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Tommy dropped a full bag of fast food into the garbage can next to the door, followed by a Coke that he hadn’t even touched. He’d already ordered when he got the call, so he dutifully paid for his food and drove off like a normal customer, knowing full well that he’d only toss it the first chance he got. It all made a satisfying thud as it hit the bottom of the empty can, reaffirming that it would have hit the bottom of his belly even harder.
The sign on the door read “Cape Madre Medical Examiner’s Office,” and inside waited something horrible and gruesome. The kind of gruesome that had a habit of erasing appetites.
That’s all that ever waited for him through those doors. While the doctors inside seemed to have grown accustomed to dead bodies and severed limbs, Tommy hoped he never would. Still, he suspected that he visited this place with more dread than the usual detective.
***
The trash can in front of the medical examiner’s office overflowed with garbage, but Tommy didn’t notice. Through those doors lay the dead body of his best friend. He hadn’t seen it yet, and before telling Stacy, he needed to see it for himself, but there was little doubt that the medical examiners of Cape Madre knew who Joe Hampton was, no matter how swollen his lifeless body.
This part was a matter of protocol — to have a close family member or friend positively identify the deceased. It should have been Stacy, but Tommy couldn’t do that to her. No one deserved to see their spouse dead on a table, least of all Stacy. Her husband had already been taken from her once, and even though his husk had come back to sleep in her bed, she had been alone ever since Joe had returned from that attack.
Deputy medical examiner Jess Gearhart met Tommy outside examination room C, his young face looking less concerned than Tommy wanted. Jess nodded, astute enough at least to realize Tommy wasn’t in a mood to chat.
Together, they stepped into the room and Tommy fought the rumbling in his stomach that threatened to hurl up his lunch.
Joe’s huge form laid stretched out on a metal table, milky white, and bloated. He might look like he was only sleeping if not for the lifeless, empty expression on his face. Even though they had dragged him out of the water hours ago, he still looked wet, not on the surface, but from inside, as if he were comprised only of water now. But it was him. No doubt about it. His belly. His beard. Everything laid on that table except the part that made him truly human.
There was nothing Tommy could do from within this room that would honor the life of Joe Hampton, so he nodded to Jess, stood a few seconds to make sure Jess understood the meaning, and then busted out of there as quickly as he could. The tears didn’t come, but he felt them building in the corners of his eyes. Now came the even harder part.
***
Tommy stepped into examination room A, immediately buffeted by the unique smells of the dead. His stomach lurched. On the metal table lay a disembodied leg, surreal in its cleanliness with a white tarp wrapped around the ragged edge. Jess Gearhart appeared from a small connected room and gave his familiar welcoming nod.
“What’ve we got here, Jess?” Tommy asked even though he already had a strong suspicion.
“Well, a leg,” Jess started the list like he was reading the ingredients off a cereal box. “Obviously, I guess. It’s from a white male. Again, obvious. Uh. Pretty big guy. Probably over six feet. Pretty muscular. Lots of activity or exercise or something.”
Check. Check. And Check. All of those finds confirmed what Tommy loathed to admit to himself. It had to be the leg of Tanner Brooks.
“Where’d they find it?”
Jess grabbed for a clipboard on a small cart rolled up next to the table and studied it for a few seconds before answering. Tommy wondered if Jess honestly didn’t know the answer or if the clipboard gave him some sort of comfort.
“A jogger found it this morning. Washed up on the beach. Near the pier. CMPD processed it, then someone decided that maybe it related to a case you’ve been working on?”
Unfortunately, yes. Tommy studied the leg for anything unique, and immediately noticed circular abrasions along the thigh. Faint, with the edges fading in and out of the victim’s milky skin, the circles were large and evenly spaced apart. He recognized the wounds, because he’d seen the same ones on Joe’s leg. No bruising, though, which surely meant something. Clearly, no shark attack.
Tommy massaged his eyes with his thumb and middle finger. They suddenly felt dry, burning, screaming for rest. If only he had that option. His entire day had now been rearranged. What should have been a pleasant chat with a newly wakened co-ed had now turned into the excruciatingly painful task of informing Miriam Brooks that her cousin looked to be more dead now than ever.
“Can you tell me anything about these cuts?” Tommy asked.
Jess put down the clipboard but kept a pen in his hand to use as a pointer. He ran it along the abrasions as he talked, careful to not actually touch the flesh. “Nearly perfectly round. Evenly spaced. No bruising, so the victim was likely dead when this happened. If it wasn’t for the size? I’d say an octopus or something. That’s certainly what it looks like. Though, not really possible. In the real world, they aren’t this big or strong.”
Next, Jess removed the tarp from the end of the leg. “This is the more interesting part, though.”
Tommy steeled himself before looking up at the amputation point. Most of the blood had been washed away, so now it almost looked like this leg had been ripped from a human-sized stuffed animal. Not ripped, though. Cleaner than that. Jess must’ve already cleaned that up, too.
“This leg wasn’t ripped off, Tommy. It was cut off. Cleanly. By something. A saw maybe?”
“What? I don’t understand.”
Jess shrugged and pointed out some of the signs with his pen, prompting Tommy to move around the table and examine the socket to see the white bone. Tommy tried to stay detached, fighting every instinct he had to just run away and switch professions to something that didn’t involve dead bodies.
“This bone was cut smoothly,” Jess said. “If the leg had been ripped off by a wild animal, we would have seen it snapped. The wounds along the skin also indicate the same. There is no doubt about it that someone cut this leg off the body.”
