Momento Mori: Black Silk

The heavy bass of an industrial rock track thudded against the tiled walls of my domain, vibrating through the soles of my platform combat boots. It was the only way to drown out the silence of the dead. I danced between stations, teal scrubs fluttering under the sweep of my open lab coat, as I cataloged a tray of histology slides. My lanyard—a custom string of glittery resin skulls—jangled against my chest. My skull ring caught the morgue lights like a warning.

My lab sat in the basement of the Honolulu Police Department Headquarters—a windowless, high-tech fortress buried five floors beneath my father’s executive office. The department was perpetually underfunded but somehow always flush with federal tech grants, which meant I wasn’t just the Deputy Medical Examiner—I was the entire forensic science unit. Three specialists for the price of one, and the paycheck of a woman who could juggle a mass spectrometer, a ballistics tank, and a bone saw with still hands, all without spilling her coffee.

I reached for my oversized thermos—packed with triple-shot Kona coffee—and took a long, twitchy sip just as the double doors hissed open. The air in the room felt charged with static, but it wasn’t the heavy, oppressive kind. It felt like a spark. I slapped the off button on my stereo, plunging the morgue into a ringing silence.

“Doctor Kahele.”

My heart didn’t just skip a beat; it did a caffeinated backflip. I spun a bit too fast, my pigtails whipping against my shoulders. I offered a bright, wide-eyed smile to the man standing just inside the biohazard line.

“Detective Akana! Hi! Hello,” I blurted, the words tumbling out before my brain could catch them. “You’re in my lab. This is... this is a lab-based visit. Are you lost? Or did you just miss my exceptionally high-quality coffee?”

Keanu Akana didn’t bother with ceremony. He was already leaning against my prep counter, a faint, genuine smirk playing on his lips as he watched me scramble. He looked tired—dark circles under his eyes and a loosened tie suggesting he’d come straight down from the squad room—but his eyes were bright with a familiarity that went back to sandboxes and the time he’d helped me hide a stray kitten in my father’s garage.

He was the one person in this entire building who didn’t look at my pigtails and see a “failure”; he just saw Malia—the girl who used to challenge him to tree-climbing contests and always won because he’d let her.

“Morning, Lia,” he greeted, using the nickname he’d been calling me since I was six. He reached out and gave one of my pigtails a playful, familiar tug. “I could hear that noise from the elevator. Good to see you’re still trying to vibrate through the floorboards. I thought moving to the mainland for school might have made you boring.”

“Boring is a biological impossibility for me, and you know it!” I chirped, stepping toward him with a pep that was definitely a mix of the caffeine and the comfort of his presence. I didn’t hide the way my eyes brightened when I looked at him. I’d been in love with him for so long that it felt less like a secret and more like a chronic condition. “So! What’s the occasion? Do we have a Jane Doe? A mysterious poisoning? I’ve got the toxicology array running on that beach case, so I can fit you in between cycles.”

Keanu’s smirk softened, turning into something more guarded, but his hand stayed on the counter near mine, comfortable and close. He pulled a manila folder from his jacket. “I wish it were just a poisoning. The Chief sent me down. It’s the old refinery. Judge Miller.”

“The old sugar refinery?” I tilted my head, my hyperactive energy still buzzing. “I didn’t think anyone had been inside those towers for years. Is it a squatter situation? A structural accident? Because if you need me to do a site assessment for environmental toxins, I’ll need to grab my portable kit.”

“Look at the photos, Malia,” he whispered, sliding the folder toward me. His tone was heavy, but I didn’t catch the weight of it until I actually flipped the cover open.

My brain went quiet. The “Orchid” was biological. A masterpiece of evisceration. The Surgeon had used Judge Miller’s small intestine. Specifically, the jejunum. Pinned with surgical precision, it formed the delicate, ruffled petals of a Cattleya orchid.

“He’s back,” I whispered, my voice dropping an octave as I leaned into the photo, my analytical brain overriding the shock. “Fifteen years to the day. He’s following the anniversary to the hour.”

“He left a note,” Keanu said, stepping closer until his shoulder brushed mine. There was no hesitation in the contact; we’d spent half our lives in each other’s pockets. “A page from a 19th-century manual on thoracic procedures. Your father is... he’s not holding it together, Malia. He needs a definitive match on the signature. He said you’re the only one he trusts to process this.”

