Another Way to Die

by Philip Cox

  He walked over to a seat, a bench on the sidewalk. The back of the seat was covered with a vinyl advertising a show on CBS Thursdays 9pm PT. He had never heard of either the show or the lady hosting. The only thing he noticed was her pneumatic cleavage.

  He flopped down onto the seat and took a deep breath. He watched as the cars and trucks passed by. A large white truck slowed for a red light, then made a left on green, heading for the coast. The cab had a Paramount Pictures logo on its side: clearly there was some filming scheduled for later.

  As he sat, his conversation with Johnson came back to him: the phrase she used Bureau’s Curse. And she was right: it was the same here, with the LAPD. None of his relationships had lasted; Ray’s marriage, outwardly a happy one, was going through a rough patch. Although Leroy wouldn’t be surprised if Ray’s father-in-law, Henry Meriwether II, had been fanning the flames. Ray had told Sam years back that Meriwether was of the view that his daughter had married beneath her station, whatever that meant; that she should have settled down with an accountant or a stockbroker. Somebody who got paid more. And somebody she knew would walk in at the end of the day, alive and well. Whereas Holly would never know for sure until Ray walked in the door.

  Perhaps that was the problem Leroy had always had. Perhaps his partners had always, deep down, gotten tired of the knotted stomachs when he was a few minutes late. Most homicide detectives were reluctant to go home until a murder was solved, until the deceased’s family had some sort of closure. That is not compatible with a stable, family home life.

  Now and again, Ray would say to him, ‘You need to find someone and settle down, Sam.’ And Leroy would point out that being alone was not the same as being lonely. But which did he feel at this moment?

  He took out his phone, and tabbed down the contacts list. He still had his ex’s number listed. His finger hovered over the call button, and then he tabbed some more. He came to the name Sally Duvall. She was an officer assigned to accompany him on a trip a couple of years back to Birmingham, Alabama. On his last night there, she propositioned him. He turned her down, but kept her number. They kept in contact a little since then, a text message now and again, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, but not for a while. Again his finger hovered over the call button.

  Then he muttered, ‘Fuck it,’ and put the phone away. Got up off the seat, and walked back inside the station.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Leroy watched the large hand pass the figure 1, and jerkily move around the clock face. It was 8:05am, and Medical Examiner Russell Hobson was about to begin the first autopsy of the day.

  Leroy was in one of the criminal laboratories in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center on Paseo Rancho Castilla, just west of Monterey Park, and adjacent to California State University. Since 2007, and after two years’ construction and costing slightly over $80 million, the imposing concrete and red brick building had been the home to the Los Angeles Crime Laboratories.

  ‘You sure you’re okay, Sam?’ Hobson asked. ‘You still look like shit.’

  ‘I feel like shit,’ Leroy reposted.

  ‘How much sleep you get last night?’ Hobson asked, as his assistant wheeled the first gurney into place.

  Leroy shrugged. ‘Couple of hours, I guess.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘I’ll let you know when we get an ID,’ he replied, nodding his head in the direction of the gurney.

  ‘I see.’ Hobson looked down at the inert body, still covered by the blue rubber sheet.

  ‘I was at the station all night. Looking at some video from outside a men’s room at LAX until around two. Then caught some zees on the couch in Roman Perez’s office.’

  Hobson was amused. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘He did when he arrived at seven thirty this morning. But before I went to sleep, I left a note on his door saying, “payback for Superbowl”.’

  Hobson frowned as he stretched his rubber gloves.

  ‘Now that seems familiar, but I don’t remember where.’ He motioned to his assistant to remove the sheet.

  ‘Goes back to when we were partners. He had this huge fight with Rosanne: he wanted to watch the game, she didn’t, things escalated, and she threw him out. He came over to mine, we watched the game, and he slept on my couch the next two or three nights.’

  ‘Yes, she could be quite feisty as I recall.’

  ‘Still can, apparently.’

  ‘So you figured it was time for payback?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Did he see it that way? Did he remember?’

