An Apple for Zoë ~ The Forsaken Read Online Free Page A

They think it belongs to the dead guy in the closet."
    "Finally a step in the right direction I hope," said Kirkland.
    "Cap wants us to meet CSI at the morgue. Dr. Roberts is doing the autopsy on the old man at one-thirty this afternoon. Can you join me?" asked James.
    "Lawrence Roberts? The Burlingame Butcher?   I swear when he's not carving up corpses he's working the dinner shift at Benihana's.   I think you better buy me lunch."
    "Sure, chopped liver okay with you?"
    "You're a sick man, Thomas James."
    "Point taken. Okay you get the car and I'll confirm our appointment with the coroner's office. And when I speak to Lawrence I'll be sure to not pass along your moniker."  
    Both men laughed and then James shook his head and repeated the title with a critical tone.
    "The Burlingame Butcher."

CHAPTER FOUR
      The Burlingame Butcher

    The stale smell of blood mixed with running water always hung in the air inside the morgue. No matter how many times the 75-year-old tile floor was mopped, it still showed signs of bloodstains, urine and feces. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of dead bodies. James hated coming here. He called it the death factory. The chief pathologist, Lawrence Roberts, was a tall intense bespectacled man growing close to retirement age. Yet his skill with a scalpel was notorious among the chosen few who had been allowed to witness one of his autopsies. He was a brilliant man, who seemed to understand death as if it had its own language. James remembered his first encounter with Roberts. The case was a 10-year-old girl.  
    James would never get used to seeing dead children. He knew the doctor had seen so many by this point in his career, the girl might as well been a log of wood. To Roberts there was no difference. He expressed no remorse for cutting the body, no emotion, he was direct and to the point. Roberts was, at the end of the day, always a professional.  
    Let me tell you a secret, Thomas James, the answer to every murder is right here in the body. Everything you need to catch your killer is right here it's just how you interpret the results. James heard those words in his head over and over, as if they were on a loop whenever he witnessed an autopsy. He would never forget them.  
    James grew to like Roberts over the years. At first he didn't know what to make of the man whose mood could change in an instant. Like Dr. Jekyll, he was quick, efficient and could discern the cause of death within in a matter of minutes. This same man could also turn into Mr. Hyde with no warning, and you could find yourself being lambasted by a tyrant with a scalpel. Smoke and mirrors to those who knew him well.  
    As James looked around the room for his crime victims, he noticed the small metal table displaying Roberts, instruments of death. The stainless steel surgical tools were used so often they no longer glistened in the light of the room. A make shift tea towel lay underneath them to absorb the residual water left from the hasty cleaning of the previous operation. There were three scalpels and two sets of toothed forceps. One large, the other one was not much smaller which seemed redundant. However James thought they must serve some distinct purpose. An "S" shaped needle with six strands of precut waxed string knotted at one end was also there. An everyday household butchers knife, hammer and bone chisel were also present. These were all the things one would need it seems, to operate on the deceased. It was macabre to think the very instruments that lay before him could have just as easily been a murder kit. Finally the piece de resistance was the vibrating bone saw. An odd- shaped device that gave James chills just thinking about it cutting through chest bones and skullcaps. He couldn't decide which bothered him more, the sound of the saw cutting into bone or the smell of burnt skull mixed with smoke as the blade cut its way into the unfortunate victims cranium.  
    Wayne Stevens, the morgue