by Chris Carter
That made Doctor Hove pause, turn around and return to the counter. ‘Who is it?’
The assistant brought up the file on his screen.
‘Female, twenty years of age, already identified as Nicole Wilson. No apparent cause of death. She was brought in just a couple of hours ago, Doc.’
The doctor chewed on those facts for a moment. She knew that UV Unit detectives would be calling or dropping by first thing in the morning, and then every hour after that until they had their results. She quickly made her decision.
‘OK. Can you please get someone to take her body to theater one?’
The attendant checked the clock on the wall to his left. ‘You’re going to autopsy her now?’
Usually when Doctor Hove came in early she dealt mainly with paperwork.
‘That’s the idea.’
‘But as I’ve said, she just came in about two hours ago, Doc,’ the attendant retorted, looking slightly surprised. ‘She hasn’t been prepped or anything.’
Before any autopsy examination, the body needs to be prepared for the post mortem – undressed, then sprayed with fungicide and thoroughly washed with disinfectant soap. That job usually fell to the morgue orderlies, but their shift wouldn’t start for at least another hour and a half.
‘It’s OK,’ Doctor Hove replied. ‘I’ll prep the body myself, it’s not a problem.’
‘You’re the boss,’ the attendant said, noting something down on a notepad. ‘Would you like me to find you an assistant for the autopsy? I can probably find you one while you’re prepping the body.’
‘No need. I’ll be fine on my own.’
After scrubbing up and disinfecting her hands, Doctor Hove made her way to Autopsy Theater One. The body of Nicole Wilson had already been wheeled in and transferred to one of the two stainless-steel tables that occupied the middle of the spotlessly clean, white linoleum floor.
Nicole Wilson was lying on her back, arms loosely resting by her side. Livor mortis, the discoloration of the body by the settling of blood, showed that the body had most probably been moved after death. She had not been killed in the location where she was found. Rigor mortis had also come and gone, which told the doctor that she’d been dead for over twenty-four hours. Her facial features were now essentially unrecognizable.
Doctor Hove first freed the body from its shoes. There were no cuts to Nicole Wilson’s feet or toes, but the doctor immediately noticed the tiny abrasions and color change to her ankles – ligature marks. Next, she removed the CSULA sweatshirt, which had bits of grass and dirt stuck to it. As each item of clothing was taken from the body, it was carefully placed into a clear-plastic evidence bag, which would later be handed over to forensics for further examination. Blood, urine and hair samples would also be collected, and oral and anal swabs taken.
As the doctor removed the victim’s sweatshirt, the first thing she noticed were the ligature marks on the woman’s wrists. Not surprising, since she had already found restraint marks on her ankles.
Using a pair of safety scissors, Doctor Hove proceeded to slice open Nicole Wilson’s T-shirt. As it came undone, she paused, her eyes slowly running up and down the woman’s torso.
‘Jesus Christ!’
After reaching for her digital camera and documenting everything, Doctor Hove finished undressing the body, sprayed it with fungicide and used a hose with a powerful water jet to methodically wash and disinfect every inch of it. With that over, she turned on her digital voice recorder and started the official examination.
She began by stating the date and time, followed by the case number. After that, she described the general state of the body. Now it was time to move into all the grisly details.
Using a magnifying headset with a directional light, Doctor Hove began by checking the skin around the neck. There were no suspicious bruises. A quick touch-examination also revealed that neither Nicole Wilson’s larynx nor her trachea had collapsed. The hyoid bone in her neck also didn’t seem to be fractured. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that she had been strangled by hand, or any other method.
Using her thumb and index finger, Doctor Hove pulled open Nicole’s eyelids and, with the help of the magnifying headset, carefully studied her eyes. As expected, her corneas were cloudy and opaque, but what the doctor was looking for were minute red specks that could be dotting her eyes or their lids, called petechiae. These tiny hemorrhages in blood vessels can occur anywhere in the body, and for a number of reasons, but when they occur in the eyes and on the eyelids it’s usually due to blockage of the respiratory system – suffocation or asphyxiation.
Doctor Hove saw none. It also didn’t seem like Nicole Wilson had died from lack of oxygen.
Her next step was to check all of Nicole’s cavities for any signs of aggression, sexual or otherwise. She began with her mouth, pulling it open and first checking for any trauma or skin and teeth color alteration. Certain poisons will leave a clear indication of having being used by either burning the fragile skin inside the victim’s mouth, or leaving a residue that will discolor the teeth and tongue, or both. Doctor Hove found no primary indications of poisoning, but she’d have to wait for the results from the toxicology tests to be completely sure.
She was about to move on when something caught her attention.
‘Wait a second,’ she whispered to herself, turning the light on her magnifying headset back on and squinting at the inside of Nicole Wilson’s mouth. ‘What do we have here?’
She examined the victim’s throat for a moment.
‘I’ll be damned.’
Carefully, the doctor moved the head left, then right, then down a fraction. She had no doubt about it, there was definitely something lodged in the victim’s throat.
