Digger - The Doctor Will See You Now by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 18

As Ryan searched the Portland area for the heavier items he needed, the tools he had ordered began to arrive -- scalpels, tissue scissors, drapes and surgical towels. The list went on. He fashioned retractors from eating utensils. Spoons and forks were ideal. Using a hammer, he pounded them flat, then tapped the ends into curved shapes capable of holding a body cavity open. But there was still one thing missing. Opening a body meant exposing fluids, and Ryan needed some form of drainage system. He knew that a dead body doesn’t bleed due to the settling of blood, but there would still be fluids to drain out. What he wanted, ideally, was a suction machine. It would both remove and contain body fluids and chemicals. He would dispose of them at another time, far from the cabin. And in time, Ryan would also determine where to dispose of the bodies once he was finished with them.

Typing the keywords ‘homemade suction’ into the browser of his laptop, it didn’t take long for Ryan to find a simple design for a suction pump. It was based on the flow of water from one large glass jug into another. It didn’t rely on power, and the only other thing it needed was some surgical tubing. It would, however, require some degree of maintenance, as the water jug would need frequent filling and the receiving jug would need to be emptied just as often. To keep the basement from filling with the eventual odor of decomposition, Ryan placed a few standing fans around the basement, pointing toward the door. He planned to use a ten percent bleach solution to keep instruments and other tools clean. Plastic sheets had also been purchased for the purpose of covering the table. Ryan wanted to keep the mess to a minimum.

Now that everything was prepared, Ryan began, using the copper rod, probing the ground around the cabin. It seemed to be a matter of touch—learning to feel rocks and other things through the rod. Tapping and scraping. And after a few days of practice, he found it easy to determine what lay at the end of the rod. Everything had been planned out to a fault. Ryan, having gone over everything several times, concluded that the only item he needed now was a body to work with.

He started making the rounds of Portland’s cemeteries, walking through the back sections, looking at the gravestones from the most recent dates. Ryan also began looking more closely at the newspaper, reading the obituaries and funeral notices. As long as he could find the funeral homes where services were being held, he could simply follow the body to its resting place. Mapping the cemeteries would also be necessary, and Ryan spent several hours printing out maps, finding out which sections he wanted to go to and also where the fastest way in and out would be. Chances were pretty good both routes would be the same. But above all, he needed to establish the shortest way out of each cemetery. He could not afford to be seen.

Finally, Ryan was ready. His plan was to arrive at the cemetery near the airport at about one in the morning. There was an old dirt road behind the property that stopped at the edge of the cemetery. Once he arrived, he would be sure to wear gloves to avoid leaving any fingerprints behind. With all these preparations and precautions, it never occurred to Ryan that he was about to commit a criminal act. The only thing he saw was the opportunity to learn and, on some level, to fulfill a deep curiosity regarding death. Now, he would begin where he left off at UNE. The only difference he saw was where the cadavers were coming from, and they were no longer of use, except to him.

The next night found Ryan in the back of the cemetery near the Portland Jetport. He found a grave that, with the use of the copper rod, found it to be ‘unprotected’ -- buried without a vault. Digging went quickly and when his shovel struck the wooden lid of the casket, Ryan stopped, kneeled down, and brushed the dirt away. He felt around the edges, and upon lifting the lid closest to the gravestone, discovered the body of a woman. She had a modest build, and her hair was dyed a deep cherry red. He stood up and looked at the name on the gravestone. “Linda,” he whispered.

Kneeling back down, Ryan looked closely at her lifeless face.

The mortuary technician had done a good job of preserving skin tone and the shape of the eyes. “Well, Linda,” Ryan began.

He didn’t expect a conversation. But even a casual, one-sided conversation seemed to help, in some small way, to fulfill his fascination with death. “I have plans for you.”

She couldn’t have been in the ground for more than three or four days. Her skin had become discolored, but still clung to the underlying tissue.

Ryan pulled her out of the casket and wrapping her body in a large tarp, he tied a rope around it at the ankles, knees, waist, chest, and neck. He was fairly strong and carried her body back to his car, returning within minutes to retrieve the shovel. By the time he drove away, the only thing Ryan left behind was a six-foot-deep hole and an empty casket. As far back as it was, there was a good chance it wouldn’t be discovered for at least a few days.

He drove the dirt road with the car lights off. With the driver’s window rolled down, Ryan listened for the sound of approaching traffic. If he even thought he heard something, he would stop, shut off the engine, and wait. This happened only once, and it was the product of a paranoid imagination. Driving out onto the main road, Ryan turned left and headed out of town, toward Sebago. With the body in the trunk of his car, the drive seemed to take forever. But roughly forty-five minutes later, he turned off onto the dirt road leading to the cabin. As he entered, Ryan shut off the car’s headlights and drove slowly down the two miles to his cabin. Under the continued cloak of darkness, Ryan dragged the wrapped body into the basement. He lifted it off the floor and laid it on the table. Leaving it wrapped in the tarp, he walked back up the basement stairs and collapsed on the couch, and, out of exhaustion, fell into a deep sleep, waking late the next morning.

