The Body Farm

  “You can go to Graceland by yourself. I’ve got plenty of work to do in my room. I’m also sitting in nonsmoking.” I chose a seat at our gate. “So if you want to smoke, you’ll have to go over there.” I pointed.

  He scanned other passengers waiting, like us, to board. Then he looked at me.

  “You know what, Doc?” he said. “The problem is you hate to have fun.”

  I got the morning paper out of my briefcase, shook it open.

  He sat next to me. “I’ll bet you’ve never even listened to Elvis.”

  “How could I not listen to Elvis? He’s on the radio, on TV, in elevators.”

  “He’s the king.”

  I eyed Marino over the top of the paper.

  “His voice, everything about him. There’s never been anyone like him,” Marino went on as if he had a crush. “I mean, it’s like classical music and those painters you like so much. I think people like that only come along every couple hundred years.”

  “So now you’re comparing him with Mozart and Monet.” I turned a page, bored with local politics and business.

  “Sometimes you’re a friggin’ snob.” He got up, grumpy. “And maybe just once in your life you might think of going some place I want to go. You ever seen me bowl?” He glared down at me, getting out his cigarettes. “You ever said anything nice about my truck? You ever gone fishing with me? You ever eat at my house? No, I gotta go to yours because you live in the right part of town.”

  “You cook for me, I’ll come over,” I said as I read.

  He angrily stalked off, and I could feel the eyes of strangers on us. I supposed they assumed that Marino and I were an item, and had not gotten along in years. Smiling to myself, I turned a page. Not only would I go to Graceland with him, I planned to buy him barbecue tonight.

  Since it seemed that one could not fly direct from Richmond to anywhere except Charlotte, we were routed to Cincinnati first, where we changed planes. We arrived in Memphis by noon and checked into the Peabody Hotel. I had gotten us a government rate of seventy-three dollars per night, and Marino looked around, gawking at a grand lobby of stained glass and a fountain of mallard ducks.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “I’ve never seen a joint that has live ducks. They’re everywhere.”

  We were walking into the restaurant, which was appropriately named Mallards, and displayed behind glass were duck objets d’art. There were paintings of ducks on walls, and ducks were on the staff’s green vests and ties.

  “They have a duck palace on the roof,” I said. “And roll out a red carpet for them twice a day when they come and go to John Philip Sousa.”

  “No way.”

  I told the hostess that we would like a table for two. “In nonsmoking,” I added.

  The restaurant was crowded with men and women wearing big name tags for some real estate convention they were attending at the hotel. We sat so close to other people that I could read reports they were perusing and hear their affairs. I ordered a fresh fruit plate and coffee, while Marino got his usual grilled hamburger platter.

  “Medium rare,” he told the waiter.

  “Medium.” I gave Marino a look.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay.” He shrugged.

  “Enterohemorrhagic E. coli,” I said to him as the waiter walked off. “Trust me. Not worth it.”

  “Don’t you ever want to do things bad for you?” he said.

  He looked depressed and suddenly old as he sat across from me in this beautiful place where people were well dressed and better paid than a police captain from Richmond. Marino’s hair had thinned to an unruly fringe circling the top of his ears like a tarnished silver halo shoved low. He had not lost an ounce since I had known him, his belly rising from his belt and touching the edge of the table. Not a day went by that I did not fear for him. I could not imagine his not working with me forever.

  At half past one, we left the hotel in the rental car. He drove because he would never have it any other way, and we got on Madison Avenue and followed it east, away from the Mississippi River. The brick university was so close we could have walked it, the Regional Forensic Center across the street from a tire store and the Life Blood Donor Center. Marino parked in back, near the public entrance of the medical examiner’s office.

  The facility was funded by the county and about the size of my central district office in Richmond. There were three forensic pathologists, and also two forensic anthropologists, which was very unusual and enviable, for I would have loved to have someone like Dr. David Canter on my staff. Memphis had yet another distinction that was decidedly not a happy one. The chief had been involved in perhaps two of the most infamous cases in the country. He had performed the autopsy of Martin Luther King and had witnessed the one of Elvis.

  “If it’s all the same to you,” Marino said as we got out of the car, “I think I’ll make phone calls while you do your thing.”

  “Fine. I’m sure they can find an office for you to use.”

  He squinted up at an autumn blue sky, then looked around as we walked. “I can’t believe I’m here,” he said. “This is where he was posted.”

  “No,” I said, because I knew exactly who he was talking about. “Elvis Presley was posted at Baptist Memorial Hospital. He never came here, even though he should have.”

  “How come?”

  “He was treated like a natural death,” I replied.

  “Well, he was. He died of a heart attack.”

  “It’s true his heart was terrible,” I said. “But that’s not what killed him. His death was due to his polydrug abuse.”

  “His death was due to Colonel Parker,” Marino muttered as if he wanted to kill the man.

  I glanced at him as we entered the office. “Elvis had ten drugs on board. He should have been signed out an accident. It’s sad.”

  “And we know it was really him,” he then said.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Marino!”

  “What? You’ve seen the photos? You know it for a fact?” he went on.