“But why? When? Before or after the...” Tommy paused to decide what to call the creature that had left the cuts. “Kraken attacked him?”
Jess smirked. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“I guess so,” Tommy said. “I don’t know what else to call it.”
“Fair enough. So, yeah, like I said, almost definitely whatever left these marks did so after the victim was dead. No way to know for sure whether it was after the leg was detached, though. Maybe if I run some more tests, or do some research into this kind of amputation, I can come up with something?”
Survivalist. The word popped into Tommy’s head out of nowhere, forcing him to place it in context. That’s how Miriam had described Tanner, when she seemed resolute that he was still alive. Tommy’s memory conveniently juxtaposed an older news story alongside his current predicament, that of a man hiking alone. Trapped.
“Could someone survive losing a leg like this?” Tommy asked.
Jess’s eyes went wide, not out of shock, but as an indication that he was thinking on it. “Yeah. I mean, it happens. People lose legs in war all the time. And, of course, we can safely medically amputate them if we have to. But out in the ocean? There’d be so much blood. Predators would come from miles around — and that’s if he didn’t bleed out before he was eaten alive.”
“What about self-amputation?” Tommy asked.
“You mean, like if he cut his own leg off? That would be really hard. Again, it’s not unheard of, but this leg is huge. That guy who did it up in Utah broke his bones first, so that he only had skin and tissue to cut through. This bone wasn’t broken. I don’t think anyone could stay awake to finish the job of sawing off their own leg. Where are you going with this, Tommy?”
Tommy waved a dismissive hand. “Nowhere, I don’t think. Just thinking through possibilities. Silly tangent, I know.”
There could be no doubt that Tanner’s injuries had started with the attack. Miriam and Newt both described exactly what had happened. This all meant that someone fished his body out of the water, sawed off a leg, then threw it back into the ocean? That just didn’t make any sense at all.
Jess continued, not nearly as well informed about the attack on Tanner. “Well, I don’t know that there’s much mystery — other than the attack by the giant octopus that we like to just ignore around here. In my professional opinion, we can assume the victim is dead. I’d rule it a homicide based on the amputation.”
A homicide. As if the kraken didn’t present enough problems for Tommy to deal with. But no. It just couldn’t be. It had to have happened in the reverse order. There had to be a reason that Tommy just didn’t see yet. He was ready to accept that Tanner Brooks was dead, but he just couldn’t believe what the science was telling him.
Jess rattled on. “We should really try to get an ID if we can. Sounds like you have a suspicion of who this might belong to?”
“Yeah, I do. I can get his cousin here to identify him. Anything noteworthy about the leg? Something unique?”
Jess put his pen down and rotated the leg so that Tommy could see the back of it. This side of the thigh had more of the circular suction wounds, but farther down the calf was a tattoo: the head of a tiger roaring above a banner reading “State Champs.” No date. No school. But it gave him something to go on.
“That’s perfect, Jess. Thanks. I should be able to get a positive ID on it from the cousin with this. I’ll get to work on that.”
Tommy said his goodbyes and stepped back out into the hallway, happy to finally be able to take a deep breath without feeling nauseated by the smell. Now he had something new to be nauseated about. Both breakfast and Emma Chu would have to wait a little bit longer.
***
Though small, old, and a little worn, Joe and Stacy had managed to make their little house look happy, but on this particular day Tommy reviled the freshly painted blue door before him. He stood there unwilling to knock. Unwilling to shatter Stacy’s world. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, trying to force his countenance back to normal. His best friend had drowned, and Tommy knew that gave him some leeway to be emotional, but he didn’t think he could carry through this task without at least trying to detach himself.
Stacy had been the first one to sound the alarm. Joe hadn’t come home all night, and even though he had become unreliable and obsessed, it was the first time he had never come home. She knew that Tommy was on the case, looking for her husband, but likely she thought he’d turn up drunk on a boat.
Not this. No one could ever prepare for this.
Tommy knocked lightly, a small part of him hoping that she wouldn’t hear, that he would have to come back later. But she was there in an instant, parting the doorway and staring at Tommy with those big sunken eyes.
He tried to form the words that he had come to tell her, but the dam broke and those withheld tears came pouring out.
Stacy wrapped him up in her arms and Tommy reached back, absorbing her warmth. He felt her tears on his neck, but that only made him squeeze harder. Tommy lost track of how long they stayed embraced like this, but he knew that he didn’t want it to end. When it ended, he would have to tell her. But she already knew. Of course, she already knew.
Maybe Stacy had already started mourning for Joe. Maybe, it was Tommy who had just now come to the realization that Joe was gone. Tommy had seen Joe’s body on that table, but it still didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like something he could ever process.
Stacy had the courage to break their embrace first, backing up, but keeping Tommy’s hands in hers. She sniffled, locking her eyes into his and nodding to let him know that he didn’t have to say it out loud. The tears fell harder when he saw the pain on her face. She would never be the same. She had tried to warn Tommy that something was wrong with Joe, and Tommy ignored it. Now he had to carry the pain with her. And he always would.
***
The engine of the Crown Vic rumbled to life, mirroring the uneasiness in Tommy’s stomach. He searched through his phone until he found his notes on Miriam Brooks, then looked for the hotel where she and Macy were staying. These sorts of things had to be handled in person.
As he turned onto the main beachside road, Tommy looked out on the horizon and briefly entertained the idea of just driving. Forever. Until he hit another ocean. An ocean that didn’t have a sea monster. An ocean that didn’t have so much pain and misery. Somewhere he could just relax, unwind, and pretend like the world wasn’t unraveling around him.