  ‘Not at first, or so he made out; but winced when I refreshed his memory.’

  Hobson laughed and turned to his assistant. ‘Oh, Sam: this is Lester. Lester, this is Detective Leroy.’

  Lester and Leroy exchanged greetings.

  ‘Right, let’s get started,’ said Hobson. ‘This is the Jane Doe that came in Friday night. Sam: she still is a Jane Doe, is she?’

  ‘She is.’ Leroy took a step back and watched Hobson and Lester begin. There was a microphone hanging three feet above the body, and as he carried out the autopsy, Hobson recorded verbal notes; at the same time, Lester recorded everything on a body diagram on a clipboard.

  In his years as a detective, Leroy had attended scores of autopsies, and each and every time the feature which struck him most was the smell. A combination of the disinfectant from the laboratory and the unmistakeable smell of decay and decomposition, even though the body had been a corpse only a few hours before it was placed in the freezer. The smell always remained with him for hours after he had left.

  In a half-hearted attempt to divert his eyes from the victim’s body, more out of respect than any squeamishness, he gazed around the lab. On one of the walls, beneath the clock, was a framed sign reading:

  Autopsy

  From the Greek autopsia

  Meaning, ‘seeing with one’s own eyes’

  An autopsy will comprise four steps. The first is to examine the body’s exterior, and check the weight. The table on which the body lay had a built in digital scale.

  ‘Weight 58.05 kilograms,’ Hobson read out. Lester recorded the weight. ‘That’s one hundred twenty-eight pounds.’

  The next check would have been of any clothing still on the body: in this case, of course, there was none. Next will be an examination of the effects of penetrating objects and the presence of blood or body fluid stains. Hobson counted the number of entry wounds. He counted nineteen in all, at random, across the victim’s chest and stomach.

  ‘Can you tell what type of knife was used?’ Leroy asked. Hobson replied as he carefully examined each wound.

  ‘Nothing sophisticated. I can’t make out any signs of serrations. Could be an outdoor knife, a drop point; could be a standard kitchen knife. The size of each wound varies between 24.9 and 28.5 millimetres by between 3 and 4.3 millimetres.’

  ‘Same knife for each wound?’

  ‘Looks that way. And the blade looks to be around 108 millimetres long. That’s just over four inches for you, Sam. And the size of the wounds -’

  ‘It’s okay. I get it.’

  ‘Full penetration each time,’ Hobson continued. ‘On the edges of three wounds I can see some traces of fibre.’ He carefully took samples of the fibre. ‘It looks as if the victim was wearing something when she was stabbed. The fibres are thin, and white. Some are heavily bloodstained. I’m guessing it was a blouse, or a tee-shirt.’ He looked over to Leroy. ‘Why take their clothes off after stabbing them? It doesn’t make sense, unless he was planning a sexual assault post mortem.’

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me that,’ said Leroy. ‘Either way, we’re looking at somebody who’s seriously fucked up.’

  Hobson’s search of the exterior took him down to the victim’s upper thigh. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed as he saw the smaller pentagram. He parted the legs slightly to get a better view. Lester followed Hobson, constantly taking photographs, while Hobson continued his
verbal notes. ‘It was so dark the first time, I couldn’t make it out very well, but…’

  ‘It will be an exact duplicate of the one on her back,’ Leroy said. ‘Except the size.’

  Hobson stepped round to the other side to get another viewpoint. ‘You’ve seen this before, then?’ he asked as he manipulated the skin with his gloved fingers.

  ‘Some years back. When Perez and I were partners.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I killed the guy.’

  Hobson looked up. ‘So…?’

  Leroy shrugged.

  Hobson returned to the carving.

  ‘It’s a -’

  ‘It’s a pentagram. Five sides.’

  Hobson took a deep breath, pausing his commentary. ‘It’s so… intricate. Does it have any significance?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘There probably is some significance, but we’ve not figured it out yet. We’ve taken advice from some guy down in UCLA, and it could have some religious meaning, pagan, witchcraft, anything.’

