Read the Forgotten Man (2005) for Free Online

said, "This is nothing. We have three rooms like this."
    "Are all these people waiting to be autopsied?"
    "Oh, no. Most of the bodies you see here are waiting to be claimed by their next of kin, or identified."
    "You get many you can't identify?"
    "We bag around three hundred John Does a year, but we put a name to most of them. Doesn't matter where they come from, either. We've had illegals from Mexico, Central America, even China, and we've run'm down. We'll name your guy, too."
    Several pairs of feet were so translucent I could see a dim smudge of bones within the flesh. Beckett explained that some of the bodies had been on the racks so long the fluids had drained from the tissue; they had been waiting for years.
    Beckett brought us past the racks to a gurney at the far end of the room.
    "Okay, here we go. You'll need gloves if you want to touch something."
    We gloved up, then Beckett peeled open the plastic. John Doe #05-1642 was naked, with a brown paper bag between his knees and a case file clipped to the gurney. The bag contained his bloodied clothes, which would be placed in a drying room before they were examined. Beckett removed the bag, then stood back.
    Diaz said, "Jesus, Pardy was right. This guy thought he was the Illustrated Man."
    Beckett grunted at the body like it was a lab specimen.
    "Weird, huh? I've never seen one like this, the way he did it. All the tats are upside down."
    Crucifixes of differing sizes and designs dotted his forearms and thighs and belly, all of them upside down. The tattoos were upside down because they were self-inflicted. They would have been right-side up as he looked at them when he pushed ink into his skin. Some of the crosses were brittle thin lines, but others were blocky structures with shading and shadows. Weeping Jesuses and upside-down words were spread between the crosses: PAIN, MERCY, GOD, FORGIVE ME. They looked like they had been drawn by a child. I felt queasy. These marks were not religious; he had desecrated himself.
    When I glanced at Diaz, she was watching me again. I felt a bubble of irritation.
    "What is it? You think I look like him?"
    "You don't look anything like him. Do the tattoos ring a bell?"
    "Of course not. It's nothing but crosses."
    Diaz glanced at Beckett.
    "Does he have more on his back?"
    "Uh-uh. It's all in front where he could reach. None of his ink is identifying-like the name of a ship, or a gang sign, or something like that-it's just what you see."
    Diaz frowned at the body, then shook her head.
    "Okay, I want you to check him for sex. If you get a smear, log it for DNA."
    "Pardy already told me."
    "Fine. Dope, too. He was in that alley for something."
    Beckett shifted the bag to make a note, and the bag gave me an idea.
    "Did you see if his name was in his clothes?"
    Beckett grinned.
    "Always, and inside his shoes, too. I got burned like that on my first case-here's this dude, flattened with no ID and no prints in the file, turns out his mama wrote his name inside his belt, and that's how we made the ID."
    I nodded, and looked back at Diaz.
    "And you didn't find any rings, watches, a wallet-"
    "He was stripped, Cole. Just the clippings and seven cents."
    I studied the body again, feeling remote and detached. His chest was smooth and thin beneath the tattoos, with a farmer's tan showing pale flesh against dark arms. Other than a thin scrape at the base of his neck, no other marks were apparent. The lower half of his body showed a mottled lividity where his blood settled; the bloodless tissue above had taken on a waxy sheen that seemed to highlight the tattoos. The pucker of the entry hole was purple and blue with a pepper of gunpowder particulate surrounding it. He had been shot close, the muzzle not more than two feet away. His fingers showed no evidence of rings, but his left wrist carried the pale outline of a missing watch. A faint dimple crossed the outside of his hip below his left pelvis, so slight it might have been a fold or a crease.
    I