will be able to say how long ago this particular bag was being used and for how long.”
“They don’t use this bag now?”
“No,” Dr. Morton explained that he had had the unfortunate task of burying a couple of local boys sent home from Iraq and this was not the type in use anymore. “I suspect it may date to a time in which our young friend met his end. But that will be your department, Chief.” Both men looked at the body on the table.
“Getting back to that, will you be able to pinpoint time of death?” Jack was getting a sick feeling in his stomach.
“If we're lucky, it will be to the month or even the year. I don’t even know if we'll be able to put a name to this poor soul. I’m going to take some dental pictures which you'll have to send off to the state boys, and if we're lucky and can figure out who he is, then we'll have a better chance of figuring out when he died.”
“Or when he was murdered,” Jack’s voice trailed off.
“Yes, I agree, but without clear cause of death I could only rule it as undetermined at this point.” Doc Howard looked at Jack for a moment before he finished, “We both have our work cut out for us.”
There was a knock on the door.