by Rick Reed
Just then, Lilly Caskins and the police crime scene photographer entered the room.
“This isn’t a knife wound, Jack,” Dr. John said. “If Sergeant Walker is correct about the amount of blood found in the bedroom, and depending on how much blood was washed away . . .” He gently palpated the entry wound before continuing. “This is the most likely cause of death. But at this point we have to rule out everything else, including drowning, aspiration of blood, et cetera. And because she was placed in the tub it washed away some of your clues, didn’t it?”
“What about the cuts on top of the head?” Jack asked.
Dr. John moved the hair around the cuts and said, “You mean the number. Three seventy-five?”
Jack nodded.
“Looks like the blade of a knife. Not the same weapon that was used on the face and the neck. Maybe a pocketknife.”
Jack asked, “You’ll keep us posted?”
Lilly answered for the doctor. “I’ll call when we’re through.” She then asked a question of her own. “Did you find a next of kin yet?”
“All we have so far is a post-office box number in Shawneetown, Illinois,” Liddell told her. “But we’re going there as soon as you finish up here. We’ll call you when we find a next of kin.”
Dr. John advised, “You two have time for a cup of coffee before we get started on the autopsy. There are some pastries in the break room, but you’ll have to make your own coffee.”
Liddell was already headed for the door when Jack remembered another piece of evidence found at the scene. “Oh yeah, Dr. John, there was something else found at the scene.” He then told Carmodi about the fleshy material the crime scene tech had found in the tub’s drain.
“Is she missing hers?” Liddell asked Dr. John.
“Let’s have a look,” Dr. John said, and he and Little Casket began prying the victim’s jaws apart. Rigor was still fixed, and the muscles would have to be forced.
Jack may have imagined it, but he could swear he heard the jawbone cracking as the mouth inched open. Carmodi used a penlight to look into the cavity of the mouth. “The tongue has been excised,” he said.
Lilly excused herself from the room and was back in less than a minute carrying a plastic bag containing water and a piece of something fleshy. Officer Morris, the crime scene tech who found the tongue, had collected it along with water from the tub. It was a general rule of evidence collection that something found in water is collected in water.
Dr. John held the bag up to the light and examined the tissue inside. “I’ll have to take it out, but it looks like a tongue to me.” He pressed the pedal on the floor and activated the mike before opening the bag and spoke the date and time he was opening the bag and where he was told it was found.
Using a large pair of tongs that looked to Jack like the kind used for cooking, he pulled the tissue from the bag. In the amplified light from above the autopsy table, the item looked very much like a tongue, or at least part of one. Carmodi recorded some more notes, but the gist of what he was saying was that this could very well be the victim’s tongue.
“He cut her tongue out?” Liddell asked.
Carmodi nodded. “You’ll need DNA run to be precise. But yes, I would say this is the victim’s tongue.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jack and Liddell sat in the county morgue break room, sipping coffee and talking. Well, Jack was sipping coffee and Liddell was inhaling chocolate long johns, crème horns, and cake donuts with white icing and sprinkles like a man on a mission.
A young woman came into the room dressed in mintgreen scrubs and a mask and gloves and announced that the autopsy was about to begin. This was the forensic pathologist’s assistant, Ginger Thomas.
They followed Ginger back down the hallway to the autopsy room, where Dr. John nodded to her. She began prepping the victim’s head for the incision that would be made laterally around the back of the skull. The skin would then be reflected away from the skull and pulled over the top of the head and face to allow clear access for the bone saw.
This was the part that Jack had never become comfortable with, and was glad to see that Liddell had turned his face away as well. Although he accepted the science of autopsies, the procedures reminded Jack of a butcher shop he had once worked in while a teenager. Slicing up things that had once been living would never appeal to him.
