Phantoms Read Free Page B

decay.
    On close inspection, the dark, mottled skin did not appear to be the result of tissue deterioration. Jenny couldn’t locate any certain, visible signs of ongoing decomposition: no lesions, no blistering, no weeping pustules. Because they were composed of comparatively soft tissue, a corpse’s eyes usually bore evidence of physical degeneration before most other parts of the body. But Hilda Beck’s eyes—wide open, staring—were perfect specimens. The whites of her eyes were clear, neither yellowish nor discolored by burst blood vessels. The irises were clear as well; not even milky, postmortem cataracts obscured the warm, blue color.
    In life, there had usually been merriment and kindness in Hilda’s eyes. She had been sixty-two, a gray-haired woman with a sweet face and a grandmotherly way about herself. She spoke with a slight German accent and had a surprisingly lovely singing voice. She had often sung while cleaning house or cooking, and she had found joy in the most simple things.
    Jenny was stricken by a sharp pang of grief as she realized how very much she would miss Hilda. She closed her eyes for a moment, unable to look at the corpse. She collected herself, suppressed her tears. Finally, when she had reestablished her professional detachment, she opened her eyes and went on with the examination.
    The longer she looked at the body, the more the skin seemed bruised . The coloration was indicative of severe bruising: black, blue, and a deep sour yellow, the colors blending in and out of one another. But this was unlike any contusion Jenny had ever seen. As far as she could tell, it was universal; not even one square inch of visible skin was free of it. She carefully took hold of one sleeve of the dead woman’s housedress and pulled it up the swollen arm as far as it would easily slide. Under the sleeve, the skin was also dark, and Jenny suspected that the entire body was covered with an incredible series of contiguous bruises.
    She looked again at Mrs. Beck’s face. Every last centimeter of skin was contusive. Sometimes, a victim of a serious auto accident sustained injuries that left him with bruises over most of his face, but such a severe condition was always accompanied by worse trauma, such as a broken nose, split lips, a broken jaw . . . How could Mrs. Beck have acquired bruises as grotesque as these without also suffering other, more serious injuries?
    “Jenny?” Lisa said. “Why’re you taking so long?”
    “I’ll only be a minute. You stay there.”
    So . . . perhaps the contusions that covered Mrs. Beck’s body were not the result of externally administered blows. Was it possible that the discoloration of the skin was caused, instead, by internal pressure, by the swelling of subcutaneous tissue? That swelling was, after all, vividly present. But surely, in order to have caused such thorough bruising, the swelling would have had to have taken place suddenly, with incredible violence. Which didn’t make sense, damn it. Living tissue couldn’t swell that fast. Abrupt swelling was symptomatic of certain allergies, of course; one of the worst was severe allergic reaction to penicillin. But Jenny was not aware of anything that could cause critical swelling with such suddenness that hideously ugly, universal bruising resulted.
    And even if the swelling wasn’t simply classic postmortem bloat—which she was sure it wasn’t—and even if it was the cause of the bruising, what in the name of God had caused the swelling in the first place? She had ruled out allergic reaction.
    If a poison was responsible, it was an extremely exotic variety. But where would Hilda have come into contact with an exotic poison? She had no enemies. The very idea of murder was absurd. And whereas a child might be expected to put a strange substance into his mouth to see if it tasted good, Hilda wouldn’t do anything so foolish. No, not poison.
    Disease?
    If it was disease, bacterial or viral, it was not like