The Path of Silence Read Online Free

powerful, corrosive, though I can’t think of anything that would do that to a man’s organs so quickly.”
    We had enough reasons to follow Joe and the ambulance to the city morgue. A pacemaker that would result in the kind of damage he had suggested was highly suspicious. I wondered whether any patient would voluntarily let a doctor insert such a deadly device into his chest.
    We were frequent visitors at Nando’s Chicken. We got quick service but for once, I didn’t appreciate haste. It only got us to the morgue that much faster.
    “Whatever it was, it had to be filled with a powerful toxin,” Joe said, as he rummaged through the food bags.
    “Standard precautions?” I asked, already resigned to a short life.
    “No need. Whatever it was had burned out seconds after it made a mess of him. It was that quick and potent.” He took a drumstick and circled the table with Brick’s body.
    Most forensic pathologists shied away from lifting human bulk. That’s why they had dieners.
    Joe was an exception. He had a hobby—popular mechanics. Under his rule, the morgue was a cybernetic heaven. He had installed electronic gadgets to move the bodies. Everything in the morgue was mechanically controlled and operated. He liked to push buttons, move levers and twist knobs. He delighted in turning screws and poking plates. All such motion produced results—rotation, tilt, slide, angle, roll and slither. He could spare one hand on food while doing his job with the other.
    I heard a whispering noise. The table with Brick’s body rotated so Joe could examine the chest. We moved to the other side.
    I wondered what I had touched when I pressed down on Brick’s body because I saw only remnants of tissue and bone, swimming in red mud, drying up.
    This was not dissolution of nondurable parts of the body. It was just as Joe said, instant liquefaction.
    “Could he have walked fifty feet after his chest exploded?” Ken asked.
    Joe gave him a “You from Mars?” look and said. “One second and his mind registers that there’s something amiss. Two seconds and whatever’s happening in his chest is powerful enough to lift him of the ground and three seconds later, he is lying like roadkill on the hood of your car.”
    “So he must have changed his mind when he got out at the gas station and headed for the convenience store,” Ken speculated.
    Joe nodded. “He made it to your passenger side fender when it hit.”
    “Would he be able to run and could he have been running?” Ken wanted to know.
    “Sure—run, swim, climb—he probably lived a normal life. Well, as normal as any man who has that kind of nasty shit planted in his chest. It may have been a pacemaker but it wasn’t for medical reasons.”
    “How could you tell that he had a pacemaker?” I asked.
    His finger hovered above the chest, in the vicinity of the victim’s heart. “This is the focus of trauma. It started from here and spread quickly, whatever it was that consumed tissue and bone. I’d say thirty seconds post activation the toxic agent was no longer the strength that would pose harm to the living. I don’t think it was an aerial agent. It didn’t linger or mix with blood. Your hands are all right. It would have eaten through the gloves if it was still active. It wasn’t. It was flat by then. What I saw happening was just the tail end of a chain reaction, the kind you can’t stop once it starts. The substance reacted in a flash. It became inert in an incredibly short span of time. I don’t know anything, medical or experimental, that can do that.”
    “But why a pacemaker?” I insisted. Mysterious substances were Joe’s territory. “Why not a bullet, or some other projectile?”
    “Too small. From the amount of damage, it would have to be a very hefty bullet. I’m sticking with an implant device, explosive and filled with unknown poison. No projectile.”
    “You just don’t want to be dragged into another argument about walking ghosts,” Ken