By the time Jack zoned back in to the autopsy the skull cap had been removed and the brain was being examined for abnormalities or any other medical reason that could have caused death. The pathologist’s job was to eliminate any other cause of death, except the cause of death. For example, if a defense attorney were to find out that the deceased’s blood alcohol content was above .25 percent, he could argue that the victim might have died from alcohol poisoning.
Jack had worked such a case. Three men had gotten another man drunk with the intention of robbing him, but hadn’t counted on the fact that he might resist. He was beaten unconscious and then carried into an alley and left in the trash, where he aspirated his own vomit and suffocated. The defense successfully argued that the blood alcohol percentage was so high that the amount of alcohol consumed could have killed the man by itself. The jury, not knowing that the normal blood alcohol of the victim was never much lower than toxic, found the defendants not guilty of murder.
“We have a winner,” Carmodi announced, shocking Jack out of his reverie.
“What is it, doc?” Liddell asked.
Carmodi had the neck opened, exposing the laryngeal cavity. “The carotid was severed.” He pulled the tissue back to show the detectives the flaccid carotid artery.
“He knew what he was doing,” Liddell said.
Carmodi shook his head. “Not necessarily, Cajun. He might not have even been trying to hit the carotid.”
Jack had a question. “Then why not cut straight across the throat?”
Carmodi looked at him from under the plastic visor and shrugged.
“I mean—and I’m just thinking out loud here—why not cut across the throat? Why did he cut at an upward angle?”
Carmodi had measured with a probe earlier. “It didn’t have to be deep to get the carotid, Jack. Only about two inches, maybe less. But you’re right about the upward angle. He wouldn’t have done this much damage if he had just sliced her throat straight across.”
“So, he might have intentionally targeted the major blood vessel in the neck?” Jack asked.
Liddell saw where this was going. “You’re the expert here, doc. What’s your gut tell you?”
Dr. John appeared to be weighing the evidence. Finally he checked the recorder to be sure it was turned off before saying, “I have to agree that there is some evidence that the carotid artery was the target. Whoever did this made neat work of it. Not medically trained, but knows his way around the body, I’d say.”
“Is that just your gut talking, doc?” Jack asked.
“Why is that so important?” Dr. John asked.
Jack shook his head. It just didn’t feel right to him. “Why kill her with one precise blow to the neck . . .” Jack began, and stared off into space as if he was visualizing the killing. “And then force her to the floor where he hacks her face off ?” Jack saw the confusion on their faces and explained, “The first blow doesn’t seem to be consistent with the other damage he did to the body after he killed her. So why? Why not just cut her head off? Why take her face and knock out her teeth? If he was trying to keep us from identifying her, why not take her purse and identification?”
Carmodi lifted the victim’s right arm that ended in a bloody stump where the hand should have been. “Notice anything unusual here?”
“You want me to give you a hand?” Liddell offered, and earned a scathing look from Lilly Caskins.
Carmodi pointed to several places on the stump that were shiny. “See this here? And here?” Jack nodded. “Our killer had some skill with a blade to do this.” He lay the arm down gently. “The hand wasn’t surgically removed.
Off the record it looks like the same weapon was used to sever the hand at the wrist. And that’s not as easy as they make it look on television.”
“Anything else?” Jack asked.
“Well, my unofficial opinion is that cause of death is exsanguination. Loss of blood. The method of death is a wound to the neck severing the carotid artery. The removal of the tongue, eyes, and hand was postmortem. She could have survived any of the other injuries, including the removal of her face, if she had found medical care immediately. The wound to the neck dropped her like a stone.”
The room became quiet while they digested this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The autopsy was thorough. It lasted two hours and thirty-three minutes, and by the time Jack and Liddell left they were gasping for fresh air. Dead flesh and exposed innards have a particular smell that can never be described to someone not familiar with them. While the long dead make even the strongest stomach roil, freshly dead bodies reek of their own mélange of odors. Jack had taken his sport coat off before entering the autopsy room and was now hesitant to put it back on.
