Autopsy, page 2
I envision the murder victim’s face, her long brown hair and athletic build, and I suspect she was attractive. But it’s hard to tell.
“I asked Fruge the same thing, and no pictures so far. Her lab director describes her as around five-foot-five,” August says as I work my legs into a pair of black cargo pants. “Maybe a hundred-and-twenty-five pounds, brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair.”
“Sounds about right but that could be a lot of people,” I reply, caught in my usual predicament.
I want the victim identified. But I wouldn’t wish what happened to her on Gwen Hainey or anyone.
“I’ve got an electronic copy of her driver’s license,” August says. “It’s an old picture, her hair really short and blond. D.O.B. is June fifth, nineteen eighty-eight. She’s five-foot-four, which is almost right. But thirty pounds heavier, and I can’t swear it’s the same person. Apparently, the town house she’s in is a short-term rental, and there are very few personal belongings.”
“Does she have a tattoo?” I’m putting on my boots.
“Her lab director wasn’t aware of any visible ones, and I didn’t volunteer what we know about the tattoo the murdered woman has.”
“And do we know why Gwen temporarily relocated to Old Town?” I’m tying my laces in double bows.
“From what I’ve been told, she was starting her new job at Thor. She didn’t want to make any long-term commitments until she was sure it would work out. It would seem it was urgent for her to get into the townhome right away.”
“Relocated from where?” I put on a long-sleeved black tactical shirt with the OCME crest on it, a caduceus and the scales of justice embroidered in blue, gold and red.
“Boston,” August says as I walk out of the bathroom, buttoning up. “I texted you a picture, what Fruge sent me. A ten-pound kettlebell weight that’s in the townhome’s entryway. A weird place for it unless it was being used as a doorstop, right?”
“I’m opening the photo now,” I tell him as I do it.
The kettlebell is round, flat-bottomed, bright blue with a shiny stainless-steel looped handle. It’s lying on its side to the left of the front door on the hardwood floor, and August wonders if an attacker might have used it to hit Gwen in the back of the head.
“Assuming she and the murdered woman from Friday night are one and the same,” he adds.
“Are we sure Officer Fruge didn’t move anything?” I enlarge the photo on my phone.
“She says she didn’t except for looking inside the knapsack. When she did her walk-through, she had on a mask and gloves, was being careful. That’s what she says.”
“And then what?”
“And then she waited until the crime scene unit got there. They’ve done their overall, taken video and photos. But they won’t come in and process anything until you and I take a look.”
“Except we don’t know if it’s really a crime scene, do we?” I ask the most glaring question.
I imagine the missing biomedical engineer returning home and finding cops inside her place, turning it upside down. Even worse if the medical examiner is there, and I don’t need that my first month on the job. I have enough trouble.
“Do you feel you have probable cause for a search warrant?” I ask August.
“We’ll have the warrant within the hour.”
“What makes you think something violent happened?” Opening a cabinet, I pull out the big black Pelican case I take to scenes. “What signs of a struggle are we talking about?”
“Apparently there’s blood inside the garage, and the furniture is disarranged in the living room. I think you’d better come,” he says, and we end the call.
Putting on my coat, I lock up for the night, following the windowless corridor of shut office doors, the walls and floor pale gray, the lighting low. Wyatt the security guard is walking off the elevator, headed toward me, carrying what I suspect is his bagged supper.
“Have a good night,” I say to him. “Hopefully, a quiet one.”
“It’s always quiet around here, ma’am. Too quiet.” He hangs a left into the breakroom where the on-call forensic investigator is making a pot of French press coffee.
Fabian is dressed in the same uniform of tactical field clothes that I have on, and my preference would have been not to run into him right now. It’s obvious that I’m headed to a scene, my big Pelican case in hand, and I don’t want him riding shotgun or even thinking about it.
“You shouldn’t show up by yourself,” he says, and obviously my secretary got to him. “I saw Maggie when she was leaving a few minutes ago, and she felt it was better if I went with you to the townhome. I’m ready and waiting, and the coffees can be to-go. Would you like one?”