From the instrument table to her right she grabbed a digital camera and proceeded to photograph the object undisturbed, snapping three shots from different angles. Once that was done, she retrieved a pair of surgical fishing forceps and inserted them into Nicole’s mouth. It took her just a couple of seconds to pinch the edge of the object she could see. It looked like a thick piece of paper. Cautiously, she began extracting it from the throat.
‘What the hell?’
What at first looked like a paper fragment just kept on coming – three, four, five inches long before it finally came loose. The piece of paper had been tightly rolled up into a tube, then inserted into Nicole Wilson’s throat.
Doctor Hove deposited the rolled-up piece of paper on to an aluminum tray on the table, grabbed her camera once again, and snapped a couple more shots.
She put the camera down and very slowly started to unroll the paper tube.
Despite everything she’d seen in all her years as a pathologist and medical examiner, and she’d seen things that defied belief, as she held the unrolled tube of paper in her hands, Doctor Hove had to pause for breath.
‘Oh fuck!’
Ten
The day outside was bright and warm, with a cloudless blue sky that could’ve belonged in the Caribbean. Even at that time in the morning, and with the breeze that blew from the west, temperatures were already getting up to 68°F.
Garcia drove while Hunter re-studied Nicole Wilson’s fact sheet and the photographs in both files the captain had given them. As they merged on to Harbor Freeway, heading towards the airport, Hunter’s cellphone rang inside his pocket.
‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special,’ he answered on the second ring.
‘Robert, it’s Doctor Carolyn Hove at the LA County Coroner.’
‘Oh, hi, Doc.’ Hunter wasn’t expecting her call so soon.
‘I’m not sure if “welcome” is the right word, but . . . welcome back.’
‘Thanks.’
Doctor Hove sounded tired, which Hunter knew wasn’t that unusual due to her workload and the problems she faced when it came to sleeping. Not that she had ever discussed it with him or anyone else for that matter, but Hunter knew about her husband, and he had recognized the telltale signs of insomnia
over a year ago, just after her loss. He was well qualified to do so.
Hunter was an insomniac himself. He had struggled with it most of his life. It’d started mildly, just after his mother lost her battle with cancer. As the years went by it intensified, but Hunter quickly learned that his insomnia was nothing more than his brain’s defense mechanism so he didn’t have to deal with the ghastly nightmares that tormented him almost every night. Instead of fighting it, he simply learned to live with it. He could survive on three, sometimes two hours of sleep a night for weeks.
‘I just finished the autopsy on case 75249-6. Young female identified as Nicole Wilson. According to the case file, you’re the lead, is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘OK.’ Hunter heard the sound of pages turning. ‘I think that you’ll want to have a look at what I found, Robert.’
‘Sure, Doc. But we’re just on our way to the location where the body was found. We’ll drop by the morgue in, let’s say –’ he consulted his watch – ‘two hours, give or take.’
There was a heavy pause. When Doctor Hove spoke again, there was something else in her tone of voice – trepidation – that was very unusual.
‘Trust me, Robert, I really think that you should have a look at this first.’
Eleven
The main facility of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner on North Mission Road was an impressive building, both in size and architecture. Showing hints of Renaissance and neoclassicism, the large hospital-turned-morgue was fronted by terracotta bricks with light-gray details. Old-fashioned lampposts flanked the extravagant entrance stairway, and from the exterior alone one would be forgiven for thinking that the inspiration for such lavish design had come from the old town of Prague, or the historic universities of Oxford.
Garcia parked in the area reserved for law enforcement officials and both detectives took the stairs up to the main building in a hurry. They pushed open the large glass doors that led into an awfully busy, but pleasantly air-conditioned, lobby and stepped inside.
Neither Hunter nor Garcia were too surprised as to the number of people mingling around the reception foyer. As the busiest coroner in the whole of the USA, the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner could receive anywhere up to one hundred bodies a day. The LACDC was also the only department of coroner in the country with an official gift shop, where one could purchase sweatshirts, baseball caps, mugs, skeleton bones and a multitude of other items, all carrying the legitimate logo of the Los Angeles morgue.
Hunter and Garcia zigzagged their way through a group of Japanese tourists and approached the main reception counter. The middle-aged African-American woman behind it looked up from her computer screen, removed her reading glasses and gave them a smile that was both warm and sorrowful at the same time.
‘Hello, gentlemen, how can I help you?’ She spoke in the same tone and volume as a librarian.
Morgue receptionists’ greetings were pretty much the same all over the USA. They never greeted anyone with the words ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon’, or ‘good evening’. Usually, a person visiting a morgue would struggle to find anything good about the day they were having.
‘LAPD Detectives Hunter and Garcia to see Doctor Carolyn Hove,’ Hunter said, producing his credentials. Garcia did the same.
‘She’s expecting us,’ Hunter added.
The receptionist allowed her eyes to hover over both detectives’ badges for a moment before reaching for the phone on the counter in front of her, but before she was able to dial the heavy metal door on the east wall was pushed open by Doctor Hove herself.
‘Robert, Carlos,’ she said. ‘You guys made it in good time.’
Doctor Hove wore a white lab coat with a photo card clipped to her left pocket. She was holding a blue file in her right hand.
‘Hey, Doc,’ Hunter and Garcia said at the same time, greeting her warmly.