“So we have two scenarios at least,” Jack said, facing Liddell. “Okay, since you’re bigger you get to be the killer.” He stood directly in front of Liddell. “She was cut on the left side of the neck with something sharp and heavy like an axe blade.”
Using his right hand, Liddell mocked a swinging motion to the left side of Jack’s neck. “That makes our killer right handed.”
Jack turned around, his back to Liddell. “Do it again.”
Liddell made the swinging motion again with his right hand. This time it appeared that if the killer used his right hand, the knife would have struck the victim in the right side of the neck.
“Dr. John said the blade penetrated at least four inches,” Liddell said. “He thought the killer used his left hand. How many people are left handed?”
“Too many,” Jack said. “And besides, the wound was made at an upward angle. It would have been hard to get that kind of cut if the victim was standing up unless the killer was extremely tall.”
“Cordelia was five foot six inches tall,” Liddell said. “The killer would have been at least as tall as me, and even then it would be hard to get the right type of angle with her standing. It makes more sense if she was already on the ground, or on her knees when the blow was struck.”
“She could have been struck in the face and then fallen to her knees,” Jack offered an opinion. “Then the blow to the neck,” he said, making a motion with his left hand as if he was swinging a short axe at an upward angle.
“Looks about right to me,” Liddell said. “But of course we don’t know any of this for sure.”
“Okay. Let’s go through what we do know.” Jack said. “According to Cordelia’s Illinois driver’s license she is five-foot-six-inches tall. If she was standing when she was killed there would have been more blood on the ceiling and floor according to Walker. Not to mention that the killer would have had a hard time striking the blow if she was standing.”
“So what are you saying, pod’na?”
“Walker thinks she was killed on the bed,” Jack said, and then shook his head. “We need to talk to Walker again. Get a better idea about where she might have been when the blow to the neck occurred.”
“Want to go now?”
Jack held up the bag of personal items they had recovered from Cordelia Morse’s clothing. The bag contained one earring, some change, and a chewing-gum wrapper. “Did you keep the driver’s license?”
Liddell pulled it from his pocket.
“Let’s go to the station and fill Captain Franklin in. Then we need to go to Shawneetown. Let’s get a map and find out who we need to talk to.”
“How’s about hitting Donut Bank before we go back to headquarters?” Liddell said.
“You go ahead. Inhale a dozen or so for me.”
“You cut me to the quick, pod’na,” Liddell said, but before they could start toward their cars the coroner’s secretary came into the parking lot and told Jack that he had a phone call.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Satellite dishes were hoisted from the roofs of the Channel Six and Channel Forty-Four news vans parked just outside the crime scene tape. The news crews were mingling with the crowd of onlookers who were bellied up to the yellow crime scene tape. Small clusters of people stood around, talking excitedly or laughing and slapping each other high-fives. It was party time in the Sweetser Projects.
Detective Ray Chapman was a thirty-four-year veteran detective. He had the gray hair and the lines in his forehead to prove it. He had caught the run and now stood with his hands in his pockets, a dour look on his face, as he waited for Jack Murphy and Liddell Blanchard to make their way through the crowds. He’d called them as soon as he had arrived.
Jack pulled the Crown Vic past the news media vans and felt the familiar tingle of anticipation. He looked around at the crowds of onlookers and newspeople. He knew that the killer might be among them.
In one of these clusters, Jack recognized Channel Six’s own Claudine Setera, who was just wrapping up an interview with a dangerous-looking young man wearing pants whose waistband threatened to fall off his bony hips. A dozen or so enthusiastic teens were surrounding the pair, hamming it up for the camera and hoping they would get a glimpse of themselves on television later. Several of the kids were making grabs for the cameraman’s equipment belt.
“Jack. Jack Murphy!” Claudine called from the other side of the yellow tape.
Jack hesitated, but then remembered that if you didn’t tell the media something—no matter how useless a piece of information—they would report that the police had no comment. “No comment” always came out sounding like “The police are hiding things from you that you need to know.”
