Part 24: Questions
Title: Genesis
Author: Anoushkala
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Genre: Pre-TDK, Drama
Pairing: Harley/Joker
Characters: Dr. Harleen Quinzel and various OCs.
Disclaimer: The whole Batman universe belongs to lots of people who aren't me. I'm not making any money off of this. I write solely for my own pleasure and the reviews, so please comment :-D
Summary: Harley deals with her own personal whodunit.
Author Notes: Un-beta'd as usual.
“I don’t understand,” she said dumbly.
His eyebrows raised, a nasty half-smile lingering on his thin lips. “How else can I explain this to you?”
She shook her head. “No, I mean… I understand but… how? What happened? When?”
He leaned forward suddenly. “You didn’t ask who.”
It was all she could do to keep her face passive and still. “Well if you’re talking to me you obviously don’t know who did it.”
“Uh-huh,” he said again. “Now, I have a question for you. You say you have a very full schedule, you have difficulty seeing all of your patients. But according to your schedule here I see that you take particular care to see one of your patients very frequently, almost every day in fact. Why is it that you have so much time for this patient in particular?”
For a moment she could not breathe.
“The Captain,” she managed. “That is no choice of mine. His course of therapy has been set by the Lieutenant-Colonel himself.”
“Why would he require so much more attention than the other patients?”
She swallowed slowly, chose her words carefully.
“He is in a fragile mental state. He requires more frequent monitoring than the other men.”
“Why?”
“I would be violating patient/doctor confidentiality by sharing that information with you, Major.”
“How convenient.”
She frowned softly.
“It’s not convenient at all. I would like to do everything I can to help you solve this case, sir. But the Captain’s treatment and the reasons for it… that is privileged information and irrelevant to our current topic of conversation.”
“When I want to talk to someone about feeling a little weepy, Doctor, I’ll know where to come… but I’ll thank you to let me decide what is and is not relevant in this case.”
She struggled to smile, managed it stiffly, slowly inclining her head.
“Of course. My apologies, Major.”
The papers shuffled again.
“Now listen, Lieutenant, what the Corporal did to you-“
Her teeth gritted at the sudden change in tack. “What he attempted to do to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, the lack of sincerity in his voice like a slap in the face, “What he attempted to do was an unspeakable act, and no one is condoning it. But you must admit that there is no one in the hospital with a greater reason to want him dead than you yourself…”
“I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t in the hospital at all last night. After what he did to me, what makes you think I’d even be able to kill him? It’s already been established I can’t fight him off.”
He was watching her closely. “No, maybe you couldn’t. But there are still quite a few people who are here at the hospital at night, who could. Now, a pretty girl like yourself, I’m sure you’ve got quite a few friends among the men. I mean, really, some of these boys haven’t seen a real American woman in years, I’d understand it if a few of them grew quite fond of you after seeing you enough. Maybe fond enough for you to ask favors of them?”
She stared at him. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You think I set someone on him.”
“Did you? “
“No!” she snapped. “I don’t know anything about this. The men have no reason to dislike me. I do my job, I ask for no quarter. I’m a good doctor and a good soldier. The men respect me.”
His head tilted. “And you think none of them want anything more?”
She was silent for some time. “I have no control over what they may or may not want.”
“But you admit to the possibility.”
Her head jerked. “I can’t deny it. But that doesn’t mean I’ve encouraged it.”
“They’re lonely, attention-starved. No more than a lingering glance is necessary for such a man in love, Dr. Quinzel, surely you are aware of that.”
She remained silent.
“Now there is a certain romanticism to the occurrence. A sense of… divine retribution, of punishment for crimes committed.”
“We cannot take the law into our own hands,” she said quietly.
“I am the law, Lieutenant, and I do not appreciate in the least my job being taken away from me.”
“I have neither condoned nor encouraged such an activity, sir. If you think I am the mastermind of some elaborate plot, you are mistaken. I am a professional, Major. I have no special friends among the men.”
He folded his hands on the table top. “Loyalty is prized among soldiers.”
She swallowed. “I’m not protecting anyone.”
“But not loyalty to the wrong thing. Perhaps you had nothing to do with the killing, you were not the one who ordered it. Perhaps this person came to the conclusion that murder was the only option left entirely to his own devices, perhaps. But if I discover otherwise... well, let’s just say you would make things much easier on yourself if you would simply tell the truth.”
