Smoke and Glory

•4•

"Detective griffin I got another call, I don't know who this person is but the messages are getting almost more theatening with each one and considering the fact that one of the calls, mentioned smoke and glory and all what does that even mean?" I say on the phone sitting in my car driving with a sense of tension and agression trying to get to the morgue as quickly as possible needing to do the autopsy on our latest victim of this maddened criminal. "Doc listen we attached a bug to your phone but it picked up nothing, whoever this is they seem to be able to bypass the bug and make it seem like you weren't being called when you were, they either have to work with the bug or have worked with it in the past,  or they have to be a tech genius to hack this, it doesn't make any sense. Anyway how close are you to the morgue?" She asks and I look out of my window to see any of the identifying markers that mean I'm going in the right direction. "Okay so I'm like 15- 20 minutes away so yeah when is the body getting there?" I ask resting the phone against my shoulder so I can make this turn off the motorway, "they recon about 30 mins away but I'm on my way in just a second my new captain wants to talk to me real quick but then I'll drive down and should get there by the time the body arrives." She says and i think for a second regarding what really has just happened, another body has dropped, and this person too is important, is it possible that we may have a serial killer on our hands? "Okay I'll see you there bye" I say suddenly realising that I am still on the phone and as I end the call I let my phone slip down my arm into my lap as I continue to drive. Around 10 minutes later I pull into the dingy yet familiar morgue car park, the fact that's it's darker and more foggy creates a simply eerie atmosphere, the fog concealing all the lights and the darkness staring down at the morgue as if to mark; here lies death. I climb out of my car and are hit with a sudden blow of cold air, as if everything around me just suddenly dropped dead and as I slam closed my car door and run towards the morgue,the cold battering my skin and the fog gets thicker and thicker as if it were hiding something. But I find the door and I open it walking into the morgue which too is cold, but that makes sense because right now I'm the only on in here, well except the night janitor and security guard, Luke, and I walk over behind the reception desk area and I switch on the thermostat and I can hear as the cranky radiators start to heat up and there randomly loose bolts rattle around in the back. I walk into my office and place on my overalls, the room goes dark as I flick the light switch off and watch each of my possessions get a dark and eerie fall over them. I walk down into the morgue hearing the ever one going buzzing of the giant freezer which is simply two doors away from me. I lay out my surgical tools onto the table and fiddle with the light for a minute to try and get it more focused on the table where the body will be laid. I then step back and begin the period of waiting while contemplating what this phone psycho has said to me and whether or not anything he says has been true, one line however is sticking in my head, 'hope you like the gift, smoke and glory and all' but why that line in particlar? I mean that isn't even really the worse one but somehow and I can't think where but I'm sure I've heard that line before but I just can't place my finger on where I've heard it. I get so caught up in my thoughts I don't hear detective griffin and the body enter until she appears in the morgue and starts talking. "Hello? Hello doc" she says as I fade back into realty and look up and smile. "Hey sorry got a bit lost in my thoughts, shall we begin" I say noticing the body being brought in and laid gently on the table and the paramedics walk out leaving me, detective griffin and the body alone. "So upon doing a outer examination I can tell that a gunshot was clearly involved going straight into the frontal lobe and out of the back of the head afterwards, but look here at the bruising around the neck, that could hint at strangulation, and there is also bruising down the back so that could hint at excessive trauma but I think they are the only signs of trauma on the body so let's open him up." I say as I cut the Y incisions along the stomach, and removing all the organs and what I find inside is doubly shocking as what we found on the outside, "he has smashed vertebrae, look here 4 cervical vertebrae are smashed and I think it appears to be 7 maybe 8 thoracic vertebrae are smashed, that hints the cause of death was either blunt force spine and neck trauma or strangulation and other things, if these were done first that is, but then why shoot him in the head, to check if he was dead maybe?" I ask detective griffin who is writing down each thing I say as i continue to prod around in the spinal area for any other signs of trauma none of which I can find. "I don't know, if your saying that those broken vertebrae could have killed him I think are killer would have known that, he seems smart, maybe he did it to make a statement, or maybe to showcase a form of dominance, power over his victim or power over well other killers" detective griffin says as I look closer at the entrance hole on the front of the head, getting ready to cut open the head and look at the brain, when I notice something inside of it, I grab my tweezers and I pull it out, and it's a small blood covered playing card, it's the 10 of diamonds and so blood covered that it's hardly recognisable. "Or maybe to hide a calling card" I say as I call her nearer and she looks closely at the blood stained card before we look at each other worried.