by Hill, Casey
‘Certainly looks like the debris from a collision of some sort.’
Gary nodded. ‘I’m going to analyze it now, and see if any of it comes from the same vehicle. Did you get anything from the body?’
‘Mostly what you would expect – gravel, traces of oil and so on. But there is one thing that is interesting…’
She reached for the dish containing the fine green fronds she’d picked out of the dead girl’s hair, and held it out for them to sniff.
‘You don’t smell it?’ she asked when neither reacted.
‘We don’t have your keen nose, boss.’
‘I picked this up on her right from the start, but I just can’t place it. Something about it reminds me of family picnics by the lake back home…’ Then she shrugged. ‘It might not even be relevant, who knows? But there is definitely something strange about this girl.’
‘Besides the massive tattoo of a pair of wings on her back?’ Lucy put in sardonically.
‘Not just that. How many teenagers do you know who wear no make-up, have no piercings, jewelry, or use hair coloring?’
Lucy pretended to think hard. ‘Let me see – none?’
‘Exactly. Apart from the tattoo, this girl looks like she could have just stepped out of the nineteenth century.’
Gary looked confused. ‘Because of the nightdress, and the fact that she wasn’t made-up to the nines?’
‘Lots of girls out my way walking the streets in their PJs, but usually with plenty of make-up and bling to boot,’ Lucy put in.
‘Perhaps, but I’ll bet you’ve never seen one in an ankle-length nightdress that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Jane Austen novel.’
But in truth it was difficult for Reilly to put her finger on what it was about this girl that had given her that sense. Perhaps it was the calm, almost ethereal aura about her.
For the next hour or more the lab was silent as the small team worked on the physical evidence they’d gathered. They all knew each other well, and each was familiar with the working style of the others.
All three wore earbuds, each listening to background music while they worked. Lucy listened to the radio, liking the company the chatty DJ gave her; Gary had dance music on, his head bobbing to the beat as he went; while Reilly usually played classical music – Bach for his calm, methodical style, Mozart when she needed something to lift her mood, or Beethoven to stir her emotions and keep her engaged if she was working late into the night.
She was so caught up in her work that it wasn’t until the other two came and stood in front of her that she noticed that they had been trying to get her attention. She slipped her headphones off and looked up, a sheepish smile on her face.
She followed them back over to their respective benches.
‘Like we said, most of it is just junk,’ Lucy explained. ‘It’s either been there way too long to be connected with our crime,’ she picked up the faded soft drink cans, ‘or it’s completely random and unidentifiable. These, however, might be of interest.’
The objects she pointed to were a relatively clean MegaCoffee branded coffee cup and some small pieces of black plastic.
Lucy indicated the cup. ‘This was the first thing I saw – it was floating in the water. It’s very new, and the coffee dregs inside are quite fresh.’
‘Any saliva traces on the rim?’
Lucy nodded. ‘Fortunately, yes. First and foremost we’ll have to check that the couple that found her weren’t the source, but if they’re not and we find a suspect, it could tie them to the scene.’
‘How do you reckon it got there, though?’
‘I was thinking about that. My guess is that it was maybe rolling around on the floor of the vehicle that hit her, maybe the driver stopped and got out to see what he’d hit and it fell out and into the ditch.’
‘And these?’ Reilly pointed to the pieces of black plastic.
‘These look like they might have come off the front end of a vehicle – again, they weren’t covered in mud which suggests they’d not been in the ditch for very long.’
Reilly looked closely at the plastic scraps. ‘If we find the vehicle these could well be critical.’ She turned to Gary. ‘Anything from your end?’
He shook his head. ‘Mostly junk, and the majority of it irrelevant.’
‘Hey, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a princess.’
‘No kidding. There was a whole army of frogs on that road. But I did pick up these close to where iSPI reckons the impact would have happened.’ Neatly arranged on the bench was a handful of safety glass, tiny crystal nuggets.