  ‘Witchcraft?’

  ‘Yup. Apparently. I think it’s simpler than that. I think the guy’s just fucked up. Wait till you see its big brother. Any signs of sexual assault?’

  ‘From a visual examination of the vaginal entrance, I can see no evidence of trauma.’ Again, Hobson looked up at Leroy. ‘I will have to remove her reproductive organs for tests.’

  Leroy took a step back and averted his eyes as Lester took more photographs. He knew the victim would know nothing of what was happening, but he still felt uncomfortable. There is no dignity in death.

  ‘If I can have a copy of an image of her face,’ Leroy asked. ‘And of the other Jane Doe, so I can compare with anything the Missing Persons Unit might have.’

  ‘You don’t know who they are, then?’

  Leroy shook his head. ‘Not yet. We might have an ID on the second, but I want to confirm with the MPU before we start bothering relatives.’

  ‘I’m now scraping the fingernails,’ Hobson recorded. ‘Sam, we’ll take anything found for analysis.’

  ‘I guess it’s too much to ask for that you’ll find our man’s DNA in there somewhere?’

  ‘You never know.’ There was some matter under some of the nails; Lester held out a small glass dish and Hobson placed the sample in the dish for analysis.

  ‘How long’s that going to take?’ Leroy asked.

  ‘A few days, Sam. You know that. I’m going to take some radiographs before we move on.’

  Hobson and Lester turned her over. Both gasped as they saw the carving on her back, beginning at the top of the spine and running down to the middle of her back, and reaching as far as her shoulder blades.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Hobson whispered. He stared down at the carving for a few seconds. ‘You had this before?’ he asked Leroy, throatily.

  ‘Yup. Our theory at the time was that it was done after death, or she was drugged, or paralysed with something.’

  Hobson ran his fingers over the cuts. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not in this case anyway.’

  ‘Oh? How so?’ Leroy had been thinking about the conversation he had had the day before.

  Hobson referred to his notes, then looked up. ‘Once the victim is dead, the heart’s not beating, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Without a beating heart, the only blood pressure in a corpse is due to gravity. Just like with the incisions we’ll be making presently, there would have been little blood, and I can see from the wounds here. The signs of trauma are different to those on the front: very little blood.’

  Leroy felt relieved at this.

  Hobson paused again, running his hand over the pentagram. He slowly shook his head and moved his hand down to the buttocks. ‘No signs of anal trauma.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t expecting any. In the other case, we’d assumed there had been some sexual contact - vaginal contact - as the ME found traces of lubricant inside the victims.’

  Hobson frowned. ‘No traces of semen?’

  ‘No. Our assumption was that he used a condom. It happens sometimes.’

  Hobson glanced over to Lester, who remained as sardonic as ever. ‘Radiographs,’ he said, ‘then we’ll move on.’

  After the radiographs had been taken, Hobson and Lester moved to the second stage, in which they would open the thoracoabdominal or chest-belly cavity. Prior to making the incisions, they slid a rubber block underneath the body, which had the effect of extending its arch and allowing greater access to the chest.

  The layman might think they are familiar with autopsies, their knowledge being gleaned from numerous television shows; however, in these shows a fundamental error is generally made. The trunk incision is commonly wrong, in that they show the incisions straight and above the breasts; also the two arms of the Y-shaped cut is too short, not extending to each shoulder joint.

  Hobson began the incision at each armpit and ran beneath her breasts to the bottom of the breastbone. There the two incisions joined and ran down the middle of the abdomen to the pubis, just above the victim’s genitals. The cuts Hobson made produced very little blood.

  The Y-shaped cut done, Hobson was able to remove the front part of the ribs and breastbone in one piece, exposing most of the organs. He checked each organ methodically.

  ‘Catastrophic trauma damage to the lungs, heart and abdomen,’ he commented. This was of no surprise to Leroy.