I closed the folder, my hands steadying as the science took over. “The intake van is two minutes out,” I said, my voice regaining its professional edge. “Suite 4 is private. We’ll do the intake here. Keanu... stay for the initial. I need a witness for the bag opening.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Lia,” he said, his voice dropping into that steady, reliable tone I remembered from childhood.

When the black bag was unzipped, the smell hit first. The cloying, fermented sweetness of the refinery mixed with the metallic tang of blood. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t turn away. To me, the smell was just another data point to be cataloged.

I snapped on a pair of bright purple nitrile gloves, the sound sharp in the silent room. Keanu stood by the wall, arms crossed, watching me. He wasn’t judging; he was simply there, a familiar anchor in a room full of ghosts. I stepped up to the table, my combat boots squeaking on the linoleum. Judge Miller’s chest had been opened with a perfect Y-shaped incision.

“The heart has been excised,” I said, my voice clear and melodic as I leaned into the thoracic cavity. “This is incredible work, Keanu. Truly. Clean extraction. No damage to the mediastinum or the great vessels. He used a number 10 blade for the primary incision and a number 15 for the internal ligation. He didn’t just kill him. He operated on him with more respect than some surgeons show the living.”

Keanu stepped closer, his shadow falling over the table. He looked at the incision with a strange, dark focus, his jaw set. “Why the heart? Why not the lungs? Or the brain?”

“Because the heart is the symbol of the life force,” I theorized, reaching for a probe to trace the line of the aorta. “The Surgeon doesn’t do anything by accident. If he wanted the lungs, he’d take the lungs. If he wanted the brain, he’d take the brain. He wants the heart.”

I looked up at Keanu. He was staring at me, his expression a mix of professional respect and a deep, unmasked worry. “You’re more like your father than you think,” he said softly. “You see the truth in the mess. You always did.”

“I just see the patterns,” I said, offering him a small, determined smile. “And this pattern? It’s familiar. It feels like I’m caught in a spider’s web and only just realizing how far the silk stretches.”

Keanu nodded, his hand reaching out to squeeze the back of my neck—a grounding, brotherly gesture that always made my pulse spike. His hand lingered for ten seconds—way too long for a ‘brotherly’ gesture—before he pulled away. He looked at the gold band on his finger, his jaw tightening. “I’ll call the Chief. Tell him the intake is complete and the signature matches. You’ve got it from here?”

I’ve got it, Keanu.” I flashed him a confident smile I didn’t entirely feel.

As he pushed the doors open, Officer Benji Harper was leaning against the glass. Fresh transfer from the mainland. Fresh academy shine. The kind of guy who thought two years of experience made him an expert, and being from the mainland made him better than us from our own island.

“Hell of a first day, Doc,” he called. His eyes flicked to my pigtails and then back to the body. “Didn’t realize the department let forensic interns work homicide. Hell, back in Seattle, we’d have the FBI crawling all over this by now.”

“Benji, you see anyone else in here? No? Then maybe learn the island before you try fixing it, mainland.” Keanu growled low.

I looked at the “Orchid” in the photos, then at the door where Keanu had just been. I was the girl who played loud music to keep the ghosts away. The girl who still believed every-body had a story to tell. Judge Miller’s story wasn’t finished. Neither was the Surgeon’s. And for the first time in fifteen years, I had a chance to finally hear the ending.

Once the double doors hissed shut and the latch clicked into place, the room felt truly mine again. I walked over to the stereo and punched the play button. The heavy industrial beat flooded back in, filling the void Keanu had left. I needed the rhythm. I needed the noise.

“Okay, Judge,” I murmured, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves. “Let’s find out what you’re hiding.”

I reached for a 20cc syringe and a long-gauge needle. With practiced ease, I palpated the femoral vein. I slid the needle in, drawing back dark, viscous post-mortem blood. I transferred the samples into purple, gray, and red-top vials, labeling them with a flick of my wrist. These went straight into the centrifuge, the machine’s high-pitched whine harmonizing with the bass of the music.

Next, I moved to the stomach. I made a long, longitudinal incision through the gastric wall, the smell of the Judge’s final meal rising to meet the disinfectant. “Saffron risotto,” I noted, peering through my loupe. “Seafood. Calamari, maybe? Digestion is minimal. Sixty to ninety minutes post-ingestion. You didn’t even get to enjoy your dessert, did you?”