How much did he know? God help her, let the mask not falter now.
“I have nothing to tell you, Major.”
He nodded, smiling at her coldly.
“I didn’t think you would. Can’t say I’m pleased to be correct, however. Your further cooperation with this investigation will be expected. I trust you won’t be taking any extended leaves in the next few weeks, Dr. Quinzel. I’ll be in touch.”
He gathered his papers, straightening them with a single tap against the tabletop and stood smoothly. He had the unthinking grace of a man completely assured with his place in life.
“Of course, Major.” She stood and saluted as he left the room, found it was several minutes before she could convince her feet to move.
“God dammit,” she muttered, peeling, it seemed, the soles of her shoes from the floor, taking several faltering steps toward the door. What else could go wrong? She would never be able to leave now, they would be watching her movements. Her absence from the hospital would be judged as irrefutable evidence of her guilt. What in the hell was she going to do? “That bastard… he’s holding me back even after he’s dead.”
And who had killed the Colonel? She looked to her watch. It was 7:20. Forty minutes until the Captain’s appointment. She had a lot of leg work to do in a very short amount of time.
She did not bother to search for Wilhelm, instead paging him to the third floor nurse’s station. He had been close, he arrived in barely five minutes, looking somewhere between harried and exhausted, uniform uncharacteristically wrinkled. He smiled when saw her, however, she did not fail to notice that. She did not let him stop, instead grabbing onto his arm and leading him down the hallway, away from the largest concentration of people.
“What the hell happened?” she whispered.
“Where have you been? He’s had everybody here since 3:30 this morning, that’s about the time they found him. Real fucking dick, too. I hate MPs, and I used to be a cop. He’s got no leads, which means everybody’s a damned suspect. I’ve been home for a grand total of an hour in the last eighteen… Wouldn’t even let me take a shower.”
Harley winced. “He must have been just thrilled when he didn’t get an answer at my apartment… No wonder he was such an asshole.”
“No, that’s just his natural charm shining through,” Wilhelm muttered, and she couldn’t help but smile softly.
“What do we know?”
“Well, from what Margit tells me they found him around the time we changed shifts last night. He’d been making a fuss pretty much since we locked him in there. I was tempted to call the nurse for a sedative, bastard wouldn’t shut up. Finally we just left him there, decided we’d come back in hour intervals to check up on him. When he comes through around 2:30 he says it’s unusually quiet, so he pops open the door and pokes his head in to get a look. Said he looked like he was sleeping, but five minutes later he still had a funny feeling so he walked by again and decided to wake him up this time, didn’t exactly care about his beauty sleep, right? He yells, but he gets no answer. He thinks it might be a trick so he keeps his pistol in hand and goes to shove him awake, and that’s about the time he realizes the guy is stone-cold dead, just laying there, so he calls the base, the MP, Harrison, calls us, and the rest is miserable history.”
“What’s happened to the body?”
“They’ve taken it down to the morgue. They’ve already had a CSI team through the room, but nobody looked particularly happy when they left. My guess is they didn’t find anything.”
Harley shook her head. “That’s impossible. How can they just… not find anything?”
“They were probably asking themselves the same question. Harrison was livid. He’s been interviewing anyone who’s so much as walked by the guy since he’s been here, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s talking. There’s been no arrests.”
“I need to see the body, Wilhelm.”
He weighed more than her. He dug his heels into the tile and she was spun around to face him.
“Are you crazy? You can’t do that! That’s interfering with an investigation. You’re gonna end up in the brig.”
“He already thinks I did it, Wilhelm,” she hissed. “It is in my best interest to find out what happened. If I figure out who did it then I have all the evidence I need to exonerate myself.”
He shook his head. “This is crazy,” he said again.
Undeterred, her expression did not change. “Who is on duty in the morgue this morning?”
“Everybody! I told you, the whole hospital has been on call!”
“But who do I need to talk to?” she persisted.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, finally opening them and looking at her.
“Dr. Browning,” he said simply, before he took a light grip on her upper arm and led her away.
