Page 24 of Ransom
"You got gloves and an apron?" I asked.
The sheriff blinked. "What?"
"Gloves. Apron. Scalpel, if you've got it." I pulled my hat off and set it on the hood of the truck. "I'll do it myself."
The sheriff looked at me like I'd just offered to perform surgery in the parking lot. "You're joking."
"I've done field autopsies before. Worked cattle country long enough, you learn to do your own detective work." I glanced at Ransom. He stood there with his eyes on me. He didn't look away this time. "I can wait for Albuquerque to maybe get around to it, or I can do it now. Your choice."
What I didn't say was that if he sent the body to Albuquerque, the body went into a system. Names and case numbers and chain of custody, and somewhere in that paperwork chain a Ranger captain in El Paso would get a phone call asking why one of his men was investigating a New Mexico judge without authorization. The body needed to stay out of the system. The autopsy needed to happen in this storage room with this sheriff who wanted to be anywhere else.
The sheriff looked at the body, then at me, then at Ransom.
"Fine," he said. "But you're signing the paperwork. And if anyone asks, I advised against this."
Good, I thought. Sign whatever you want. Nobody's going to ask.
He walked toward the morgue entrance, keys jangling. "I'll get you set up."
I looked at Ransom. "You coming?"
"Somebody's got to help you get him inside." He pushed off the truck and pulled the bandana down from his face. The sun caught the line of his jaw, two days unshaved. "Might as well be me."
The sheriff unlocked the morgue and disappeared inside. He moved around in there, opening cabinets and muttering to himself.
Ransom climbed into the truck bed and crouched beside the body. I joined him. We stood there a moment, looking down at Roy Castillo.
"You take the shoulders," I said.
Ransom nodded.
We got our hands under him. The body had stiffened some, but the heat had loosened it again, and when we lifted him he moved in ways that made my stomach turn over. Something shifted inside the chest cavity that wasn't supposed to shift. Fluid had pooled along the underside, and a slow, dark seep came through the back of the dress shirt as the weight redistributed onto our forearms. I'd done this before. It never got better.
We carried him down out of the truck bed. Ransom walked backwards, steady, his face blank. His eyes were on me and not on the body, and we both knew it.
My boot caught on the edge of the tailgate, and I stumbled.
Ransom's free hand shot out and caught me by the elbow before I fell. "Careful," he said.
He let go. I didn't look at the place his hand had been because I knew if I did, he'd see me do it.
We carried Castillo across the parking lot toward the open door, the sun beating down on us. The smell got worse with every step, riper, and the slow seep through the back of the shirt warmed my forearm. I didn't want to put words to it. Flies had found us. They circled, landed, and lifted off again. One walked across the bridge of my nose, and I shook my head to get rid of it because my hands were full of dead judge.
The morgue smelled like old bleach trying to cover up rot and a musty basement cooler. The sheriff had turned on a single overhead light above a steel table in the center of the room, and the rest of the place fell off into shadow. The table had a drain at one end and rust stains that had been scrubbed at but never quite came clean.
We laid the body down. The shirt made a wet sound against the steel that I would hear in my sleep.
Ransom stepped back and wiped his hands on his jeans. He looked at the table, at the body, at the single high window with bars across it, his jaw set tight.
"You good?" I asked.
"Fine." He didn't look at me when he said it.
The sheriff came back with an apron, gloves, and what he called a tackle box. Inside were scalpels, forceps, a bone saw that had seen better days, and a collection of tools I couldn't identify but probably didn't want to.
"Best I can do," he said. "We mostly use this room for storage now."
"It'll work."