“Miss Setera,” Jack said, “I’ve only just arrived and probably know less than you do.”
She gave him a look that said, Of course you know less than I do.
“Could I just get a photo of you entering the crime scene again?” she asked. “We didn’t see you arrive.”
Sergeant Walker had stopped and now smiled at Jack. “You’re a movie star,” he said. “I’m heading in.”
Jack nodded at Walker and then raised his eyebrows at Claudine.
“Oh, just come out here a few feet and then cross under the tape,” she said, and shrugged.
“Okay,” Jack said, and ducked under the tape and walked a few feet from the cameraman. She didn’t care what he had to say, she just wanted some film to play along with her scripted version of events. “Is this okay?” he asked, and she nodded.
When he was finished reentering the crime scene for benefit of the camera he approached his partner. Without even a thank-you, Claudine and her cameraman were loading the Channel Six van, no doubt to make a hasty retreat from the area before the throngs of kids could strip them of valuables.
Detective Chapman walked toward Jack and said, “I think I might have found your missing hand.” Chapman ran a hand through his thick gray hair, and then gave Jack a disconcerted look. He put his notebook in his jacket pocket and then stuck both hands back in his pockets, and to Jack he looked like an old coat hanging on a coatrack. His whole manner spoke of someone who was wrung out.
Jack and Walker exchanged a look. Walker nodded, and confirmed, “We found a hand at this scene that doesn’t belong here.”
Chapman was looking at the crowds of people. He was not a happy man.
“One of their neighbors has been slaughtered, and they act as if this is some sort of entertainment for their benefit.”
“You’ve got your time in, Ray,” Jack said. “You’ve got enough to draw a good retirement. Go fishing whenever you want. Eh?”
Chapman’s face hardened. “You think I can’t cut it anymore ?” he asked, surprising Jack.
“I’m just saying, Ray,” Jack began, but then thought better of it.
Chapman seemed to get a grip and pulled his notebook back out, a
nd forced a grin. “Well, maybe I will take retirement, Jack. But it won’t be today. We’ve got a looney tune to catch.”
Liddell was talking to an officer who was holding an aluminum clipboard and pointing down the passage at other apartments and then at the area of ground next to them that had been roped off with yellow crime scene tape. Liddell thanked the officer and walked over to meet Jack.
“Give me some good news, Bigfoot.”
“I think we’re looking at the same killer here,” Liddell said.
“The coffee is wearing off,” Jack said and wiped a hand across his face.
Liddell pulled out his notebook and recited, “Louise Brigham, black female, age thirty-three, two kids, both at school when this happened. Neighbors say she’s stand-up. No drugs. No enemies. No male visitors. Ex-husband in Toledo, Ohio. No problems there. No fights with anyone. She’s on Section Eight housing, and doesn’t work.
“Her throat is cut. Just like the last one. Little Casket’s crew is on the way,” Liddell said, meaning that the coroner’s office had been officially notified by the police dispatcher and someone would be arriving shortly. Probably Little Casket herself.
“We have a motive yet?” Jack asked.
“No motive. No weapon,” Liddell confirmed, and then he leaned close to Jack’s ear and said, “The killer left a hand behind.”
Jack felt a knot forming in his stomach.
Liddell added, “And he took her face and eyes.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jack stared at Liddell, waiting for the rest of the statement.
Liddell continued. “Yeah! Her face is missing just like the last one. And the hand we found here isn’t hers because this victim is black and the hand we found is from a white female.”
“This just gets better and better,” Jack muttered.
“That’s not the best part,” Liddell said, and motioned for Jack to follow him.
Corporal Joe Timmons was guarding the crime scene entry and handed the sign-in log to Jack at the doorway. Jack signed his name, the date, and the time he was entering the apartment. Timmons had at least forty years under his belt, and had been a field training officer for the last fifteen years. Another guy well past retirement, Jack thought.
