Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Eight

Decedent suffered two gunshot wounds (GSWs) from a single firearm, .38 caliber. Both shots entered decedent from the back of his body. One bullet recovered subcutaneously. Medium caliber, likely .38, and copper jacketed. Soot, stippling, and searing are present around the second and fatal entry wound.

The first shot entered decedent's upper right back but did not exit. Bullet fractured the right scapula. Mushroomed round recovered from top of the right trapezius muscle. The second and fatal shot entered decedent's rear left skull just above his left ear and exited through his right jaw...

Like the actor Ben Stein in those eye-drops commercials, Dr. Ho Nguyen speaks in a monotone, into an old, 1940s-style radio microphone dangling from the ceiling of autopsy room #1 at the Medical Examiner's Office. Nguyen would make a lousy narrator of audiobooks and all but Visine ads, but when it comes to slicing and dicing the recently departed, he's the best.

He insists he speaks so flatly when recording autopsy notes to keep emotion out of the process and avoid potentially influencing authorities or jurors when a death was suspicious or clearly criminal.

"I'm still a human being," he blurts, almost playfully, pausing the recording, as I pretend to nod off.

Nothing is funny about violent death. But humor keeps us sane.

Nguyen reaches to restart his dictation and says without a hint of irony, "Amazing. He looks so peaceful."

When I was in high school —right about the time I figured out I wanted to be a journalist— I had to do a religious history report on life or death, but not both.

I chose to write about Thanatos, the Greek god of death. I'd love to say it was because I was fascinated by Thanatos's manner of "enforcement and governance," as he was apparently known for meting out peaceful deaths, sometimes with the help of his twin Hypnos, the god of sleep.

But I didn't know anything about Thanatos before I was assigned the report and started doing homework. Honestly, at sixteen-years-old, I just thought it was cool that his name sort of sounded like Thanos, the Mad Titan of the Marvel Comics Universe. And since Thanos aspired to kill half the living creatures in the universe, why not?

Anyway, what I learned researching that paper was that Thanatos was twice tricked out of claiming lives that seemed destined to end. In one case, he thought he had killed someone who was actually in a coma induced by his empathetic brother.

And that led me to conclude that there was a very, very thin line between Thanatos's "life's" work and Hypnos's.

What is death if not a really, really deep, long sleep? I mean, so deep that it could fool the literal god of...

"Wilson!"

I jump, startled to hear my name shouted.

"I said could you hand me that pan?"

I had tuned out Nguyen right after my unspoken joke about falling asleep.

Maybe because I was genuinely bored or maybe because I knew what was coming next.

I give him a flat stainless steel pan, about eighteen inches across. In a few minutes, he'll ask for another. It's time to remove the victim's heart, brain and other vital organs, to examine them for damage, weigh them, and extract tissue samples to test for potentially fatal diseases or alcohol or illicit drugs.

I'm not squeamish and, generally, have an iron stomach that would make Keith Richards proud. But I hate to see this part. I always hate to see this part. It is the final, literal dismantling of someone whose soul was snatched without so much as a hello. It is the ultimate indignity. And no fourteen-year-old boy deserves this.