R.V. Roush
�It locks when it shuts. Come in,� Steve said, turning his back to the man. �But I was just about to leave. You�ll have to make it qui�.�
Steve didn�t finish his thought; his spinal cord had been forcibly snapped from his brain stem. He slumped into his killer�s arms.
The killer turned and dragged the body of the restorative artist over to the supply drawers in the gray floor cabinets. He slid his little finger through the metal drawer handle, opened it. With the weight of Steve�s body resting against his own, he reached into the drawer, withdrew a pair of latex surgical gloves and four pairs of blue paper shoe coverings. He used his raised knee in the rear of Steve�s crotch to keep the body from falling, and pulled the gloves on. He wedged one arm under Steve�s armpit, and slipped the blue booties over his own shoes, one of seven pair he�d purchased four years ago from a shoe outlet that was going out of business. He�d never worn the shoes, so a wear pattern hadn�t yet developed on the foam rubber soles. The paper of the booties would further obscure the identity of footprints on the filmy floor of the restoration room. As a final measure, he lugged the body half over his own left shoulder to the spot in which he�d stood before having covered his shoes with the paper booties, setting Steve down on the floor, allowing the seat of Steve�s pants to obliterate the unprotected footprint.
He stepped to the side, turned slightly, and noted the well lighted vending machine area, which ended in a shower stall. Considering the morbid purposes of the work place, nothing seemed out of place.
He fished in a drawer of tools, came out with a scalpel, held the tail of Steve�s green surgical gown, sliced a clean incision up the cloth, letting the sides fall away. Then he sliced away the thread holding the buttons of Steve�s dress shirt, and then slit the t-shirt up to Steve�s neck. He pulled the collar away from the neck to expose the area of the jugular and carotid arteries. Expertly, he inserted draining needles into the body�s main arteries, raised the feet with a foot block, and slid his arms under the corpse�s ass, lifting, helping gravity in the removal of the body�s blood through the tubes directed at the floor drain approved for bodily fluid disposal.
He�d introduced nothing foreign to the body. He�d only taken away.
He let the body rest on the table and removed the drain tubes from one end of the spike needles that remained in the neck arteries.
Deciding not to use the gurgling trocar, he made a Y-shaped incision from each clavicle to the body�s sternum, the length of the torso, ending at the pubis after a small detour around the navel. The incision was excessive, but he wanted to satisfy his curiosities about the human anatomy. He wanted to see firsthand how knives he�d plunged into the bodies of his targets impaired the operation of organs at various locations.
� 2004 R.V. Roush