doors at the end of the short hall, beside which was a visiting civil servant, dutifully recording death certificates and filing them like so many paper tombstones. An effigy of science attesting to their death rather than a eulogy of a life however spent.
"Tell me you have something for me, boys. I'm running out of time here," the deputy said as he came upon the shining table on which lay the remains of Champ. He stood on one side with Oscarson while Klein stood on the other, beside a tray of used instruments. They had done their grisly deed, the evidence up to the elbows of the latex gloves encasing David's hands, which even now held a serrated tool curved in a wicked, crescent shape.
The Rottweiller was laid open, the abdomen gutted like a side of beef prepared for market. Roth looked at the adjoining receptacles at either end of the table. They were not only cleaned. They were empty.
"Looking for something? Klein asked, casting a knowing glance to his nodding partner before returning his gaze to the deputy.
Roth had no time for games. "You know damn well I am. Where are his organs?"
"That's just it," Oscarson replied for his associate. "There aren't any. This poor animal was robbed of his vital organs from his heart, lungs, lower intestines and everything in between. They weren't ravaged, at least not as far as we can tell. Everything was done with such precision and so quickly that only sheer brutality could account for how completely this dog was eviscerated."
"Excuse me. Eviscerated?"
Knowing he understood the term and wanted a more detailed explanation, Klein lay down his implements of dissection and took up a pose of lecture. "There was no other wound, deputy, other than the one here on the neck. As you can see, it is less than three inches in circumference. It is round, which we consider significant. From the trauma to the opening, we surmised that there had to have been an initial bite to penetrate the neck for the purposes of draining the blood."
Without pausing, Oscarson took up the dissertation by pulling down the magnified lamp to show a close up of the area at the base of the neck. "Although there was no other wound we could find, there were, among the lacerations on the side of the neck toward the base of the skull and the collarbone, puncture marks we supposed were intended to hold the mouth in place while the assailant fed."
"But, what you're telling me is that it wasn't only after the blood?"
"Precisely, Deputy Jacobs. Outwardly, the flesh is for the most part undisturbed. Inwardly, the residue, what little there is, tells us that the respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems were literally dissolved, scrambled and taken out, by whatever means, through this opening in the throat."
Roth examined the wound and found, five inches of each side at perpendicular angles, the slight crease of puncture marks, just as the coroners described. The edges of the hole were pressed outward; as if whatever made them had entered in through this point, but had expanded to allow for whatever it brought out of the body of the dog.
"How is this possible? What you're saying is that something flexible was inserted to travel down Champ's gullet, then was made rigid enough to swizzle the innards into a liquid and consumed. Am I right so far?"
"Remarkably so, deputy," Klein replied. "Think of the spider."
"Also the mosquito," Oscarson countered.
"Quite so, my esteemed colleague. I forgot to mention the female anopheles. Thank you."
Roth was getting tired of the continental decorum between the two coroners and said as much. In response, Klein picked up a forceps and drew apart the folds of the wound while his partner donned a pair of surgical gloves and, by hand, separated the even cut down the Rottweiller's torso. Drawing the mirror downward to the belly of the dog after a closer examination of the neck, Roth Jacobs was surprised to learn that, although the two areas were unscarred, they were hardly clean.
He hadn't noticed a corrosion initially around the opening of the wound. In the case of the neck, it would have been impossible to tell without penetrating the opening to look at the interior tissue. The inner wall of the abdomen gave a clearer picture of just what the animal, still alive at the time, had been subjected, to presumably by the creature Ramirez described.
"The musculature has been scraped clean, leaving nothing of the connecting tissues of any vital organ," Oscarson said as he held open the dissection for the deputy's closer examination. "It is our estimation that, whatever did this to your friend's dog, first injected high levels of seratonin to subdue the animal at the base of the skull and directly into the bloodstream at the jugular venous distention. Poor beast had little idea what was happening to him after that."
That would explain how the was bull dropped without a fight, or even this potentially vicious breed of dog.