~~
Like most hospitals, Hines found it best to keep their ‘medical waste’ as far from the living patients as possible. The morgue was in the second level of the basement, a series of cold and open rooms. The walls, ceiling and floor were all of plain concrete block. Along the west wall was a bank of metal doors, small refrigerated compartments which served as a temporary hold for the unfortunates who found themselves wheeled through the steel double doors, a way station on the road to their final resting place. She had no idea how many soldiers had been brought through here in the history of the hospital, and did not particularly want to dwell upon it.
To the right was a small lab area, enclosed, sealed off from the rest of the morgue with walls of glass and steel. The majority of the room, however, was dominated by the examination area, three steel slabs, the tops grooved with a series of channels to guide away water and other bodily fluids. The tables were thankfully empty. However, so was the rest of the lab.
“There’s no one here,” she looked to Wilhelm helplessly.
He shook his head. “Hold on a second.”
He led himself down a small hallway, past a line of empty gurneys. She heard a knock.
“Come in,” came a muffled voice. Harley followed quickly behind him, found him at the end of the hallway. The opened door revealed a tiny office, not an inch of wall visible behind three large bookcases. A monstrous gray desk took up most of the floor space, the rest of it filled with milk-crates, stacks of paper and manila folders. There was a path about a foot wide leading from the desk to the door, just enough space behind it to house a chair and the small brunette within it.
“Who is it?” she asked around a mouthful of a particularly soggy looking tuna salad sandwich. A moment later her expression said that she recognized Wilhelm. She took a quick swallow, chasing it down with a gulp of coffee that looked as though it had long since ceased steaming.
“What can I do for you?”
He threw a hand out in a flourish, raising his eyebrows to Harley.
“It’s all yours.”
She sighed softly, edged carefully around Wilhelm, peering into the tiny room.
“Dr Browning?” she guessed.
The woman nodded, hurriedly pulled the impromptu paper bib from the collar of her shirt, tripped over a plastic crate, and nearly toppled out of the door. Wilhelm caught her inches from the ground. She squeaked, hurriedly dragged her feet under her, sniffling and straightening her clothes hurriedly as she stepped away from him.
“Oh… uh… thank you…Yes… yes, that would be me. What can I do for you?” she asked again.
Harley watched her closely. “I need to know about the Corporal…”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Who?”
She frowned softly. “The… the Corporal… he was murdered last night.”
“Oh,” she said after a moment, recognition finally showing on her face.
“Oh, the blonde, why didn’t you say so? Everybody’s been asking about him.” She spun on her heel, looking back to Harley quickly. “I really shouldn’t say anything to you. I’m not supposed to reveal anything until the official autopsy report is filed… but… just between you and me? He wouldn’t accept my initial report, so technically, I’m not sharing any real information with you. Said he was sure I made a mistake. I wanted to eat something before I looked him over again.”
“Harrison, the MP?” Harley asked, and the brunette hummed, considering.
“Could be. Never really asked his name. Didn’t ask for mine. Not very bright though. There was nothing wrong with my autopsy, just the body.”
“What was wrong with the body?”
“Ah,” she pointed, grinning. “That’s just the thing. There is nothing wrong with the body. Here…” She disappeared briefly. Harley heard a lock turning, and Browning reappeared, heading for the refrigerated cells. “We haven’t got much time. Help me get him out.”
She opened a door in the second row, third from the end. She grabbed the edge of the slab and slid it out. There was a closed body bag on the steel. Inside was the Colonel. Harley swallowed, grabbed for Wilhelm reflexively. He gave her a look of concern, touching her forearm briefly before he stepped away, grabbing a corner of the bag and helping to heft it onto the gurney the woman had wheeled over.
“This is completely unprofessional, but this is isn’t exactly a routine case. I mean, normally I don’t get bodies that are in such good condition, you know. They’re usually ripped up, and I’ve got five pounds of shrapnel to pick out of their bodies… or at least have more holes in them and a gallon of blood to wash off before I turn them over to the funeral home, but him… well, he’s just perfect.”
She zipped the bag down quickly, spreading the panels open. Harley jumped at the sound, screamed when his hand suddenly reached for her, wrist flexing upward.
“Little jumpy,” Browning said, the blue eyes regarding her curiously. “It’s just the nerves dying. Perfectly natural.”
She circled the end of the gurney, grabbing his arm and lifting it back onto the mattress. Wilhelm set a hand on her shoulder, and she glanced back at him briefly.