“No, thank you.”
Clearly August shared the details with her, and he shouldn’t have. I imagine Maggie then passing them along to Fabian, giving directives as if she runs the place, and that shouldn’t have happened, either.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” He flashes a smile, and he can turn up the charm when he wants, I’ll give him that.
A physician’s assistant in Louisiana before working here, he’s in his late twenties and could pass for a goth model with his silver jewelry, tattoos, fine features and Cher-like long black hair. By far he’s the best investigator of the three I’ve got, one of them about to retire, the other nothing to brag about.
“I’ll let you know if I need you,” I tell Fabian. “But I don’t think so.”
“I haven’t heard about any deliveries,” Wyatt is quick to pipe up over the noise of the microwave oven, looking at me suspiciously. “There’s nothing expected, isn’t that right?”
“Not so far, and we’ll hope it stays that way,” I reply.
“It sounds like where you’re headed might be related to the murdered lady from the railroad tracks.” Fabian pours a cup of his strong coffee, a smoky chicory blend that his mother ships to him from Baton Rouge.
“Possibly,” I reply, wondering why everybody thinks it’s okay to crash my boundaries and interrogate me.
“I mean, if it’s important enough to ask you to look?” He stirs in his preferred sweetener of agave nectar. “You sure you don’t want some help? It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the case.”
He worked with me at last Friday night’s scene, but that doesn’t mean I need his assistance now. It’s but another example of what happens when the person in charge is shuttered away, not paying attention. Elvin Reddy has managed to foster a pervasive spirit of entitlement.
Telling Fabian and Wyatt good night, I walk off. I’m avoiding elevators whenever possible since the coronavirus. My boots echo dully inside the concrete stairwell, and on the lower level I open the windowless fire-escape door. I step into another corridor, this one hospital-white with bright lights, and there’s no sign of anyone. No one alive that is.
The CT scanning room is locked up, the light green outside the door, the technician gone for the day. The autopsy suite is empty, its stainless-steel tables, carts and countertops shiny-clean, awaiting new cases. There always will be more. The next accident or homicide. Another person ends it all or drops dead unexpectedly, those left behind irreparably altered.
As I near the anthropology lab, I hear the quiet clatter of bones defleshing in bleach-infused water that will simmer for days. Through observation windows lining both sides of the corridor, I can see the five-gallon stockpot steaming on the portable cooktop, the decomposing skeletal remains discovered last week by a hunter.
Through another window I see his rotting boots, clothing, a pack of Marlboros, a pint of Fireball whisky, a wallet and its contents spread out on a paper-covered table inside the evidence room. The cause and manner of death are still undetermined. I suspect he died a year ago based on what the police discovered when going through the retired mechanic’s house near Fort Belvoir.
Inside the intake area, the cloying odor of industrial deodorizer is strong as I set my scene case, my briefcase down on top of a cart in front of the walk-in cooler and freezer. Their digital displays show the temperatures and other information that I can monitor on an app. Everything’s in the green, and I put on exam gloves and a surgical mask.
Finding a six-inch plastic ruler, I tuck my phone inside an antimicrobial protective sleeve so I can take additional photographs if needed. Opening the cooler’s stainless-steel door, I walk inside, the loud blowing air frigid and foul. Her black pouch is on a gurney in a back corner, and there’s nothing on the toe tag except the date 11/30 and a location of Daingerfield Island RR tracks scrawled in smeared ink.
I partially unzip the heavy vinyl, and the murdered woman’s face looks worse than when I autopsied her a few days ago. Abrasions and contusions are an angrier red in contrast to her pale, bloodless body. The vital tissue response to her injuries indicates she survived long enough for her killer to finish what he’d started.
There’s no obvious indication of sexual assault, but that doesn’t necessarily mean very much. No question this is a sexually motivated homicide, all about overpowering, and I suspect she didn’t know her assailant but may have trusted him at first. Otherwise, I don’t understand how he gained access to her home or wherever it was that he confronted her.