"Seratonin? Then you're telling me this thing produces it for injection, like a snake would venom?"
"It would seem so. I'm not saying that it produces seratonin, but like melatonin and certain neurotoxin and hallucinogenic drugs, it causes the subject to manufacture massive amounts of additional seratonin in a very short time. The purpose again would be to subdue the animal bitten by creating in it either a euphoric or catatonic state. We can only hope the poor beast was sufficiently anesthetized not to have suffered much."
Roth nodded as he shook off the sensation these men at least considered whatever committed this act to be somehow merciful to its victims. "Can you get me a work up of the composition of this enzyme, amino acid or whatever you call it? I want to know what is in its spit right up to the DNA, if you can get it for me."
"Already on its way, but I'm afraid it will take a few days. We have connections in Austin with the University of Texas. I wouldn't get my hopes up, though," Oscarson cautioned. "If this creature is as strange as we all agree it may be, a match will not be forthcoming soon, if at all. Besides, technically it is a venom. As for its 'spit', we have already discovered its composition."
Roth looked to Klein and back to Emil. They were smiling broadly at one another and their collective ingenuity. With a shrug and a hand gesture, David allowed Oscarson to do the honors in continuing their earlier discussion. "It is as we described with the spider and the mosquito. A common variety spider will bite to inject its poison into its prey. It initially induces a catatonic state, which subdues and eventually paralyzes its victim.”
“This allows the spider time to drag the victim back to its lair, where the poison will cause necrosis and eventually liquefy the internal organs for easier digestion. This creature, whatever it may be, can perform the same function on a much larger scale in much less time. It is far more acidic, at ten times the level capable of the human stomach. It is this same acid formation that emulates the chemical changes in muscle tissue, resulting in the rapid onset of rigor mortis you discovered."
Roth was still not satisfied. "Even so, the liquefaction process should still take time. Now, you said that all the major abdominal organ systems were missing. I've got a feeling that this is where we jump from the spider to the mosquito. Am I right?"
"Yes, more than you realize," Klein agreed. "Remember how we said the wound was initially a perfectly round but smaller opening which later became stretched after the creature began to feed? We believe, as the teeth or fangs latched on to its victim with the same tenacity as claws to maintain its grip, that a proboscis, like that on a mosquito, was inserted into the body cavity, with one notable difference."
Roth felt knots tighten in his stomach. Here it comes.
"We believe that whatever did this has an extraordinarily long 'tongue', for lack of a better term. We feel it connects directly to the stomach and can reach to a length sufficient to penetrate a victim up to at nearly its body size. It would have to be in order to have scraped the abdominal lining as it did. It is also by this method, again we suppose, that acidity was released into the body of this dog and was then acted upon by a whipping motion sufficient to dislodge and liquefy the organs. In essence, the digestive process began outside of the creature."
"So the tongue acts like a mosq
uito's proboscis but can be made flexible with a harder exterior to penetrate the body cavity. It might even be barbed, if the scrapes on the abdominal lining are any indication. Anything else?"
"Not at the moment," Oscarson replied, a sentiment echoed by David Klein.
Jacobs turned and headed for the exit. He had to get to work. Stopping only momentarily, he remembered both his manners and his duty. "Oh, great work. By the way, there's a bull I need you to take a look at out at the Syke's place on 134 just this side of Caddo Lake. He may have moved it already into cold storage. Call the office for his telephone number and directions. Same scenario. Let me know when you get a response to your samples from the university. Thanks again, both of you!"
Roth trotted along the hallway past the morgue until he reached the outer doors. Glad to breathe the clean air again, he pushed his way outside just in time to see Jeremy Borjon's late model sedan with the press tag hanging from the lowered passenger side visor. The 'Jefferson Observer' publisher pulled alongside the brown and gold patrol car, just near enough to keep the impatient deputy from being able to open his door.
"What do you want, Borjon? You seem to be dogging my every step, these days."
"Just information, deputy. Yours and mine. Look, I already know you're not too happy with me for