“Now see, I’m glad I hadn’t stapled him shut yet... I’d hate to have to take them all back out… I did a complete exam of all his organs, weighed and catalogued them all. Heart, lungs, liver, brain, kidneys, everything’s completely normal. I don’t even usually get to see organs in such pristine condition. He’s a model body, he should have outlived God, yet here he is... Kind of a shame. He was a looker, wasn’t he?” she asked with a crooked grin.
Harley smiled weakly. Wilhelm, wisely, kept his mouth shut. After a moment , the woman coughed and went on.
“Anyway… it obviously rules out a natural cause of death. So I went back to the external exam. Hadn’t bothered with one initially because the first look over said there was nothing wrong with him. Now the cyanosis in his lips and eyelids is indicative of-“
“Asphyxiation.” Harley finished.
“Yeah. But the quickest way to create a lack of oxygen is strangulation. Now, you think, you’ve got a trained soldier. He’s not just going to lay there and let himself die is he? No, he’s going to fight. Strangling a person really isn’t all that hard, it takes about thirty-three pounds of sustained pressure for about four or five minutes and brain death occurs. It takes three to six pounds to pull a trigger, twenty pounds to open a can of pop.
“But how do you keep a man immobilized for five minutes while he’s fighting for his life with absolutely no signs of a struggle? Capillary rupture in the sclera of his eyes, here,” she cracked his eye open with thumb and forefinger, growing more animated with each passing minute. “would indicate a vigorous struggle, but they’re white as snow. I’ve got no petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes or the hairline, no manual bruising or ligature marks around the neck, absolutely no tracheal edema. There’s nothing wrong with him other than the fact that he’s completely dead. So how does a perfectly healthy twenty-nine year old die in his sleep?”
Harley did not bother to open her mouth, only shook her head dumbly.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I don’t have an explanation for it either. I did a swab of the body, but I didn’t find anything. Everybody leaves something behind. The body is constantly expelling hairs and skin cells spontaneously, we have no control over it, so unless he was killed by someone wearing a clean suit, how is it that I located not a single stray hair or thread of fabric? There’s no bruising on his hands, no flesh under his fingernails. That says to me that he never saw it coming. He never had a chance to fight. But no one’s that good. Everyone makes a mistake somehow… So where’s his?”
Author: Anoushkala
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Genre: Pre-TDK, Drama
Pairing: Harley/Joker
Characters: Dr. Harleen Quinzel and various OCs.
Disclaimer: The whole Batman universe belongs to lots of people who aren't me. I'm not making any money off of this. I write solely for my own pleasure and the reviews, so please comment :-D
Summary: Harley deals with her own personal whodunit.
Author Notes: Un-beta'd as usual.
“I don’t understand,” she said dumbly.
His eyebrows raised, a nasty half-smile lingering on his thin lips. “How else can I explain this to you?”
She shook her head. “No, I mean… I understand but… how? What happened? When?”
He leaned forward suddenly. “You didn’t ask who.”
It was all she could do to keep her face passive and still. “Well if you’re talking to me you obviously don’t know who did it.”
“Uh-huh,” he said again. “Now, I have a question for you. You say you have a very full schedule, you have difficulty seeing all of your patients. But according to your schedule here I see that you take particular care to see one of your patients very frequently, almost every day in fact. Why is it that you have so much time for this patient in particular?”
For a moment she could not breathe.
“The Captain,” she managed. “That is no choice of mine. His course of therapy has been set by the Lieutenant-Colonel himself.”
“Why would he require so much more attention than the other patients?”
She swallowed slowly, chose her words carefully.
“He is in a fragile mental state. He requires more frequent monitoring than the other men.”
“Why?”
“I would be violating patient/doctor confidentiality by sharing that information with you, Major.”
“How convenient.”
She frowned softly.
“It’s not convenient at all. I would like to do everything I can to help you solve this case, sir. But the Captain’s treatment and the reasons for it… that is privileged information and irrelevant to our current topic of conversation.”
“When I want to talk to someone about feeling a little weepy, Doctor, I’ll know where to come… but I’ll thank you to let me decide what is and is not relevant in this case.”
She struggled to smile, managed it stiffly, slowly inclining her head.
“Of course. My apologies, Major.”
The papers shuffled again.
