“Thanks again for allowing me to tag along. I appreciate being kept in the loop on this.” Fire Captain Ryan Hudson met Isaac and Pete at the entrance of the morgue.
“It’s no problem.” Isaac stepped passed him. “Let’s go on in. I’m eager to see what’s what.”
Once inside, Isaac spotted Dr. Hiroshi Sato hunched over a body that was stretched out on the big metal table. He was wearing a pale yellow surgical gown over a pair of dark blue scrubs and a plastic face shield.
“Hiroshi, is this a bad time?”
Hiroshi looked up at them. “Not at all.”
He waved them closer and turned back to his task — placing what looked like a human kidney into a thick plastic bag and sealing it. Then he carefully placed the bag into the open body cavity of the man splayed open on the table.
Isaac recognized the exercise. Hiroshi was in the final stages of an autopsy. The part where the human organs that had been removed and thoroughly examined are sealed in leak-proof bags and returned to the body cavity like macabre puzzle pieces. Then the breastbone and ribs that had been sawed off to reach them would be placed back on top, and the body sewed back up nice and neat and ready for embalming.
“Aw, God!” Captain Hudson’s fist flew to his mouth like he might hurl, and he took a huge step back away from the table.
“You okay there, Hudson?” Isaac’s upper lip twitched from the strain of trying not to laugh.
“Yeah. I just don’t do well with blood and guts and stuff.”
The man was now bent over. His hands clutched at his knees and his gaze was glued to his shoes so that he didn’t have to look anywhere near the body.
“Uh, can one of you get Captain Hudson to a chair?” Hiroshi called out, sounding concerned.
Pete moved, pulling a rolling chair over from one of the work stations and helped Hudson onto it. The man swiveled away from the action at the metal table.
Isaac and Pete stood quietly by and watched Hiroshi finish the process, bagging the rest of the organs and returning them to the body cavity. When the breastplate was finally back in place, Hiroshi turned to his assistant.
“Carla you want to handle the closing while I talk to these gentlemen?”
“Sure thing, Dr. Sato.”
Hiroshi stepped away from the body, removing his face shield and pushing his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. Then he pulled off his latex gloves. “I assume you’re all here about firefighter Jim Lawson.”
“That’s right,” Isaac confirmed.
“That’s him on the table. As you can see, I’ve just completed his autopsy. It’ll be a little while before I have the full report written up for you though.”
“Are you done?” Hudson’s voice sounded harried, like he may still lose his breakfast at any minute. He sat with his back to the rest of them, his shoulders slumped forward.
“I am. Why don’t we all go into my office to get you away from the sights and smells, huh?” Hiroshi moved that way and motioned for them to follow.
“That’d be great.” Hudson stood, his movements jerky and unsteady, like Frankenstein’s Monster. His face had lost all color.
They all followed Hiroshi into the office and Isaac didn’t dare glance over at Pete. He knew if he made eye contact with his partner they’d both bust a gut over Hudson’s discomfort.
Isaac quietly cleared his throat. He was a professional. He could get through this without laughing or insulting the Fire Investigator. “So what were your findings, Hiroshi?”
“Not at all what I expected given he’s a firefighter who died during a 5-alarm blaze.”
Hiroshi’s statement got everyone’s attention, and Isaac suddenly lost the desire to laugh.
“Really? How so?”
“For starters, there was zero smoke in his lungs,” Hiroshi’s voice was all business, and he looked Isaac in the eyes. “No evidence of fire trauma of any kind.”
“COD?” Isaac asked.
“The cause of death was a blow to the back of the head. It was delivered with so much force that it snapped his neck forward, severing the spinal cord.” Hiroshi used his hands and his own head movements to illustrate. And then he turned to a set of x-rays hanging on the viewer in his office.
“These are from the set I took before beginning the cutting portion of the autopsy. You can see here what I mean.” He used a pen to point to the area on the film that showed the obvious break in the firefighter’s neck.
“Jeez. It’s like his head was snapped clean off his neck.” Pete’s voice was full of quiet awe, and Isaac couldn’t blame him.
“Pretty much,” Hiroshi agreed. “I believe he was gone before he ever hit the floor.”
“I told you!” Hudson sounded vindicated. “I knew this wasn’t a normal fire death.”
“Okay, hold on.” Isaac’s mind was fighting to chop through all the questions and make sense of this. He looked back at Hiroshi. “Is it possible that Lawson was hit in the head by a falling beam? I mean, doesn’t that make more sense in this instance than foul play?”
“Making it fire related and not homicide,” Hiroshi stated.
“Exactly.”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
Hudson was shaking his head before Hiroshi had even stopped speaking. “No. No, it’s not possible. I’m telling you, Detective, I’ve found no evidence in that section of the warehouse to support that. Lawson was found in a section of the canning plant that was not severely compromised by the fire. That section now has some minor smoke and water damage, but it is in-tact and mostly sound. Whatever hit Lawson was not a piece of the burning building.”
Isaac sighed and looked Captain Hudson in the eyes. “All right, Hudson. But you do understand that means it’s now our job to question every single firefighter who was on the scene at that plant fire. And I don’t think they’re going to appreciate being made our main persons of interest.”
Hudson nodded, a grim expression souring his already haggard face. “I do know that. But if the fire didn’t kill Jim Lawson, then one of them did.”