After she was dead, he lewdly displayed her nude body along railroad tracks to shock those aboard the next train going by. That’s if you ask my forensic psychologist husband with his internal database of nightmares, and he’s probably right. Benton usually is. There’s no question that her body was deliberately displayed, and I take a picture of her face.
The pupils of her cloudy eyes are fixed and dilated, her lips a purplish-blue and crusty. The gaping wound to her neck is dark red and dry, and I smell the stale stench of refrigerated decomposition as I manipulate her head, turning it to one side. She hadn’t been dead very long when I examined her at the scene, her extremities beginning to stiffen.
Since then, rigor mortis has come and gone, her muscles unclenching as if unable to resist the inevitable any longer. The shaved back of her head is cold and boggy through my nitrile gloves as I palpate the depressed skull fracture, feeling the edges of bone punched in by a single crushing blow. Possibly by the kettlebell in question, and I’ll know better when I can take a closer look at the scene.
The contused and lacerated area of her scalp is approximately four inches in diameter, the round shape of it consistent with the possible weapon. Whatever was used, the blow to her head would have been immediately incapacitating.
She wasn’t walking around or talking afterward. It’s not the cause of death although it might have been eventually. Surviving long enough for swelling and internal bleeding, she died after her throat was sliced ear to ear with some type of nonserrated cutting instrument.
After death, her hands were cut off, and that means no fingerprints. Maybe that was the reason. But there are other ways to identify someone, and we’re not having any success so far. She’s not in the FBI’s Combined DNA Identification System database better known as CODIS. Maybe we’ll get lucky with a genealogical profile.
We might learn something important from other evidence I began collecting at the scene, mostly microscopic particles of rust, wood, and various minerals consistent with the rocky railroad bed. But I also found fibers all over her body including in her hair, and suspect the source of them might be whatever the killer wrapped around her during transport.
Something like a multicolored blanket made of a synthetic fabric, and I suspect she was first attacked indoors. I envision her panicking, trying to get away from her assailant, bumping into things as he grabs at her before knocking her unconscious.
Then transporting her somewhere, he finished her off, possibly near the railroad tracks where he left her. We found no evidence of such a thing when we searched the area Friday night. But it was raining hard enough that any blood would have washed away or been next to impossible to find as big and densely wooded as the park is.
Taking several more photographs, I zip up the body bag, pulling off my gloves. I step around gurneys bearing other patients in this sad clinic. Outside the cooler, I remove my personal protective equipment (PPE). Into the red biohazard trash bag everything goes, and I help myself to a big dollop of hand sanitizer before collecting my belongings.
I walk past the security office, and there’s no sign of Wyatt behind the bulletproof glass window. No doubt he’s holed up in the breakroom, monitoring the security cameras on the flat screen in there. He doesn’t like the morgue, especially after hours. A lot of people don’t, and it’s always struck me as silly, because it’s not the dead who will hurt you.
I exit the building through the vehicle bay where bodies are delivered and driven away. The size of a small hangar, it’s empty now, just our mobile emergency response truck. Near it is a zodiac boat and pallets of heavy-duty water-recovery body bags, disposable sheets, gallons of disinfectant and other necessities.
The beige epoxy-painted floor is still wet from being hosed down, my boots making a quiet sticky sound. Zipping up my coat and pulling up my hood, I open the pedestrian door leading outside, startled by the guttural rumble of a turbocharged engine idling in the volatile dark.
Chapter 3
Pete Marino creeps up in his blacked-out Ford Raptor pickup truck as I wait in the downpour next to the morgue’s shut bay door. His headlights illuminate my take-home Subaru in its parking spot reserved for the chief M.E., perhaps the only perk of the job as it’s turning out.
“Get in, Doc. No way you’re driving yourself anywhere right now,” he booms through his rolling-down window, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen him this keyed up, maybe not since his wedding day.