“Now listen, Lieutenant, what the Corporal did to you-“
Her teeth gritted at the sudden change in tack. “What he attempted to do to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, the lack of sincerity in his voice like a slap in the face, “What he attempted to do was an unspeakable act, and no one is condoning it. But you must admit that there is no one in the hospital with a greater reason to want him dead than you yourself…”
“I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t in the hospital at all last night. After what he did to me, what makes you think I’d even be able to kill him? It’s already been established I can’t fight him off.”
He was watching her closely. “No, maybe you couldn’t. But there are still quite a few people who are here at the hospital at night, who could. Now, a pretty girl like yourself, I’m sure you’ve got quite a few friends among the men. I mean, really, some of these boys haven’t seen a real American woman in years, I’d understand it if a few of them grew quite fond of you after seeing you enough. Maybe fond enough for you to ask favors of them?”
She stared at him. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You think I set someone on him.”
“Did you? “
“No!” she snapped. “I don’t know anything about this. The men have no reason to dislike me. I do my job, I ask for no quarter. I’m a good doctor and a good soldier. The men respect me.”
His head tilted. “And you think none of them want anything more?”
She was silent for some time. “I have no control over what they may or may not want.”
“But you admit to the possibility.”
Her head jerked. “I can’t deny it. But that doesn’t mean I’ve encouraged it.”
“They’re lonely, attention-starved. No more than a lingering glance is necessary for such a man in love, Dr. Quinzel, surely you are aware of that.”
She remained silent.
“Now there is a certain romanticism to the occurrence. A sense of… divine retribution, of punishment for crimes committed.”
“We cannot take the law into our own hands,” she said quietly.
“I am the law, Lieutenant, and I do not appreciate in the least my job being taken away from me.”
“I have neither condoned nor encouraged such an activity, sir. If you think I am the mastermind of some elaborate plot, you are mistaken. I am a professional, Major. I have no special friends among the men.”
He folded his hands on the table top. “Loyalty is prized among soldiers.”
She swallowed. “I’m not protecting anyone.”
“But not loyalty to the wrong thing. Perhaps you had nothing to do with the killing, you were not the one who ordered it. Perhaps this person came to the conclusion that murder was the only option left entirely to his own devices, perhaps. But if I discover otherwise... well, let’s just say you would make things much easier on yourself if you would simply tell the truth.”
How much did he know? God help her, let the mask not falter now.
“I have nothing to tell you, Major.”
He nodded, smiling at her coldly.
“I didn’t think you would. Can’t say I’m pleased to be correct, however. Your further cooperation with this investigation will be expected. I trust you won’t be taking any extended leaves in the next few weeks, Dr. Quinzel. I’ll be in touch.”
He gathered his papers, straightening them with a single tap against the tabletop and stood smoothly. He had the unthinking grace of a man completely assured with his place in life.
“Of course, Major.” She stood and saluted as he left the room, found it was several minutes before she could convince her feet to move.
“God dammit,” she muttered, peeling, it seemed, the soles of her shoes from the floor, taking several faltering steps toward the door. What else could go wrong? She would never be able to leave now, they would be watching her movements. Her absence from the hospital would be judged as irrefutable evidence of her guilt. What in the hell was she going to do? “That bastard… he’s holding me back even after he’s dead.”
And who had killed the Colonel? She looked to her watch. It was 7:20. Forty minutes until the Captain’s appointment. She had a lot of leg work to do in a very short amount of time.
She did not bother to search for Wilhelm, instead paging him to the third floor nurse’s station. He had been close, he arrived in barely five minutes, looking somewhere between harried and exhausted, uniform uncharacteristically wrinkled. He smiled when saw her, however, she did not fail to notice that. She did not let him stop, instead grabbing onto his arm and leading him down the hallway, away from the largest concentration of people.
“What the hell happened?” she whispered.
“Where have you been? He’s had everybody here since 3:30 this morning, that’s about the time they found him. Real fucking dick, too. I hate MPs, and I used to be a cop. He’s got no leads, which means everybody’s a damned suspect. I’ve been home for a grand total of an hour in the last eighteen… Wouldn’t even let me take a shower.”
Harley winced. “He must have been just thrilled when he didn’t get an answer at my apartment… No wonder he was such an asshole.”
“No, that’s just his natural charm shining through,” Wilhelm muttered, and she couldn’t help but smile softly.
“What do we know?”