  “I’ve seen them. And yes, I know,” I said as I stopped at the receptionist’s desk.

  “Then what’s in them?” He would not stop.

  A young woman named Shirley, who had taken care of me before, waited for Marino and me to quit disagreeing.

  “That is none of your business,” I sweetly said to him. “Shirley, how are you?”

  “Back again?” She smiled.

  “With no good news, I’m sorry to say,” I replied.

  Marino began trimming his fingernails with a pocketknife, glancing around like Elvis might walk in any minute.

  “Dr. Canter’s expecting you,” she said. “Come on. I’ll take you back.”

  While Marino ambled off to make phone calls somewhere down the hall, I was shown into the modest office of a man I had known since his residency days at the University of Tennessee. Canter had been as young as Lucy when I had met him for the first time.

  A devotee of forensic anthropologist Dr. Bass, who had begun the decay research facility in Knoxville known as The Body Farm, Canter had been mentored by most of the greats. He was considered the world’s foremost expert in saw marks, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was about this state famous for the Vols and Daniel Boone. Tennessee seemed to corner the market on experts in time of death and human bones.

  “Kay.” Canter rose, extending his hand.

  “Dave, you’re always so good to see me on such short notice.” I took a chair across from his desk.

  “Well, I hate what you’re going through.”

  He had dark hair combed straight back from his brow, so that whenever he looked down it fell in his way. He was constantly shoving it out of his way but did not seem aware of it. His face was youthful and interestingly angular, with closely set eyes and a strong jaw and nose.

  “How are Jill and the kids?” I inquired.

  “Great. We’re expecting again.”

  “Congratulations. That makes three?”

  “Four.” His smi
le got bigger.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” I said sincerely.

  “Doing it’s the easy part. What goodies have you brought me?”

  Setting the hard case on the edge of his desk, I opened it and got out the plastic-enclosed sections of bone. I handed them to him and he took out the left femur first. He studied it under a lamp with his lens, slowly turning it end over end.

  “Hmmm,” he said. “So you didn’t notch the end you cut.” He glanced at me.

  He wasn’t chastising, just reminding, and I felt angry with myself again. Usually, I was so careful. If anything, I was known for being cautious to the point of obsession.

  “I made an assumption, and I was wrong,” I said. “I did not expect to discover that the killer used a saw with characteristics very similar to mine.”

  “They usually don’t use autopsy saws.” He pushed back his chair and got up. “I’ve never had a case, really, just studied that type of saw mark in theory, here in the lab.”

  “Then that’s what this is.” I had suspected as much.

  “I can’t say with certainty until I get it under the scope. But both ends look like they’ve been cut with a Stryker saw.”

  He gathered the bags of bones, and I followed him out into the hall as my misgivings got worse. I did not know what we would do if he could not tell the saw marks apart. A mistake like this was enough to ruin a case in court.

  “Now, I know you’re probably not going to tell much about the vertebral bone,” I said, for it was trabecular, less dense than other bone and therefore not a good surface for tool marks.

  “Never hurts to bring it anyway. We might get lucky,” he said as we entered his lab.

  There was not an inch of empty space. Thirty-five-gallon drums of degreaser and polyurethane varnish were parked wherever they would fit. Shelves from floor to ceiling were crammed with packaged bones, and in boxes and on carts were every type of saw known to man. Dismemberments were rare, and I knew of only three obvious motivations for taking a victim apart. Transporting the body was easier. Identification was slowed, if not made impossible. Or simply, the killer was malicious.

  Canter pulled a stool close to an operating microscope equipped with a camera. He moved aside a tray of fractured ribs and thyroid cartilage that he must have been working on before I arrived.

  “This guy was kicked in the throat, among other things,” he absently said as he pulled on surgical gloves.

  “Such a nice world we live in,” I commented.

  Canter opened the Ziploc bag containing the segment of right femur. Because he could not fit it on the microscope’s stage without cutting a section that was thin enough to mount, he had me hold the two-inch length of bone against the table’s edge. Then he bent a twenty-five-power fiber optics light close to one of the sawn surfaces.

  “Definitely a Stryker saw,” he said as he peered into the lenses. “You got to have a fast-moving, reciprocating motion to create a polish like this. It almost looks like polished stone. See?”

  He moved aside and I looked. The bone was slightly beveled, like water frozen in gentle ripples, and it shone. Unlike other power saws, the Stryker had an oscillating blade that did not move very far. It did not cut skin, only the hard surface it was pressed against, like bone or a cast an orthopedist cut from a mending limb.

  “Obviously,” I said, “the transverse cuts across the midshaft are mine. From removing marrow for DNA.”

  “But the knife marks aren’t.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Well, we’re probably not going to have much luck with them.”

  Knives basically covered their own tracks, unless the victim’s bone or cartilage was stabbed or hacked.

  “But the good news is, we got a few false starts, a wider kerf and TPI,” he said, adjusting the microscope’s focus as I continued holding the bone.