‘Fortunately for us, different motor companies use different types of glass. These, believe it or not, come from the front headlights of a commercial vehicle manufactured by Ford sometime between 1991 and 1997.’
‘Wow, that specific?’
Gary shrugged. ‘According to the database anyway.’
‘Good work. I’ll get this information to the detectives right away,’ Reilly said.
‘Any luck with the green goo, boss?’
‘Actually yes.’ She held up a printout of the chemical analysis of the mysterious greenery. ‘It’s algae,’ she told him, still kicking herself for not figuring it out. ‘At some point before our victim was hit by the van, she must have been in a pond or a lake.’
‘Bizarre,’ Kennedy said when later that morning, Reilly arrived at Harcourt Street station to update him on the findings. ‘Why would a girl in a nightdress be swimming in a lake in the middle of the night?’
‘Why would she be wandering around anywhere in the middle of the night in bare feet and a thin nightdress?’ she countered.
‘Good point. Did I already mention that you look terrible?’ he teased, studying her.
‘Yes,’ she replied archly, ‘but the difference between you and me is that I only look this bad when I’ve had no sleep.’
‘Touché.’ Kennedy pulled a chair across from his cubbyhole for her.
She sat back, and crossed her legs. ‘Where’s Chris?’
‘Meeting with the boss. Can I get you a coffee?’
‘I’d kill for one, thanks. So what’s he talking to O’Brien about?’
‘Statement to the press. We’re going to need help getting an ID on the girl.’
‘You’ve already canvassed the local area?’
He nodded. ‘Local boys have been on it since the early hours. Nothing to report so far, but here’s hoping they turn up something that leads to an identification. At least then we can concentrate on catching the scumbag who left her dead in the road.’
‘I presume they’re going to —’
‘Widen the area?’ he finished for her. ‘Yeah. But you and I both know that just makes things harder.’ There was a mathematical relationship involved in widening a search area, and all too often the numbers quickly became unmanageable with so many personnel and subsequently much more information in the mix.
Chris arrived while they were talking, and Reilly immediately sat up on alert. She hated the way they both now always seemed so uncomfortable around one another.
The current rift stemmed from a major difference of agreement. Chris was covering up something from his superiors – something important, which he’d reluctantly confided to Reilly in order to enlist her help. At the time, she’d assumed they had an understanding: she’d help him get to the bottom of the issue, and he’d deal with the implications. As far as Reilly was concerned, she’d held up her end of the deal, but he had not, and in refusing to come clean was potentially putting himself and others on the force at risk. She couldn’t condone that, no matter how much she liked him. She’d always believed Chris Delaney to be an honest and decent guy, someone to trust with her life. Now she knew he wasn’t as upstanding or truthful as she’d believed.
And the realisation had hit her much harder than she’d expected.
‘So what news from on high?’ Kennedy asked Chris.
‘We’ve got the go ahead,’ he said, nodded a br
ief greeting to Reilly. ‘We’ll put out a standard press release to all the local and national media, say it’s a hit and run, ask for help in identifying the girl, and appeal for possible witnesses.’
‘What about the tattoo?’
‘We should keep that to ourselves for now,’ replied Chris quickly, and Reilly could tell by his tone that this was a point of argument between them. ‘O’Brien agrees.’
Kennedy scowled. ‘For Christ’s sake … it’s so distinctive – if you’d ever seen it you wouldn’t forget it. I’m telling you, we have to use it.’
‘I agree with Chris actually,’ Reilly said tentatively. ‘If we can get an ID without revealing it, well, it’s a pretty personal thing…’
‘And if we mention it too soon but don’t get an ID, it’s the kind of thing the press will be all over,’ Chris pointed out. ‘Before we know it we’ll have another hyped-up circus on our hands like we did with the Dante thing last year.’