I moved my light closer to the thoracic cavity, specifically focusing on the ribs. I ran my fingers along the bone. “No fractures,” I whispered. “But look at you... He polished you.” I leaned in closer. The edges where the ribs had been detached from the sternum weren’t just cut; they had been filed down, made smooth to the touch. The Surgeon wasn’t just an artist on the outside; he was a perfectionist on the inside.

Finally, I looked at the vascular ties. At the base of the great vessels, the Surgeon had used braided silk sutures. Black. Traditional. I used a pair of fine forceps to lift one of the knots. “Who still uses silk in a trauma situation?” I asked the silent room. “Someone who wants the knots to stay. Someone who likes the feel of the thread.”

For the first time all day, the Surgeon felt a little less like a ghost. I reached for the heavy, curved needle and the thick, waxed twine. I didn’t want the Millers to see their patriarch as a hollowed-out shell. I began the long, rhythmic process of the baseball stitch, the needle dipping in and out of the skin flaps. My movements were fast, caffeinated, and precise. I pulled the skin of the Y-incision together, creating the thick, crisscrossed pattern that restored the Judge’s dignity.

By the time I tied off the final knot at the base of his throat, I was sweating, but my mind was already arranging the evidence into patterns. I used a warm cloth to wipe away the prep fluids, tucking the white sheet up to his chin until he looked as if he were simply resting.

“Ready for burial,” I whispered.

I unlocked the hydraulic lift on the table and wheeled the Judge over to the cooler wall. I hit the foot pedal, the heavy steel door swinging open to reveal the chilled, dark slots. With a grunt, I slid the tray into unit 14. The heavy thud of the door closing felt like a period at the end of a very long sentence.

I stripped off my bloody outer gloves, tossing them into the biohazard bin, and headed for the lab benches. The centrifuge had finished its cycle. I pulled the vials out and moved them to the GC-MS—The Kraken.

“Okay, big guy,” I said, patting the machine’s casing as I loaded the serum sample. “Tell me everything. Give me the wine vintage, the risotto spices, and if we’re really lucky, whatever sedative he used to keep the Judge so quiet.”

While the Kraken began its digital deep dive, I sat down at my workstation, the blue light from three monitors reflecting in my glasses. I pulled up the HPD cold case archives, my pigtails brushing against my collar as I typed in the password. The digital files for the Orchid Surgeon were thin—mostly grainy photos and scanned notes from fifteen years ago.

I opened the new photos of Judge Miller’s “orchid” next to a photo of an earlier crime scene. I leaned in, my heart doing that twitchy caffeinated dance again.

“Same pins,” I whispered, counting the surgical staples. “Same tension on the mesenteric tissue. But the sutures...”

I pulled the black silk thread from my specimen jar and held it up to the screen, comparing it to the high-resolution macro shot of the Judge’s thoracic cavity. Then I opened the files from fifteen years ago. In the earlier cases, the killer had used standard nylon. I stared at the screen. Judge Miller’s body had been stitched with black silk. Something had changed. The discrepancy itch was real, a buzzing under my skin that refused to be ignored.

I stood up and crossed over to the evidence table, where the refinery haul was laid out in neat, heat-sealed bags. “Fingers first,” I murmured. I picked up the evidence bag containing the torn page of the manual. I moved it to the cyanoacrylate fuming chamber. I clicked the heater on and watched the white mist begin to swirl around the yellowed paper.

While the fumes did their magic, I turned my attention to the Judge’s clothes. I laid the expensive silk suit out on my secondary exam table, the fabric still smelling faintly of salt spray and expensive cologne. I scanned the fabric with a UV light, looking for traces.

“Are there traces of any gloves on the clothes?” I whispered. I lifted the specialized forensic lens to my eye. Nitrile. I could see the faint, microscopic residue of nitrile powder on the jacket’s shoulder. But nitrile was common—everyone from doctors to car mechanics used them. It was a lead, but frustratingly broad.

Then I moved to the sleeves. Near the cuff, hidden in the dark fabric, I found a smear of something dark and waxy.

“Not blood,” I said, sniffing it. “Industrial grease. Heavy-duty.”

I moved the sample to a slide and zoomed in. My caffeinated buzz started to fray into a cold, sharp realization. The Surgeon was supposed to be a master of precision, a ghost who left nothing behind but surgical perfection. So why was he covered in machine grease? Why would a meticulous killer smudge industrial lubricant onto a silk suit?