  I had known nothing about saws until I began spending so much time with Canter. Bone is an excellent surface for tool marks, and when saw teeth cut into it, a groove or kerf is formed. By microscopically examining the walls and floor of a kerf, one can determine exit chipping on the side where the saw exited bone. Determining the characteristics of the individual teeth, the number of teeth per inch (TPI), the spacing of them and the striae, can reveal the shape of the blade.

  Canter angled the optic light to sharpen the striations and defects.

  “You can see the curve of the blade.” He pointed to several false starts on the shaft, where someone had pushed the saw blade into the bone, and then tried again in another spot.

  “Not mine,” I said. “Or at least I hope I’m more adept than that.”

  “Since this also is the end where most of the knife cuts are, I’m going to agree that it wasn’t you. Whoever did this had to cut first with something else, since an oscillating blade won’t cut flesh.”

  “What about the saw blade?” I asked, for I knew what I used in the morgue.

  “Teeth are large, seventeen per inch. So this is going to be a round autopsy blade. Let’s turn it over.”

  I did, and he directed the light at the other end, where there were no false starts. The surface was polished and beveled like the other one, but not identical to Canter’s discerning eye.

  “Power autopsy saw with a large, sectioning blade,” he said. “Multidirectional cut since the radius of the blade’s too small to cut through the whole bone in one stroke. So, whoever did this just changed directions, going at it from different angles, with a great deal of skill. We have slight bending of the kerfs. Minimal exit chipping. Again, denoting great skill with a saw. I’m going to bump up the power some and see if we can accentuate the harmonics.”

  He referred to the distance between saw teeth.

  “Tooth distance is point-oh-six. Sixteen teeth per inch,” he counted. “Direction is push-pull, tooth-type chisel. I’m voting this is yours.”

  “You caught me,” I said with relief. “Guilty as charged.”

  “I would think so.” He was still looking. “I wouldn’t think you use a round blade for anything.”

  The large, round autopsy blades were heavy and continuous rolling, and destroyed more bone. Generally, this was a utility blade used in labs or in doctors’ offices to saw off casts.

  “The rare occasion I might use a round blade is on animals,” I said.

  “Of the two- or four-legged variety?”

  “I’ve taken bullets out of dogs, birds, cats and, on one fine occasion, a python shot in a drug raid,” I replied.

  Canter was looking at another bone. “And I thought I was the one who had all the fun.”

  “Do you find it unusual that someone would use a meat saw in four dismemberments, and then suddenly switch to an electric autopsy saw?” I asked.

  “If your theory’s correct about the cases in Ireland, then you’re talking nine cases with a meat saw,” he said. “How about holding this right here so I can get a picture.”

  I held the section of left femur in the tips of my fingers, and he pressed a button on the camera.

  “To answer your question,” he said, “I would find it extremely unusual. You’re talking two different profiles. The meat saw is manual, physical, usually ten teeth per inch. It will go through tissue and takes a lot of bone with each stroke, the saw marks rougher-looking, more indicative of someone skilled and powerful. And it’s also important to remember that in each of those earlier cases the perpetrator cut through joints, versus the shafts, which is also very rare.”

  “It’s not the same person.” I again voiced my growing belief.

  Canter took the bone from my hand and looked at me. “That’s my vote.”

  When I returned to the lobby of the M.E.’s office, Marino was still on the phone down the hall. I waited a little while, then stepped outside because I needed air. I needed sunshine and sights that weren’t savage. Some twenty minutes passed before he finally walked out and joined me by the car.

  “I didn’t know you was here,??
? he said. “If someone had told me, I would’ve got off the phone.”

  “It’s all right. What a gorgeous day.”

  He unlocked the car.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.

  I briefly summarized as we sat in the parking lot, not going anywhere.

  “You want to go back to the Peabody?” he asked, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb.

  I knew exactly what he wanted to do.

  “No,” I said. “Graceland might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  He shoved the car in gear and could not suppress a big grin.

  “We want the Fowler Expressway,” I said, for I had studied a map.

  “I wish you could get me his autopsy report,” he started on that again. “I want to see for myself what happened to him. Then I’ll know and it won’t eat at me anymore.”

  “What do you want to know?” I looked at him.

  “If it was like they said. Did he die on the toilet? That’s always bothered the hell out of me. You know how many cases like that I’ve seen?” He glanced at me. “Don’t matter if you’re some drone or the president of the United States. You end up dead with a ring around your butt. Hope to hell that don’t happen to me.”

  “Elvis was found on the floor of his bathroom. He was nude, and yes, it is believed that he slid off his black porcelain toilet.”

  “Who found him?” Marino was entranced in an uneasy way.

  “A girlfriend who was staying in the adjoining room. Or that’s the story,” I said.

  “You mean he walks in there, feels fine, sits down and boom? No warning signs or nothing?”

  “All I know is he’d been playing racquetball in the early morning, and seemed fine,” I said.

  “You’re kidding.” Marino’s curiosity was insatiable. “Now, I never heard that part. I didn’t know he played racquetball.”

  We drove through an industrialized area, with trains and trucks, then past campers for sale. Graceland stood in the midst of cheap motels and stores, and it did not seem so grand given its surroundings. The light gray, stone mansion with its columns was completely out of place, like a joke or a set for a bad movie.