After his morning coffee, Ryan showered, dressed and walked down to the basement. The body still lay on the table, wrapped in the green tarp purchased for the purpose of transport. He cut the ropes off and opened the tarp. Under the ceiling light, the body seemed to be in better condition than he had first thought. The skin was still taught and pushing a finger gently into a hand he noticed a marked flexibility of the skin, indicating the beginning of breakdown. As Ryan continued moving the hand’s tissue in various directions, the skin suddenly tore broadly across the knuckles. Its disintegration became apparent when it slid down over the knuckles, de-gloving itself from the underlying tissue and peeling off the fingers. Ryan picked up the small pile of dead tissue and tossed it into a nearby bucket. It would be disposed of later, along with any other bits he deemed of no use.

He turned his attention to the face. The mortuary technician’s treatment of the face was a work of art -- lifelike to the point of surreal. Ryan carefully separated the lips and with a pair of tissue scissors clipped the string holding the mouth closed. Gently pulling it out, he opened the mouth and made a thorough inspection of the teeth, tongue, and throat. The mouth’s interior was a waxy white but otherwise unremarkable. With a thumb and forefinger, he opened an eye and discovered the placement of a mortuary eye cap. After death, the body’s tissues begin to dehydrate -- including the eyes -- causing them to shrink, creating a sunken appearance. The eye caps make them appear of normal size, giving the face a lifelike appearance. Ryan opened each as far as the eyelids would stretch and with a pair of forceps picked out the eye caps. Resting one on the tip of his index finger, he also noticed rows of small teeth, and also assumed they acted to hold the eye closed. Putting them in a small glass jar of alcohol, Ryan set it in one of the cabinets as a postmortem curiosity.

Beginning the process of disrobing the body, he chose to simply cut the clothing off. Later, he would start a small fire behind the cabin and burn them. He made short work of it, exposing the entire body and as he did, Ryan noticed the absence of a ‘Y’ incision, the product of an autopsy. “Well, look at you,” he said.

His growing fascination with the dead led Ryan to engage the deceased in a one-sided conversation. A reply was, of course, highly unlikely.

“Looks like you checked out at a hospital.” After cutting away the clothes, he moved up to the head. Turning it aside, Ryan fumbled through the hair, looking for a suture line. Some autopsies are limited to one particular organ system. But his hope was that the brain would be intact, and was very pleased to discover there were no sutures.

Examining the rest of the body, Ryan was careful not to put too much pressure on the skin. He had already damaged one of the hands and didn’t want any more accidents. “So,” he whispered. “Where should we start?” Ryan was still talking to the corpse. In time, this would become a habit, and he stared at the dead woman’s face as though listening to her response.

“Oh, okay,” he continued. “If that’s what you want.” Picking up the scalpel, he carved a line around the back of the head, pausing momentarily to put on a pair of heavy kitchen gloves. Surgical gloves were expensive, and these were reusable. All they needed for cleaning was a bit of bleach solution. His initial incision was shallow, and tracing over it, Ryan sliced down to the skull. The scalp, as well as its underlying muscle, were absent of any connections to the skull, and he simply slipped his thumbs under the incised flesh and stretched it over the front of the skull. He had acquired a handheld electric tool with interchangeable parts. It was perfect for cutting through bone. Plugging it into a nearby wall outlet, Ryan began sawing around the widest portion of the skull. He noticed some fluid oozing from the narrow channel he was creating, and upon removing the skull cap, he was taken aback as the brain tumbled out like molten Jell-O. The brain is quick to decompose, and after only two or three days, it begins to liquefy. This organ had turned to soup and was entirely unusable. If Ryan could acquire a body from a morgue, he might have a chance of obtaining an intact brain. But the chances of such a find were next to nothing, and the risk of getting caught was too high. Ryan would have to wait, hoping to encounter the right set of circumstances.

“Fuck!” Ryan cursed.

The fluid-filled brain case emptied itself, covering Ryan’s gloves and falling over the edge of the table onto his shoes. He stood back in disgust and looking down at his filth-soaked shoes, loudly cursed.

“Son of a bitch!”

The mess of viscous fluid would never come out, and his shoes were ruined. But for now, he would proceed. He made a ‘Y’ incision across the collarbones, down the chest and deep into the lower abdomen. He used the sheet metal scissors to cut through the ribs on each side of the chest. The scissors were sharp enough, but this didn’t prevent a few bone chips from soaring across the room.

Removing each organ, Ryan laid them out on a row of surgical towels. He compared them to the images in his textbook and, after writing a few notes, photographed them. After rinsing the organs with water, Ryan immersed each in its own glass jar of alcohol. He felt that storing them would provide a continued opportunity for study, dissecting them later. Using his makeshift suction machine, he cleared the now-empty body cavities of reddish-brown fluid. He closed the ‘Y’ incision with braided silk suture. It was very thin, yet extremely strong. Having placed a dozen large screw hooks into the ceiling beam, Ryan wrapped the body in plastic, bound its feet and arms, and hung it by its ankles.

The entire process consumed his day and a good portion of the night. Letting his badly soiled kitchen gloves soak in the bleach solution, Ryan walked up the basement stairs and into the kitchen. He was mentally exhausted but knew the value of a hot meal. The next day was spent examining organs and pictures, examining every detail. Ryan was continuing to learn, having reclaimed his purpose -- at least in his mind. But on a deeper level, his fascination with death had not been fully satisfied, and he was not nearly aware how far he would go to fulfill that need. Anatomically, everyone presents some variation of structure and arrangement. But his fascination with death fueled his craving for the collection of more bodies, and he thought of how exciting it would be to find a body riddled with cancer. But obtaining one in that condition would be a purely fortunate stroke of luck. For now, Ryan would take the time to study every piece of information he had collected.