I pulled up the chemical breakdown on my screen. “Petroleum-based... high-viscosity additives...” I stared at the data, but for the first time today, the patterns didn’t make sense. It was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit the ‘Surgeon’ persona at all. It was too messy. Too blue-collar.

I leaned back, my brow furrowing as I stared at the blinking cursor. I was stumped. But in my world, being stumped was just another way of saying I hadn’t looked close enough yet.

I turned back to my computer, the keyboard clacking rapidly as I finalized the official report. My fingers hesitated for a second over the ‘industrial grease’ finding. That same obsessive attention to detail had ended my brief career on patrol. I opened a secondary, encrypted drive and created a new folder. I dragged the high-res scans of the silk sutures and the chemical breakdown of the grease into it. Then, I pulled a small, glittery skull-shaped flash drive from my pocket and initiated a transfer.

Shadow files. Just in case the official ones decided to go for a walk.

I closed my laptop’s lid and looked at the clock. It had been 8:00 AM when Keanu walked in. Now, the digital display read 6:42 PM. The day had vanished into the abyss of the Judge’s chest cavity. I was exhausted, my caffeine levels hitting that dangerous plateau where my hands were steady but my brain felt like it was floating in neon static.

I walked over to the corner of the lab I’d claimed as my own—a little nook hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain I’d hung to block out the sterile white light. This was my sanctuary. There was a mismatched vintage armchair, a shelf full of old medical texts, and a small vanity mirror covered in stickers.

I peeled off my blood-stained scrubs, leaving me in just my silk camisole. I caught my reflection in the mirror, my eyes tracking the black ink that crawled across my skin. On my left forearm, I had an anatomical heart tangled in blooming nightshade—a piece I’d gotten the day I passed my boards. Across my ribs, a geometric owl clutched a scalpel in its talons. They were my secret maps, the parts of me that the department didn’t get to see.

I reached for my street clothes. I pulled on a pair of high-waisted black denim jeans with fishnets underneath, the rips showing. I pulled on a fitted black crop top embroidered with silver anatomical hearts along the neckline. It showed just enough skin to annoy the department’s dress code and just enough tattoo ink to make the brass nervous. I threw on a fitted leather jacket adorned with silver studs and small, girly pink ribbons I’d tied to the zippers—a look that was entirely too loud for the HPD. I laced up my platform boots, the extra three inches of height making me feel a little more ready to face the testosterone-heavy floors above. I reapplied my signature smudge of glittery black eyeliner and let my wavy white hair fall loose over my shoulders and down to my waist.

I grabbed the manila folder, the official report tucked inside. The glittery skull flash drive was tucked safely into the secret pocket of my jacket.

The elevator ride up from the basement felt like a journey between worlds. The quiet, sterile peace of the morgue was replaced by the low, frantic hum of the squad room. Even at nearly seven in the evening, the fifth floor was a swarm of activity. Phones were ringing, printers were chattering, and the air smelled of stale pizza and desperation.

I navigated the maze of desks, my platform boots thumping on the carpet. Everyone looked at me as I passed—some with skepticism, some with annoyance at my “alternative” presence—but I kept my eyes on the corner office. I found Keanu’s desk near the back, piled high with files and cold coffee cups.

He was there, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, his tie loosened, and his jaw shadowed by a day’s worth of stubble. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the entire island on his shoulders. For a second, I considered letting him sleep.

“Kiki?” I said softly, standing by the edge of his desk.

He opened his eyes, and for a split second, that familiar, warm smirk returned before he actually saw me. His eyes swept over me in surprise before he seemed to catch himself. The faint flush creeping up his neck told me I’d won whatever silent battle had just happened in his head.

“Lia,” he rumbled, his voice a little lower than usual as he straightened up in his chair. “I keep forgetting you aren’t that kid who used to hide in my locker anymore. That... is quite the recovery outfit.”

“It’s my ‘I just spent ten hours inside a Judge’ outfit,” I countered, feeling a familiar spark of heat in my cheeks. “The Captain hasn’t tried to tase me yet, so I think I’m safe.”

Keanu huffed a small, tired laugh, but his gaze stayed on me a second too long before he reached for the manila folder. “He’s probably too tired to notice. But I noticed.”

I held out the report, but my hand brushed against the flash drive hidden in my pocket. “I’m done. And Keanu? He was sloppy this time, but not by much.”

For the first time in fifteen years, the Surgeon felt less like a ghost and more like a man. And men could make mistakes.