‘Still…’
‘We’ll know soon enough anyway,’ he continued. ‘Press release is scheduled to go out soon, so it’ll be on the lunchtime news.’ He picked up Reilly’s preliminary evidence report and scanned it. ‘I’ll pass the information about the Ford along to the locals. There are lots of farms, workshops, all sorts out there where someone might have a Transit van – we’ll just have to hope something shows up. We’ll add the details to the press release too.’
‘That will just tip the guy off,’ Kennedy grumbled.
‘Maybe, but we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.’
‘Your call,’ his partner retorted grumpily, burying his face in his coffee cup.
Reilly glanced at Chris, wondering again what was up with Kennedy, but he was concertedly avoiding her gaze. ‘So what direction do you want to take with this lake information?’ she asked after a beat. ‘It seems strange that—’
He cut her off. ‘There are lakes, ponds and bogs for miles around in that particular area. It may not be that significant.’
‘Fine,’ Reilly said, feeling wounded by his attitude. He was normally so receptive to her findings and willing to discuss options that the stone-walling made her feel like she was back at day one on the job, hoping to prove her worth to a suspicious, mostly hostile police force.
Back then Chris had been her biggest champion – why now had everything changed?
Chapter 6
State Pathologist
DATE and HOUR AUTOPSY PERFORMED: 15/03/2012; 8:30 A.M. by Karen Thompson, Chief Medical Examiner
Assistant: Victoria O’Neill, MD
Full Autopsy Performed
SUMMARY REPORT OF AUTOPSY
Name: Jane Doe
Coroner's Case #: 1398-277
Date of Birth: N/A
Age: N/A
Race: White
Sex: Female
Date of Death: 14/03/2012
Body Identified by: N/A
Case # 001294-23E-2012
Investigative Agency: GFU
EVIDENCE OF TREATMENT:
N/A
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:
The autopsy is begun at 8:30 A.M. on March 15, 2012. The body is presented in a black cadaver pouch. The victim is wearing a white cotton dress.
The body is that of a normally developed white female measuring 67 inches and weighing 118 pounds, and appearing generally consistent with that of an individual in their late teens or early twenties. The body is cold and unembalmed. Lividity is fixed in the distal portions of the limbs. The eyes are open. The irises are blue/green and corneas are cloudy. Petechial hemorrhaging is present in the conjunctival surfaces of the eyes. The pupils measure 0.3 cm. The hair is red, untreated and approximately 26 inches in length at the longest point.
Initial visual examination of the body shows clear blunt force trauma, with several cuts, lesions and extensive bruising visible on exposed skin of arms, legs and face. There appears minimal bleeding which suggests the victim’s heart stopped beating soon after receiving visible injuries.
Upon removal of the victim’s clothing, an odor of damp vegetation was detected. Areas of the body were swabbed and submitted for detection. Several more cuts and bruising were clearly visible along with signs of internal bleeding. Several items of trace were removed from the lesions and have been sent for analysis. Swabs and scrapings also taken from fingernails.
The genitalia are that of an adult female and there is no evidence of injury. Limbs are equal, symmetrically developed and show no evidence of injury. The fingernails are short in length and fingernail beds are blue. There are no residual scars. The victim’s back is approximately 80 percent covered with a tattoo of a pair of wings. Several tissue samples have been taken along with further trace from wounds including glass and metallic fragments.
INTERNAL EXAMINATION:
HEAD--CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM: Subsequent autopsy shows a fractured skull and jaw bone. The brain weighs 1,303 grams and within normal limits.
SKELETAL SYSTEM: Compound fractures to left and right tibia. Pelvic fractures. Several simple fractures to right ribs 3 & 7, left rib 2. There are simple fractures in the radius and ulna of both arms along with several fingers. The amount of trauma appears consistent with an RTA.
RESPIRATORY SYSTEM--THROAT STRUCTURES: The oral cavity shows no lesions and there are no injuries to the lips, teeth or gums.
There is no obstruction of the airway. The mucosa of the epiglottis, glottis, piriform sinuses, trachea and major bronchi are anatomic. No injuries are seen and there are no mucosal lesions.