  For cosmetic reasons, an ME would not normally disturb the skin of the face, hands, arms and the area above the breast. Hobson did a visual check for signs of trauma to the neck and larynx for possible evidence of strangulation. There was none.

  Leroy said, ‘We’re still trying to figure out how he overpowered them, got them to wherever he killed them.’

  ‘There are no signs of strangulation, or use of a choke hold. There are no signs of bruising on their wrists or ankles. I know she was bound when she was found, but that had to have been done, for whatever reason, after death.’

  ‘He must have given them something, then.’

  Hobson checked her arms, legs, and between her toes and fingers. ‘Sam, there’s no sign of any needle pricks.’

  ‘He didn’t use a syringe, then.’

  ‘Once we’ve dealt with her internal organs, we’ll begin examining tissue and fluid samples. As you know, we’ll test for drugs, poisons in the spinal fluid. We’ll look at eye fluid, blood, bile, stomach contents, her hair and skin, urine. We’ll also check for any blisters, although I don’t think much decomposition has taken place. And before you ask, that is going to take a while.’

  Leroy nodded. ‘I realise that. You’re going to carry out the second, aren’t you? You said you’d do them together.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not going to do them together, as in together, but once we’ve removed this victim’s organs and bagged them up, we’ll start on number two.’

  Hobson was referring to the third stage of the autopsy, where the body’s organs are removed for dissection and further examination. They can then be stored in the refrigerator and examined later. Hobson saw no need at this time to remove the victim’s brain. After the examinations, the organs would be placed into plastic bags and stored in the relevant body cavities. They must be kept in case they are needed as evidence. Once the autopsy is finally completed, Hobson would determine the cause of death. The time of death is always approximate, the estimate being based on the temperature of the body on discovery.

  ‘Do you plan to stay, Sam?’ Hobson asked, before he began to remove the organs.

  ‘I don’t need to stay to watch you do that, but what about Number Two?’

  ‘We have to finish here before I begin on the next,’ Hobson explained. ‘Look, I know as SIO you always like to be here, but you don’t usually get them in bulk, do you? Let us finish off here; then I’ll make a start on Jane Doe Two. I’ll call you once I’ve done the exterior examination. Can call you when I’m ready to start; could put you on speaker.�
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  Leroy sighed. He wanted to stay, but Hobson was right. There would be limited value in staying here until the second post mortem was done, and there was still a lot of work to do at the station. And if he stayed here waiting and waiting, he would surely fall asleep.

  ‘Okay,’ he said wearily. ‘Call me then, would you, Russ? I’ll get back and see how the others have gotten on.’

  ‘Others, plural? You referring to the trusty Raymond?’

  ‘I’ve sent Ray down to the owner of the car number two was found in. With uniform back-up, of course.’ He explained to Hobson about Agent Johnson.

  ‘Has she been any help?’ Hobson asked.

  ‘To be honest, not much. She’s made a couple of suggestions, but for the most part, she’s just validated what we’ve done already.’

  ‘Well, you know Perez, Sam. Better than most.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyhow, she’s flying back to Quantico this afternoon. With any luck, she’ll be on her way to LAX by the time I get back.’

  ‘You’re not a fan of hers, then?’

  Leroy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There’s something about her. Like she has a bug up her ass about something. A chip on her shoulder.’

  ‘Well, Sam, if she hasn’t added any value, you’re better off without her, in my opinion.’

  Leroy turned to go. ‘Mine too. Thanks, guys. Talk to you later, Russ.’

  Leroy left them to finish Jane Doe One and begin Number Two. As he walked down the steps to his car, he sniffed and took a deep breath. It was always the same, every time he attended a post mortem. The smell stayed with him for hours.

  The smell of death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Leroy headed back to the station. Heading along the 10 Freeway, the noises coming from his stomach reminded him that he had not eaten since he could not remember when. He disregarded the disgusting takeout he had bought last night; that certainly could never pass for food, not in the sense he understood it.