Empties Read Free

one out there. Take my word for it, son, there never was anyone there. You don’t believe me? Go look outside. I mean really look outside. There’s nothing there! It’s all dark!”  
    “Then why are you talking to me?” Benek had asked.  
    The drunk had roared with laughter and said, “You don’t get it, do you?” It had not been a question, but an arrogant assertion of fact. Logic was long gone. “You really don’t get it at all?” he had repeated, as if catching a simple mistake in addition.  
    “What?” Benek had asked.  
    “I’m talking to myself,” the drunk had mumbled as he fell asleep.  
     
     

 
     
    2
     
     
    “I want to ask you about this autopsy report,” Benek said from the doorway. The large office was well stocked with plants, clearly belonging to a man who had made something pleasant of his workplace.  
    The overweight, balding coroner did not look up from his desk. “You can want all you want, but my open door does not mean you don’t have to knock. Who are you?”  
    “Sorry,” Benek said as he came forward and put the report on the man’s neatly arranged desk. “Detective Benek, homicide, 6th Precinct, annex A.”  
    “Annex A?” He smiled to himself, as if the annex address had a special meaning.  
    “Yes,” Benek said.  
    The coroner glanced at the file and sighed. “It’s exactly as I put it down, Detective Benek.”  
    Benek said, “I’d like more on this one.”  
    “More of what?” the man said softly.  
    In the week since the report had arrived on Benek’s desk, no one at the precinct, including Captain Reddy, had shown the slightest curiosity about the odd details. So Benek had decided to use some of the initiative that Reddy was always prattling about. If something smells, Reddy would say, then follow it up—but try not to waste the city’s money.  
    The coroner looked up finally, obviously irritated. “What do you want from me?” His blue eyes were youthful, and seemed happier than the rest of his face, as if he were living somewhere else. “Why complicate your life and mine with this nonsense?”  
    “What’s your opinion?” Benek asked, trying to sound polite.  
    The coroner smiled. “Don’t waste any more of our time on what’s obviously a medical student’s prank.”  
    “But your report seems to rule that out.”  
    The coroner sighed again and put his work aside. “Sit down, Detective.” The look of living somewhere else faded from his eyes and he seemed resigned to the here and now.  
    Benek lowered himself into the wooden chair. It creaked under him.  
    The coroner asked, “How long have you been with homicide?”  
    “Three years.”  
    “And before?”  
    “I was a sergeant.”  
    “Married?”  
    “No.”  
    “Girlfriend?”  
    Benek didn’t answer. He had always been suspicious of the game between the sexes, whatever that meant. Men were the predators, sex an invasive physical act, pleasure the reward for the mere attempt to reproduce, with no guarantees. About as much fun as picking flowers. The players had no choice about playing the game, whose rewards shone in the short term, and the difficulties were revealed when it was too late to back out. Good looks made men and women mad and stupid, ill with each other, as Aristotle put it, and to see through the game left you with nothing to see in your wise unhappiness.  
    “If you were married, or had a girlfriend, you wouldn’t worry about things like this. You’d do your job and go home, eat, and get laid. Must have taken you at least half an hour to get down here. Think of the crooks you might have stopped in that time.”  
    “I’m on my lunch hour,” Benek said, then leaned forward and asked, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”  
    The coroner sighed even more impatiently and replied, “No, I haven’t, ever—but so what? Have you?”  
    “Then how was the skull emptied without being opened?”  
    “You don’t