Blood Legacy: The Story of Ryan Read Free Page B

begin. “Doc, I thought the refrigeration units went off-line so I went to check them.” He stopped, trying to steady his voice. “The units were warm like something was heating them up. I opened her drawer and unzipped her bag, and she opened her eye and looked at me.”
    Susan was confused. “What are you talking about? Who is ‘she’?”
    “The woman with the gold hair. The one who jumped out the window.”
    Susan felt a slight misgiving but dismissed the feeling. She knew immediately whom he was talking about.
    “Look, Mason. You and I both looked at her injuries. There was no way she was alive.” She searched for a plausible explanation. “You of all people know how bodies settle. Isn’t it possible you jostled her and her eyelids rolled back?”
    Mason relaxed only a little. “Yeah,” he said doubtfully, “I guess that’s possible.” He didn’t know why he didn’t reach that conclusion himself, and why it didn’t seem to appease him.
    Susan nodded. “Why don’t we go in here and you can show me what happened. Okay?”
    Mason nodded, but was not enthusiastic about re-entering the icebox. “Okay,” he said doubtfully, “That sounds like a good idea.”
    Susan took three steps, then stifled a gag. “Well, something is definitely wrong with the icebox.”
    She followed him into the control room and he fiddled with the computer a moment until the lights in the adjacent room came on. She followed him into the icebox.
    One of the drawers was left partially open and upon approach, Susan saw the body of the woman she had seen previously. The bag was unzipped to just below her chin, but other than that she looked exactly the same. Both eyes were closed.
    Susan reached down and unzipped the bag a little more. She felt a little foolish, but she poked the woman in the chest. Cold and hard. She stepped back and indicated that Mason should do the same. He was starting to feel foolish as well, and more so when he leaned over and poked the corpse. Cold and hard. The woman was obviously dead.
    He stepped back. “Look, doc. I’m really sorry. Maybe I’ve just been working too hard, or maybe I had a bad dream or something. I’ve never had a hallucination like that before.”
    Susan grasped his shoulder. “And I’ve never known you to do anything but laugh down here, and sometimes I think you do it to cover up the things that bother you. You know it’s okay. Even coroners sometimes get the creeps.”
    Mason let out a huge sigh of relief. “Maybe you’re right. I think this one bothered me a little more than most.” He reached down and started to re-zip the bag.
    “Hold on just a minute.”
    Mason stopped. Susan was looking at the woman’s face strangely. “Did you clean her up?”
    Mason shook his head. “No, I usually let morticians do that. I figured it wouldn’t get done in this case.”
    Susan shook her head as if to clear it and went to zip the bag. She stopped again, examining the face more closely. “You know,” she said uncertainly, “I would swear there was a lot more damage to the right side of her face.”
    Mason did not agree or disagree.
    She shook her head in disgust. “Now I’m being foolish. It’s probably just more of the body settling.” She reached for the zipper for a third time, and for the third time she stopped.
    “You know,” she said, then trailed off. She glanced up at Mason. She reached down and began to unzip the bag the rest of the way. She peeled the plastic back so she could get a good look at the damaged legs.
    Mason looked down at the legs. They appeared much the same to him.
    They did not to Susan. She shook her head in confusion. “Didn’t she have a compound fracture of the right femur?”
    Mason glanced down at the right leg. There were several compound fractures, but none of the right femur. He was confused as well. “I thought there was a fracture at the femur.”
    Susan stared at the leg a long moment, then snatched at the zipper. “This is