Monday Mourning

Something was definitely there.

Digging a handheld lens from a drawer, I returned to the table.

Under magnification, details were clearer.

“Dr. LaManche,” I said. “Take a look at this.”

19"

"LAMANCHE CIRCLED THE TABLE AND I HANDED HIM THE LENS. He studied Parent’s dentition, then spoke without straightening.

“A feather.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

LaManche used forceps to transfer the feather to a plastic vial. Then he spread Parent’s jaws and examined her back teeth.

“I see no others.” Muffled through his mask.

“Luma-Lite?”

“Please.

As I dug the apparatus from a closet, Lisa transferred Parent to a gurney and rolled her next door to the X-ray room. By the time I rejoined them, she had also collected the granny gown and spread it on the X-ray table.

While LaManche and I donned orange-tinted plastic goggles, Lisa hooked up the Luma-Lite, an alternate light source composed of a black box and an enhanced blue fiber-optic cable. With it, we would be able to see trace evidence invisible to the naked eye.

“Ready?” Lisa asked.

LaManche nodded.

Lisa slipped on her goggles and hit the light switch.

In the dark, the pathologist began scanning Parent’s nightie. Here and there hairs lit up like tiny white wires. Lisa tweezed and transferred them into a plastic vial.

When we’d finished with the gown, LaManche turned to the corpse. Slowly, the light crept over Parent’s feet and legs. It probed the hills and valleys of her pubis, belly, rib cage, and breasts.

Nothing glowed but a few more hairs.

“They look identical to her head hair,” I said.

“Yes,” LaManche agreed.

Parent’s hands and fingernails yielded nothing. Her eyes, nostrils, and ears were clean.

Then the beam entered the dark recess of the woman’s mouth.

“Bonjour,” Lisa said in the darkness.

One molar sparked like phosphorous along the gum line.

“That’s not a hair,” I said.

Lisa withdrew the thing with forceps.

Though we worked another thirty minutes in the dark, our efforts produced only two more hairs, both fine and wavy like those of the victim.

When Lisa restored the lights, LaManche and I headed back to the autopsy room. There he opened the molar vial and examined the contents under magnification. It seemed a decade until he spoke.

“It is another feather fragment.”

LaManche and I exchanged glances, identical suspicions crossing our minds.

At that moment, Lisa reappeared with Mrs. Parent.