When the Dead Speak

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

King Tut stood propped in the corner of the examining room like an archeological find. Long, fluorescent bulbs lined the tall ceilings giving the starched white tiled floor and walls an even more sterile appearance.

Benny Lau smiled like a proud father. Benny had been the chief medical examiner for the past fifteen years. Small, dark eyes rested under a helmet of jet black hair. His deep olive complexion shielded his skin from the typical aging signs of a man just reaching fifty.

"Unbelievable!" Sam couldn't take her eyes off of the monolith. She detected a pungent odor drifting from the body and waved a hand in front of her face.

"Adipocere," Benny explained. "Due to chemical changes, the body turns to soap, literally. It's the fatty acids from the hydrolysis and hydrogenation of body fats after death that gives it the odor."

Something other than the odor, however, was overpowering her. It was the aura. She had felt it the moment she stepped into the room. That's usually when it is the strongest. Right after the person dies. In this case, King Tut's death aura had been entombed with him.

Sam moved toward King Tut. "May I?" she asked Benny as she started to place her hands on the body.

Frank signed their names to the log at the reception desk. A young woman with porcelain skin and China-doll features glided gracefully over to the desk. The name on the badge clipped to her white lab coat said Tamara. She looked at their names and with a lilting voice said, "Doctor Lau is expecting you."

Jake carried his sportcoat hooked on the tip of his finger. They walked past empty, pristine offices crammed with computers and filing cabinets.

Benny's office was at the far end of the wide corridor. Stacks of reports cluttered a conference table. Two file drawers stood gaping, file folders left slanted like large Post-it notes.

Two of the walls were plate glass giving a full view of both the large gymnasium-sized examining room and the smaller room where King Tut stood. The intercom into the smaller examining room was on while Benny's voice and an unidentified female voice filtered through the air.

Jake studied the woman whose back was to them. Her mass of untamed hair was pulled back in a clip. She wore a white lab coat but there was something familiar in the curve of those calves and the tone of her voice.

Sam approached King Tut. Only the front portion of the body was exposed. The back side was still wearing a thin concrete jacket. The right arm hung straight at the side while the left arm rested across the chest. Pieces of skin, brown and leathery, hung like sheets of phyllo pastry.

Fragments of clothing appeared well preserved but fragile. When her fingers touched what looked like a plaid shirt, the weaker sections of cloth crumbled in her hand.

Gingerly she touched the concrete framing the corpse. Her hand rested on top of the skull, holding it there for several moments like a mother feeling a child's forehead.

"What on earth is she doing?" Frank whispered.

"I don't know." Jake turned the volume up on the intercom.

Sam closed her eyes. Immediately she saw lightning bolt shapes, smelled gun powder, blood. It all overshadowed the odor from King Tut. He spoke to her. Out of his gaping mouth she heard the screams of battle, of war. She sensed fear, terror.

Sam jerked away, stepped back from King Tut.

"Are you okay?" Benny placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Nothing that a little air won't cure." Studying the deceased, she wondered what kind of horrors this man had suffered. "He died about fifteen or twenty years ago, maybe longer." Sam peeled off the latex gloves. "And I believe he knew his killer."