Doctor Hove was a tall and slim woman with deep penetrating green eyes. Her long chestnut hair was bundled up into a bun and tucked under a factory-style hairnet. A surgical mask hung from her neck.
‘Once again,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if this really applies, but . . . welcome back, both of you.’ She paused and her eyes narrowed a fraction as she looked at Hunter. ‘Though, I must add that you don’t look like you just came back from a break, Robert. Are you sure you’ve been away?’
‘Oh, I’m sure.’
Garcia stifled a smile.
‘So,’ Hunter asked, his eyes focusing on the file in her hand. ‘What have you found, Doc?’
She didn’t follow his gaze. Instead, she tilted her head in the direction of the door she’d just come out of.
‘I think you both better come with me.’
Twelve
Hunter and Garcia followed Doctor Hove past the reception counter, through a set of double swinging doors and into a wide corridor with strip lights on the ceiling and shiny floors.
As they entered the corridor, they were all greeted by a cold, antiseptic odor that lingered in the air and scratched the inside of their nostrils as if it were alive.
Hunter hated that smell. No matter how many times he’d been through these corridors, he just couldn’t get used to it. He subtly scratched his nose and did his best to breathe only through his mouth.
They passed a couple of closed doors with frosted-glass windows on the left side of the corridor, before turning right at the end of it and into a second, narrower hallway. There they came across three lab technicians, also in white medical scrubs, standing around a coffee machine. None of them looked their way.
They pushed through a set of double swinging doors and, as they did, they all had to squeeze against the wall and wait for a trolley wheeled by an orderly to go past. The body on the trolley was covered by a white calico sheet. Balanced on its torso was a box of test tubes containing blood and urine.
Garcia made a face and looked the other way.
At the end of that corridor, they finally reached a small anteroom. Another set of double doors with two small frosted-glass windows stood directly in front of them. Above the doors, in big black letters, a plate read – Autopsy Theater One.
‘Here we are,’ Doctor Hove said, as she punched a six-digit code into the keypad to the right of the door. It buzzed loudly, and then the door unlocked with a hiss like a pressure seal.
Most people who have never been inside an autopsy room would expect the air to be heavy with the smell of a compound like formaldehyde – something many associate with biomedical labs and the preservation of a body or part of it, human or otherwise. Instead, Hunter detected a faint scent of antiseptic and industrial soap. The temperature inside the autopsy rooms was also a few degrees below what would be considered comfortable. Within minutes, an unprepared visitor would be shivering in here from the temperature alone.
The room was relatively spacious. A large double sink hugged the west wall, with a central channel that led to a drain. Next to it was a metal counter with a multitude of tools, including a Stryker saw. Parked against the north wall, in neat rows, were three empty trolleys. The center of the room was taken by two stainless-steel examination tables. The body on the furthest of the two was completely covered by a white sheet. Just above the table, circular and powerful halogen lights were suspended from the ceiling.
Doctor Hove gloved up and approached the table. Hunter and Garcia followed, each grabbing a pair of latex gloves themselves.
The doctor positioned herself on the other side of the table from the two detectives and pulled back the sheet, revealing Nicole Wilson’s naked body. Her skin had begun to turn a pale, ghostly shade of white. Her eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets, and her thin lips had now lost all color. Her hair looked wet and messy, with some of it sticking to the sides of her face. Clearly visible was the large Y incision that started at the top of each shoulder, ran down between her breasts and the front of her stomach, and concluded at the lower point of her sternum. A sec
ond large incision had also been made around her head, running across the top of her forehead to open her cranium, which indicated that her brain had been examined. Hunter found that a little peculiar, but he knew the doctor would explain it in due time. Both incisions had been stitched up with thick, black surgical thread. All that gave Nicole’s body a plastic, Frankenstein-mannequin look, a far cry from the person she had once been.
As the white sheet was pulled back, Hunter and Garcia paused, looked at each other for a split second, then back at the body. What caught them by surprise wasn’t the ugliness of the two incisions, or the roughness of the black thorn-like stitches. They had seen those more times than they cared to mention. What had made them pause was the incredible number of open wounds that covered most of the victim’s torso and thighs. They all looked to be fresh lacerations, probably no more than three to four days old, varying in sizes and orientation – some were horizontal, some diagonal, some vertical.
‘What the hell?’ Garcia breathed out.
‘I know,’ Doctor Hove agreed. ‘I was as surprised as you are when I undressed the body as I prepped it for the post mortem earlier today.’
Both detectives approached the table, bending down slightly to have a better look at the cuts.
‘What we have here is a combination of two types of wounds,’ the doctor announced. ‘As you can plainly see, they all vary in size – the smallest being just over an inch long, and the largest measuring five and three quarter inches. No two lacerations are the exact same size.’
She placed her fingers over the sides of one of the cuts and pressed it down, spreading it open.
‘None of the cuts is deep enough to have reached a major organ, artery or vein.’
She repeated the process with a couple more cuts.
‘They’re essentially all flesh wounds.’
‘Torture,’ Garcia stated rather than asked.
‘No doubt,’ Doctor Hove replied.
