Jernigan gave Ticer’s wife, Cecily, some earrings made from gold bought with his military pension, and he crafted a wishing-well bucket for Ticer. Ticer was as trusting of the murderer as Jernigan’s friends had been; he would have trusted him with his own young daughter. Even on death row Jernigan would write to the stepchildren from his failed marriage. Smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and sipping a Pepsi, he would discuss legal strategy with Ticer until finally there wasn’t quite so much to be strategic about. “Paul,” Ticer more or less said, “things are not going well. I guess I have to talk about your burial arrangements if they’re going to execute you. I know your family doesn’t have a lot of money.” And it was there in the Ellis prison in Huntsville that Ticer learned of The Gift. Neither knew Jernigan would eventually become the Visible Man. Mark Ticer tried for a stay of execution up to the last minute. Aware of Ticer’s devotion to him, Jernigan asked his lawyer not to witness his last minutes. Death was almost instant. Paul Jernigan died much more smoothly than he had lived. The state anatomical board, a subcontractor of the University of Colorado, took it from there. Jernigan got one and a half gallons of 1 percent formalin. That was a light touch. Often cadavers are embalmed with ten gallons of a stronger preservative, and they sit and pickle for a year, so that when medical students cut them up all the tissues are gray. But the idea here, in case Jernigan won the Visible Man honors, was to keep his tissue looking nice and bright like prime meat; the students would be able to enjoy a better, more realistic view. Writing this chapter, I pondered the use of the state anatomical board as a cadaver procurer. Thank God the board was separate from the court system. Given the rage for businesslike government, I could just imagine some of the wilder politicians setting up an execution quota to work toward a balanced state budget. But the real reason for the use of Jernigan’s corpse was more prosaic. Texas had one of the best cadaver-donation programs in the country, and of some 2,000 bodies that year, his just happened to show up at the right time and in the right condition. A Learjet flew Jernigan from Texas to Colorado. Awaiting him were the masterminds of the dissection effort at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Victor Spitzer specialized in radiology and cellular and structural biology; David Whitlock was a professor of cellular and structural biology. The people working most on Jernigan would be the research assistants in the dissection room, which, day to day, was overseen by Tim Butzer, thirty, and his wife, Martha Pelster, a bright, curly-haired woman of twenty-five who would later apply for medical school. Helen Pelster, another assistant, was the sister of Martha Pelster.[5.6] The whole scenario—the family connection—begged for embellishment from Stephen King or Robin Cook.