Lieutenant Mark Kaddouri thought Mrs. Gibbs was a beautiful woman; her quiet anguish over her dead husband only added to her inherent dignity. They had no children, and to him that was a shame. She would have done well as the matriarch of an extended family. She had the grit and the grace for it. The man had married well.
It was late at night and they were in the downtown morgue with Dr. Osborn the coroner. He was quite used to death in all its forms, and had to remind himself to be circumspect and appropriately dour for a viewing, which was hard to do after slicing someone open and taking stock of their viscera. He had sewn the dead guy up well enough to invite the missus over for a confirmation. Maybe she wouldn’t throw up or scream like some of them did. He already had a long day and didn’t have much patience left for dealing with some lady’s histrionics about her stiff, unresponsive husband.
Except this case was different, so maybe she had a right to be freaked out. There was something weird about the corpse. There usually was with all the bodies that were piling up on Christine Mas’s beat. But this was a new one, even for him. And he had sliced and diced a lot of stiffs for Mas over the years, ever since her old man got shot with his own gun. Or whatever the hell happened to Julian Mas; nobody really knew for sure. It still bothered Osborn, and he had a soft spot in his heart for Mas because of it.
He slid out the stainless steel drawer and glanced at Mrs. Gibbs. She had her eyes fixed on the refrigerated body like viewers always did, but she surprised him by glancing up and looking him in the eye before she nodded for him to go ahead and lower the sheet. Most of them didn’t have it together enough to do that. They’d usually just stare at the covered corpse and nod, as if they expected Osborn to be watching them every moment for non-verbal cues. Maybe she was different.
Here you go, lady...
He carefully rolled down the sheet, but all she did was stiffen slightly upon seeing her dead husband’s bloodless face. Then she quickly frowned, seeing something odd. Very odd, indeed. His flesh was covered with a strange assortment of welts, like some kind of hieroglyphics. Osborn had no idea what they were, and neither did the research geeks at the Federal building, even after spending the entire day searching the Internet for a pattern match.
It was like a gang had tagged him with a series of branding irons. But any mystery aside, it was the sheer indignity of someone defiling her husband’s corpse that was too much for Mrs. Gibbs to bear. She turned away from the ghastly sight and buried her face in Dr. Osborn’s shoulder. He glanced over at Kaddouri, but the cop was already walking away and pulling out his cell phone. It was up to Osborn to dispense the tea and sympathy. Kaddouri would owe him one.
Mark stood well away from the weeping widow and eventually reached Mas down in Haiti.
“Chrissy?” he said in a quiet voice, “I’m at the morgue. Gibbs’s autopsy is inconclusive. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
He fiddled with his phone and sent her a picture he took of the corpse right before he brought in Mrs. Gibbs.
“There’s these strange welts on his body, like ancient writing or something.”
In Haiti, Mas and Francine were still in the mountain meadow, sitting on the hood of Francine’s Jeep. Mas viewed the image Kaddouri sent her, and as she did, icy needles poked at her gut. Francine peeked at Mas’s iPhone and frowned, wondering what in the world they were looking at.
“We can’t touch Nano on this,” Mas finally said to Kaddouri.
“But if the Church is involved...” he said, trailing off to let her fill in the rest.
She didn’t reply immediately, and gazed across the meadow at Father Eden. He and a few of the priests were still serving loaves and fishes to the refugees, by the light of the rising moon.
“... we’re going to get crucified,” she said softly into her phone, completing Mark’s sentence for him.