“Well, from what Margit tells me they found him around the time we changed shifts last night. He’d been making a fuss pretty much since we locked him in there. I was tempted to call the nurse for a sedative, bastard wouldn’t shut up. Finally we just left him there, decided we’d come back in hour intervals to check up on him. When he comes through around 2:30 he says it’s unusually quiet, so he pops open the door and pokes his head in to get a look. Said he looked like he was sleeping, but five minutes later he still had a funny feeling so he walked by again and decided to wake him up this time, didn’t exactly care about his beauty sleep, right? He yells, but he gets no answer. He thinks it might be a trick so he keeps his pistol in hand and goes to shove him awake, and that’s about the time he realizes the guy is stone-cold dead, just laying there, so he calls the base, the MP, Harrison, calls us, and the rest is miserable history.”
“What’s happened to the body?”
“They’ve taken it down to the morgue. They’ve already had a CSI team through the room, but nobody looked particularly happy when they left. My guess is they didn’t find anything.”
Harley shook her head. “That’s impossible. How can they just… not find anything?”
“They were probably asking themselves the same question. Harrison was livid. He’s been interviewing anyone who’s so much as walked by the guy since he’s been here, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s talking. There’s been no arrests.”
“I need to see the body, Wilhelm.”
He weighed more than her. He dug his heels into the tile and she was spun around to face him.
“Are you crazy? You can’t do that! That’s interfering with an investigation. You’re gonna end up in the brig.”
“He already thinks I did it, Wilhelm,” she hissed. “It is in my best interest to find out what happened. If I figure out who did it then I have all the evidence I need to exonerate myself.”
He shook his head. “This is crazy,” he said again.
Undeterred, her expression did not change. “Who is on duty in the morgue this morning?”
“Everybody! I told you, the whole hospital has been on call!”
“But who do I need to talk to?” she persisted.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, finally opening them and looking at her.
“Dr. Browning,” he said simply, before he took a light grip on her upper arm and led her away.
~~
Like most hospitals, Hines found it best to keep their ‘medical waste’ as far from the living patients as possible. The morgue was in the second level of the basement, a series of cold and open rooms. The walls, ceiling and floor were all of plain concrete block. Along the west wall was a bank of metal doors, small refrigerated compartments which served as a temporary hold for the unfortunates who found themselves wheeled through the steel double doors, a way station on the road to their final resting place. She had no idea how many soldiers had been brought through here in the history of the hospital, and did not particularly want to dwell upon it.
To the right was a small lab area, enclosed, sealed off from the rest of the morgue with walls of glass and steel. The majority of the room, however, was dominated by the examination area, three steel slabs, the tops grooved with a series of channels to guide away water and other bodily fluids. The tables were thankfully empty. However, so was the rest of the lab.
“There’s no one here,” she looked to Wilhelm helplessly.
He shook his head. “Hold on a second.”
He led himself down a small hallway, past a line of empty gurneys. She heard a knock.
“Come in,” came a muffled voice. Harley followed quickly behind him, found him at the end of the hallway. The opened door revealed a tiny office, not an inch of wall visible behind three large bookcases. A monstrous gray desk took up most of the floor space, the rest of it filled with milk-crates, stacks of paper and manila folders. There was a path about a foot wide leading from the desk to the door, just enough space behind it to house a chair and the small brunette within it.
“Who is it?” she asked around a mouthful of a particularly soggy looking tuna salad sandwich. A moment later her expression said that she recognized Wilhelm. She took a quick swallow, chasing it down with a gulp of coffee that looked as though it had long since ceased steaming.
“What can I do for you?”
He threw a hand out in a flourish, raising his eyebrows to Harley.
“It’s all yours.”
She sighed softly, edged carefully around Wilhelm, peering into the tiny room.
“Dr Browning?” she guessed.
The woman nodded, hurriedly pulled the impromptu paper bib from the collar of her shirt, tripped over a plastic crate, and nearly toppled out of the door. Wilhelm caught her inches from the ground. She squeaked, hurriedly dragged her feet under her, sniffling and straightening her clothes hurriedly as she stepped away from him.
“Oh… uh… thank you…Yes… yes, that would be me. What can I do for you?” she asked again.
Harley watched her closely. “I need to know about the Corporal…”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Who?”
She frowned softly. “The… the Corporal… he was murdered last night.”
“Oh,” she said after a moment, recognition finally showing on her face.