A knit cap covers his bald head, and he has on a ballistic vest under his camouflage hunting jacket, his demeanor as serious as a heart attack, to borrow one of his expressions. Obviously, Maggie must have gotten hold of him, passing along that I’ve been detained and need to postpone Lucy’s birthday celebration.
But that doesn’t explain why he’s picking me up unannounced while commandeering and ordering me about. I know that look on his sun-weathered face. Something has pushed his panic button, and I set my scene case on the floor in back near his Heckler & Koch MP5 and an Army surplus ammo box.
“What’s happened?” The rain is blowing like mad, soaking my cargo pants and streaming into my eyes as I climb up into the passenger seat.
“This couldn’t be much worse, Doc.” He hands me a dingy microfiber towel to dry off. “Best I can do, sorry. But better than nothing. I thought I had a roll of paper towels in here, dammit! I can’t believe it!”
“Am I in some sort of danger that no one’s told me about?” I wipe myself down, getting a whiff of Armor All. “Is my sister all right? Is Lucy okay? What’s got you in such an uproar?”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” He’s not talking about the storm or my dripping all over his immaculate cockpit that still smells new.
I place my briefcase in my lap, mindful of the 10mm pistol on the console, his matte-gray Guncrafter Industries 1911 built from billet with Trijicon optic sights and custom grips. Cocked and locked with the thumb safety on, it’s loaded with two-hundred-grain Buffalo Bore rounds that could take out a grizzly, I have a feeling.
If that’s not enough firepower, he has his submachine gun and plenty of highly destructive ammunition within reach on the backseat. I suppose if we end up in a shootout I could pitch in with the Sig Sauer P226 in my briefcase, I think sardonically, halfway wondering if he’s losing his marbles.
“Are you expecting a gunfight, a riot, an insurrection?” I put on my shoulder harness, and I’m not being funny. “What’s got you in such a state? You’re scaring me.” I keep thinking of the victim in my cooler, and his missing neighbor, Gwen Hainey.
“I’m pretty sure I know who the murdered lady is from Friday night. Someone Lucy and me tried to help, someone Dorothy was friendly with. Our damn neighbor.” He’s out with the name, my stress spiking.
“You and Lucy tried to help her?” I don’t understand.
“We gave her security advice once. Obviously, she didn’t listen. And whoever did this? He has to be familiar with the area right here where we live. You, me, all of us. He had to be watching Gwen and no telling who else.”
Like Hannibal Lecter says, it all starts with what you see. Marino repeats one of his favorite lines, pointing two fingers at his eyes. Rain hammers the roof as we drive through my parking lot, passing the OCME’s small fleet of windowless vans, shiny black like limousines, the crest of Virginia in gray on the doors.
“Point being, it might not be a domestic homicide,” he adds.
“I’m not aware that anyone’s thinking the homicide from Friday night is domestic,” I reply, baffled. “And where did you hear about—”
“I dropped off Dorothy at your house.” Interrupting, he’s barely listening. “We were out running an errand when I heard the call over the scanner. A wellness check at an address two houses down from ours. I didn’t want Dorothy staying alone at our place right now. She’s with Lucy.”
He says he has information about his missing neighbor but it’s not a subject I can discuss easily. Marino isn’t a police officer anymore. He has no official capacity, and Lucy doesn’t either, their new investigative company private. Truth be told, I shouldn’t be comfortably ensconced inside his truck right now, everything black leather and carbon fiber.
His new ride is but one of my sister’s many grand gestures since the two of them got married last year during the worst of the pandemic. He also has a sport boat docked behind their waterfront townhome, a tricked-out Harley-Davidson touring motorcycle in the garage, and an unlimited budget for his growing arsenal.
My sister does well as a graphic novelist, and I’m still getting used to Marino’s newly acquired affluence and management. Hardest for me is not confiding in him like I used to, going back to our earliest years working together. It’s not really possible to ring him up or have a drink, to brainstorm about murder, mayhem or anything much. I wouldn’t dream of discussing cases or anything private, not with my only sibling hovering.
