Wolf in the Big City

Chapter 3 - Coroner

Why was it always so cold down here?

Doctor Stephen Beauregarde was our resident medical examiner, had been for about four years. In that time I'd gotten to know the old man very well, since he was the guy who cut open every single corpse we'd brought him.

For some reason, he loved to keep his basement office and morgue at the coldest his AC would manage, which felt like we were walking into the ass-end of the Antarctic every time we went to see him. Even with my thickest hoodie on, the cold still cut straight to the bone.

I suppressed a shiver as the sliding doors to the morgue opened with a hiss of air and we were greeted by a blast of frigid air, although it never seemed to affect Dylan that much. Doctor Beauregarde was already present within the lone operating theatre, gowned up and doing a cursory examination of the corpses.

He gave us a wave as we stepped into the observation room and turned on the two-way intercom on his side of the window. The speakers above our heads crackled to life as he cleared his throat.

"Perfect timing, gentlemen. I was just about to start without you, but now that you're here, I'd say we're ready to get going."

Without pause, he turned to face the first corpse. With his foot, he tapped a button that started a recording within a microphone embedded in the ceiling. His talking would be saved to his computer, along with a video being captured by a camera that was also mounted above him.

Technology was pretty great.

"Starting with the gentleman. Edward Prince, age sixty-three, Caucasian male, would've weighed roughly a hundred and ninety pounds before expiration. The preliminary cause of death: gross exsanguination through as of yet unknown means. That means he was bled dry if you didn't know already."

He walked a slow circle around the corpse, moving the hands, arms, turning the head from side to side, checking out what he could see first.

"Cursory examination of the corpse notes severe desiccation of all extremities and torso along with...what's this?"

Doctor Beauregarde stopped at the corpse's neck and turned its face so it was looking away from him, exposing the right side of its neck. He picked up a pen torch from his table and shined it where he was looking and frowned.

"There appear to be several small holes in the right side of the victim's neck, corresponding to where the jugular veins would be. It looks to be some sort of bite mark."

He put down his torch, picked up his small digital camera and snapped a photo of the neck wound. I was busy writing down the details he was uncovering but... A bite mark? That was strange. Very strange.

"Moving on to the grisly bit now. I shall now make a Y-shaped incision on the victim's torso to examine his internal organs."

With a scalpel, the incision was made and I had to suppress a grimace. Every time he cut open someone like that, I couldn't help it. Something about the whole notion of slicing open a human body to pull out internal organs was fascinating and morbid at the same time. As Doctor Beauregarde split open the corpse and peered inside, I saw a look cross his face that I'd never seen before. One of abject confusion.

"I... There appear to be no internal organs within the victim's chest and abdominal cavities."

Oh. Wait, what?

Dylan leaned forward, the same expression on his face as he spoke into the intercom. "Uh, can you confirm that, doctor?"

Stephen looked up from his work and pointed up at the camera. Dylan and I followed suit and looked up at the big TV screen that was hooked up to the camera. From up above, we could see that the corpse's insides were...black? Or was it so brown it was on the verge of being black? But it looked like a thick liquid instead of multiple organs, almost like soup. Doctor Beauregarde gave us a shrug and held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender.