The Body Thief by Chris Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

stared after his father’s departing
back. All of a sudden, eating pie was the last thing on his
mind.
    * * *
    Samantha checked the toe tag against the
paperwork in her hand and proceeded to pull the body off the wire
shelf of the fridge where it lay. She rolled it onto the gurney.
The blue plastic sheeting that covered most of what used to be
Natalie Piccoli crackled with the movement. Positioning the body so
that it wouldn’t fall, Sam hurriedly pushed the trolley out of the
fridge.
    It was a Saturday and she shouldn’t have
even been working. The fact that she’d been called in put her out
of sorts. She was rostered to work the weekdays, but the usual
pathologists who covered the weekend were both off sick, including
Richard. Staffing had phoned her in desperation, asking if she’d
come in and deal with the backlog of cases. The day was winding
down. Soon it would be dark and she still had another two cases to
go, including Natalie Piccoli.
    With a sigh, she wheeled the body to her
usual workstation and quietly and efficiently prepared her tools.
When all was as she liked it, she picked up a scalpel and turned to
make the Y incision. A fresh surgical scar gave her pause.
    In the notes Sam had scanned earlier, there
had been no mention that the woman had undergone recent surgery in
the hospital and yet it was obvious she had. Reopening the incision
with her scalpel, she noticed the woman’s ribs had already been
sawn through. Prising open the chest cavity, Sam did a preliminary
search for Natalie’s organs.
    Which weren’t there. At least, not all of
them. The heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestine and pancreas were
missing.
    They’d obviously been donated. It had
been a few weeks since Sam had autopsied a donor body. When she’d
noticed the evidence of recent abdominal surgery, harvesting of
organs hadn’t immediately come to mind. But now, there was no other
explanation, though it was unusual for someone to donate almost
every organ they had. Most chose to limit their donation to the
heart and the lungs.
    According to the report the police had
prepared for the coroner, Natalie Piccoli’s suspected cause of
death was a brain aneurysm. Sam hoped that the doctors who’d
treated the woman were right because there was very little else for
her to examine. Tugging off her gloves, she reached for the
paperwork again.
    Flipping through the pages, she searched for
the consent form that was usually signed by the deceased’s next of
kin, giving permission for the organs to be recovered. She couldn’t
find it. Frowning, she went through the pages again, more slowly,
and still she couldn’t locate it.
    With an impatient curse, she went through
the paperwork a third time. This time, she loosened the clip that
held all the papers together and went through them individually,
checking both the front and the back. The consent simply had to be
there.
    And yet, it wasn’t.
    Perplexed, Sam took a moment to flip back to
the start of the notes and looked for the doctor who had signed off
on the death certificate. Her brother’s name and signature were
there in bold black ink: Doctor Alistair Wolfe . He’d also
done the organ recovery.
    There was no surprise in that. He was the
head of the donation for transplantation team. Much of the organ
recovery surgery was carried out by him. His name had also been on
the paperwork for the donor bodies she’d autopsied the previous
month.
    She checked for the letter of authorization
that would have come from the coroner’s office and found it. A
quick scan of its contents showed that Deputy Coroner Richard Davis
had authorized the removal of the donor organs prior to the
autopsy.
    Again, there was nothing unusual about that.
Richard must have taken Alistair’s call from the ICU, just prior to
the patient’s death. It had happened before. In fact, she seemed to
recall Richard had also consented to the last donor body she’d
autopsied.
    Perhaps the consent form had been misplaced
or