“Oh, the blonde, why didn’t you say so? Everybody’s been asking about him.” She spun on her heel, looking back to Harley quickly. “I really shouldn’t say anything to you. I’m not supposed to reveal anything until the official autopsy report is filed… but… just between you and me? He wouldn’t accept my initial report, so technically, I’m not sharing any real information with you. Said he was sure I made a mistake. I wanted to eat something before I looked him over again.”
“Harrison, the MP?” Harley asked, and the brunette hummed, considering.
“Could be. Never really asked his name. Didn’t ask for mine. Not very bright though. There was nothing wrong with my autopsy, just the body.”
“What was wrong with the body?”
“Ah,” she pointed, grinning. “That’s just the thing. There is nothing wrong with the body. Here…” She disappeared briefly. Harley heard a lock turning, and Browning reappeared, heading for the refrigerated cells. “We haven’t got much time. Help me get him out.”
She opened a door in the second row, third from the end. She grabbed the edge of the slab and slid it out. There was a closed body bag on the steel. Inside was the Colonel. Harley swallowed, grabbed for Wilhelm reflexively. He gave her a look of concern, touching her forearm briefly before he stepped away, grabbing a corner of the bag and helping to heft it onto the gurney the woman had wheeled over.
“This is completely unprofessional, but this is isn’t exactly a routine case. I mean, normally I don’t get bodies that are in such good condition, you know. They’re usually ripped up, and I’ve got five pounds of shrapnel to pick out of their bodies… or at least have more holes in them and a gallon of blood to wash off before I turn them over to the funeral home, but him… well, he’s just perfect.”
She zipped the bag down quickly, spreading the panels open. Harley jumped at the sound, screamed when his hand suddenly reached for her, wrist flexing upward.
“Little jumpy,” Browning said, the blue eyes regarding her curiously. “It’s just the nerves dying. Perfectly natural.”
She circled the end of the gurney, grabbing his arm and lifting it back onto the mattress. Wilhelm set a hand on her shoulder, and she glanced back at him briefly.
“Now see, I’m glad I hadn’t stapled him shut yet... I’d hate to have to take them all back out… I did a complete exam of all his organs, weighed and catalogued them all. Heart, lungs, liver, brain, kidneys, everything’s completely normal. I don’t even usually get to see organs in such pristine condition. He’s a model body, he should have outlived God, yet here he is... Kind of a shame. He was a looker, wasn’t he?” she asked with a crooked grin.
Harley smiled weakly. Wilhelm, wisely, kept his mouth shut. After a moment , the woman coughed and went on.
“Anyway… it obviously rules out a natural cause of death. So I went back to the external exam. Hadn’t bothered with one initially because the first look over said there was nothing wrong with him. Now the cyanosis in his lips and eyelids is indicative of-“
“Asphyxiation.” Harley finished.
“Yeah. But the quickest way to create a lack of oxygen is strangulation. Now, you think, you’ve got a trained soldier. He’s not just going to lay there and let himself die is he? No, he’s going to fight. Strangling a person really isn’t all that hard, it takes about thirty-three pounds of sustained pressure for about four or five minutes and brain death occurs. It takes three to six pounds to pull a trigger, twenty pounds to open a can of pop.
“But how do you keep a man immobilized for five minutes while he’s fighting for his life with absolutely no signs of a struggle? Capillary rupture in the sclera of his eyes, here,” she cracked his eye open with thumb and forefinger, growing more animated with each passing minute. “would indicate a vigorous struggle, but they’re white as snow. I’ve got no petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes or the hairline, no manual bruising or ligature marks around the neck, absolutely no tracheal edema. There’s nothing wrong with him other than the fact that he’s completely dead. So how does a perfectly healthy twenty-nine year old die in his sleep?”
Harley did not bother to open her mouth, only shook her head dumbly.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I don’t have an explanation for it either. I did a swab of the body, but I didn’t find anything. Everybody leaves something behind. The body is constantly expelling hairs and skin cells spontaneously, we have no control over it, so unless he was killed by someone wearing a clean suit, how is it that I located not a single stray hair or thread of fabric? There’s no bruising on his hands, no flesh under his fingernails. That says to me that he never saw it coming. He never had a chance to fight. But no one’s that good. Everyone makes a mistake somehow… So where’s his?”