Examines corpse

I stared at the ragged stump of his neck. The head just wasn't there. Even though that's where heads go. Ditto his hands. A man should have a head. Should have hands. They shouldn't simply be gone.
The impression it left on me was unsettling-simply and profoundly wrong. Inside me, some little voice started screaming and running away. I stared down at the corpse, my stomach threatening insurrection again. I stared at his missing head, but aloud all I said was, "Gee. Wonder what killed him."
"What didn't kill him," Butters said. "I can tell you this much. It wasn't blood loss."
I frowned at Butters. "What do you mean?"
Butters lifted one of the corpse's arms and pointed down at dark mottling in the dead grey flesh, just where the corpse's back met the table. "See that?" he asked. "Lividity. If this guy had bled out, from his wrists or his neck either one, I don't think there'd be enough blood left in the body to show this much. His heart would have just kept on pumping it out of his body until he died."
I grunted. "If not one of the wounds, then what was it?"
"My guess?" Butters said. "Plague."
I blinked and looked at him.
"Plague," he said again. "Or more accurately plagues. His insides looked like models for a textbook on infection. Not all the tests have come back yet, but so far every one I've done has returned positive. Everything from bubonic plague to strep throat. And there are symptoms I've found in him that don't match any disease I've ever heard of."
"You're telling me he died of disease?" I asked.
"Diseases. Plural. And get this. I think one of them was smallpox."
"I thought smallpox was extinct," Murphy said.
"Pretty much. They have some in vaults, probably some in some bioweapon research facilities, but that's it."
I stared at Butters for a second. "And we're standing here next to his plague-ridden body why?"
"Relax," Butters said. "The really nasty stuff wasn't airborne. I disinfected the corpse pretty well. Wear your mask and don't touch it, you should be fine."
"What about the smallpox?" I said.
Butters's voice turned wry. "You're vaccinated."
"This is dangerous, though, isn't it? Having the body out like this?"
"Yeah," Butters said, his voice frank. "But County is full, and the only thing that's going to happen if I report an occurrence of free-range smallpox is another evaluation."
Murphy shot me a warning look and stepped a very little bit between me and Butters. "You got a time of death?"
Butters shrugged. "Maybe forty-eight hours ago, tops. All of those diseases seemed to sprout up at exactly the same time. I make cause of death as either shock or a massive failure and necrosis of several major organs, plus tissue damage from an outrageously high fever. It's anyone's guess as to which one gets the blue ribbon. Lungs, kidneys, heart, liver, spleen-"
"We get the point," Murphy said.
"Let me finish. It's like every disease the guy had ever had contact with all got together and planned when to hit him. It just isn't possible. He probably had more germs in him than blood cells."
I frowned. "And then someone Ginsued him after he died?"
Butters nodded. "Partly. Though the cuts on his chest weren't postmortem. They had filled with blood. Tortured before he died, maybe."
"Ugh," I said. "Why?"
Murphy regarded the corpse without any emotion showing in her cool blue eyes. "Whoever cut him up must have taken the arms and hands to make it hard to identify him after he died. That's the only logical reason I can think of."


Death Masks Chapter 5, Page 51-53