The lungs weigh: right 355 grams; left 362 grams. Both lungs showed significant and unusual signs of inflammation. Swabs and tissue samples have been sent for further testing.
CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: The heart weighs 253 grams, and has a normal size and configuration. No evidence of atherosclerosis is present.
GASTROINTESTINAL SYSTEM: The mucosa and wall of the esophagus are intact and gray-pink, without lesions or injuries. The gastric mucosa is intact and pink without injury. Approximately 125 ml of partially digested semisolid food is found in the stomach. The mucosa of the duodenum, jejunum, ileum, colon and rectum are intact.
URINARY SYSTEM: The kidneys weigh: left 115 grams; right 113 grams. The kidneys are anatomic in size, shape and location and are without lesions.
FEMALE GENITAL SYSTEM: The structures are within normal limits. Examination of the pelvic area indicates the victim had not given birth. The victim was however pregnant in second trimester at the time of death. There is no evidence of recent sexual activity. Fetus was removed, measured, weighed and tissue samples taken before being returned to the uterus. Age has been verified at eighteen weeks. Vaginal fluid samples have been removed for analysis.
TOXICOLOGY: Sample of right pleural blood and bile are submitted for toxicologic analysis. Stomach contents are saved.
LABORATORY DATA:
Cerebrospinal fluid culture and sensitivity:
Gram stain: Unremarkable Culture: No growth after 72 hours
Cerebrospinal fluid bacterial antigens:
Hemophilus influenza B: Negative Streptococcus pneumoniae: Negative N. Meningitidis: Negative Neiserria meningitidis B/E. Coli K1: Negative
Drug Screen Results:
Urine screen {Immunoassay} was NEGATIVE. Ethanol: 0 gm/dl, Blood (Heart) Ethanol: 0 gm/dl, Vitreous
EVIDENCE COLLECTED:
1. One (1) white cotton dress, size Small.
2. Samples of Blood (type O+), Bile, and Tissue (heart, lung, brain, kidney, liver, spleen).
3. Twenty three (23) swabs from various body locations, to be tested.
4. Eleven (11) autopsy photographs.
8. One post mortem CT scan.
9. One post mortem MRI.
OPINION
Time of Death: Body temperature, rigor and livor mortis, and stomach contents approximate the time of death between 9:00 and 11:00 P.M. on 14/03/2012.
Immediate Cause of Death: Blunt force trauma due to high-speed impact.
; Manner of Death: Vehicle strike.
Remarks: Decedent originally presented to this office as hit-and-run victim. The injuries present indicate this as most likely cause of death. There are no wounds inflicted post mortem, which suggest the victim was only struck once. GFU and case detectives were notified of these findings immediately upon conclusion of examination.
‘You are kidding me,’ Reilly said, partly in shock but also annoyance. It was later that evening and she was back at the city morgue, discussing the autopsy findings with Karen Thompson.
She had examined the girl carefully; there had been no outwards sign of pregnancy, nothing showing at all. ‘How did I not spot it?’
The ME shrugged. ‘Some women, especially younger first-time mothers, or first-time pregnancies rather,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘don’t show until seven, maybe even eight months.’
‘I know, I guess …’ Reilly paused, searching for the right words to explain her surprise. ‘It just doesn’t fit my image of her. She seems so young, so innocent – beyond innocent even, otherworldly. When I examined the body it almost felt like I was handling a china doll.’
‘I know what you mean. I try to view the bodies I examine as dispassionately as possible too, but I agree – this girl does have an unusual air about her.’ She picked up her case notes. ‘Based on bone growth I’d place her at around seventeen or eighteen years of age. Oh, and here’s another strange thing…’
Karen paused, and Reilly raised her eyebrows in anticipation.
‘Dental records.’
‘Helpful?’
‘Non-existent. The girl has no fillings, orthodontics – nothing.’
Dental records were often a last resort in trying to identfy unnamed victims. Without them they were back to square one.
