by DL Barbur
"Undergarments are inconsistent with the outer clothing," Alex was saying. She cut those off and handed them to me. The fabric felt stiff and new like it hadn't even been washed. The printing on the labels inside was crisp and easy to read. Interesting.
There was a camera mounted on a flexible arm over the table. The controls and cable release were covered with disposable plastic covers. Alex took two long shots of the whole body.
Alex started with a top-down examination of the girl. I followed along closely as Alex described the girl from head to toe. There were some scrapes and marks that she paid particular attention to, but no big wounds.
Next came one of my least favorite parts of an autopsy. I had gotten to the point where I could divorce the person from the body, usually. But as Alex arranged the girl's legs and got out her speculum, I turned away a little, pretended to study the clothes some more, as she narrated that part of the exam.
Alex put her tools away, took a minute to stretch out her back muscles. She picked up a hard rubber block, put it under the girl's neck so it would hold her head up.
"I'm going to open up her head before I look at her neck."
Her eyes went from mine to Mandy's. Mandy was silent. She stood there with her arms crossed over her chest. Alex considered for a moment, pointed at one of the two trashcans over in a corner. One was red and had biohazard symbols all over it. I knew better than to grab that one. The other was plain, with a clean liner in it. I picked it up and set it just outside the taped line on the floor. Mandy raised an eyebrow at me.
Alex made three quick, sure cuts with the scalpel, then set it down. I'd learned that this was called "reflecting" the skin, since "scalping" sounded so non-clinical. The skin came loose from the back of the girl's skull with a wet ripping sound. Alex pulled the flaps forward, over the dead girl's face. I looked over at Mandy. She was white and there was a big drop of sweat on her forehead, but so far she was doing ok.
"Hmm…" Alex said. "Pronounced bruising on the back of the head. No fracture to the underlying skull structures." Alex shot a few pictures of the inside of the skin from the girl’s head. Then picked up the Stryker saw.
I hated the high pitched whine of that saw, and no matter how good the ventilation in the new room was, I always thought I could smell the hot microscopic chips of bone through my mask. Alex set the saw down, twisted the top of the girl’s head back and forth a couple of times. It came off with a pop. I was always surprised at how blindingly white the inside of the skull was. The pinkish white brain underneath always looked unreal, like it was some kind of anatomical display or something. I frequently had that reaction to gruesome images. My brain would check out by saying "gotta be fake man, we can't really be seeing this." It worked for me as long as I was awake. It was when I went to sleep that I stopped believing it.
Mandy had the presence of mind to make it to the trash can before she puked, where she would be out of range of the microphone. She got bonus points for being quiet. I debated going over to pat her on the shoulder, or maybe taking my gloves off and getting her a glass of water or something. I decided against it. She was a little touchy if she felt like she was being patronized, and come to think of it, I had never done it for any of my male partners that puked.
Alex was saying something about "no brain abnormalities" and I looked back in time to see her poking around inside the girl’s head. I turned away and looked at the other evidence we’d accumulated.
Mandy came over to stand beside me as I stared at the girl's clothes on the counter.
"What do you make of all this?" I asked, keeping my voice low so there was no chance it would be picked up on the microphone. I tried to sound natural like I hadn't noticed Mandy puking, and like a woman that I was supremely physically attracted to wasn't dissecting a corpse six feet behind me.
Mandy was quiet for a moment. She actually looked green. That was interesting. I'd heard the expression before but had never seen anybody actually turn green, at least not somebody who was still alive.
"Her clothes and her underwear don't match?" Mandy sounded a little tentative.
I frowned. She was right, but the whole puking thing seemed to have sapped some self-confidence. She needed to understand that a cast-iron stomach and an investigative mind didn't have to go together.
"Ok. What else?" I asked.
"Her clothes are dirty, her socks are worn out like she's been living on the streets, but she takes time to shave her legs and her ummm… pubes?" Mandy blushed a little. We were going to have to work on this sort of thing before she had to get on the stand and testify about somebody’s private parts. Jesus, how could you be a cop for six, seven years and still get embarrassed by this stuff?
"That doesn't make sense," Mandy continued. "And neither does the makeup."
I agreed. The dirty jeans and sweatshirt on top of lingerie that looked like it came out of a men's magazine, freshly shaved but with dirty fingernails. It didn't match up, unless she'd been killed in the middle of cleaning herself up, then dressed in her old clothes. Stranger things had happened.
I looked back at Alex. She had made the classic "y" shaped incision on the girl's chest, leaving three flaps of skin hanging open. As I watched, she picked up what looked like a pair of pruning shears, opened them up and went to work on the girl’s rib. I winced and turned just as the snapping sounds started.
I picked up the bag containing the handcuffs: Smith and Wesson. Professional quality, law enforcement grade restraints, not the cheap pot metal and fur lined crap they sold in the sex toy stores. This was the sort of thing a cop or higher end security employee would carry.
I checked on Alex again. She was holding the girl's detached stomach in one hand over a large beaker. She took a scalpel and made a long cut down the side, so all the contents drained into the beaker. She was humming to herself. I swallowed and looked away again.
I had to get my head right about Alex. First of all, I really was madly in love with Audrey. Second, if something ever did happen between me and Alex, and it ended badly, I knew her dad would kill me. Third, after repeatedly seeing her with human internal organs in her hands, I didn't think I'd be able to be particularly amorous anyway.
When I stepped outside of my life, it seemed pretty messed up sometimes.
"Ok," I said to Mandy. "What else do we have to follow up on?"
"First, we've got the handcuffs to check for prints. The clothes need to go to the lab for whatever we can find, hair fiber, what have you."
I nodded again. "Hopefully AFIS will come back with something from the girl's prints."
AFIS stood for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Through the system, all fingerprint records were tied together via the FBI. If our victim had ever been arrested or fingerprinted by any government agency before, she would be in the system. I wasn't getting too excited. The girl was young, maybe even still a minor, but if she had been living on the streets, there was a pretty good chance that she had some minor contacts with law enforcement. Maybe there would be a shoplifting arrest or some other minor charge.
"We also need to check missing person reports,” Mandy said. “If this girl has been on the streets, it doesn't look like it was for long. She was skinny, but not in that underfed way those kids get. We'll know for sure when the toxicology results come back, but I don't have her pegged for a hardcore junky or meth head either. She still had her teeth and there weren't any needle marks on her.”
It sounded like Mandy was coming back from her setback. Her brain was engaged again.
I checked on Alex. She was putting all the organs back, more or less in the same places she found them. On the table beside her was a long row of specimens: vials of urine, blood, intraocular fluid; cross-sections of internal organs; smears and slides. It was a human body reduced to a bunch of samples taken for analysis. As I watched, Alex did a quick check of all her tools and instruments to make sure she wasn't leaving anything inside. Then she picked up the chest plate and settled it int
o place before smoothing the flaps of skin back down. She was still humming, a James Taylor tune if I wasn't mistaken.
"You know," I said to Mandy. "I never get used to this."
She looked a little relieved.
I walked back over to the autopsy table. Alex was whipping long, wide stitches through the incision. I made a mental note to go to another doctor if I needed a cut stitched up. She paused for a second, pointed at the wall. The red light next to the "record" sign was off.
"We're in the clear if you want to whisper sweet nothings in my ear." She held down a piece of skin that kept wanting to curl up and put a stitch through it.
Damn. Sweet nothings? Where had that come from?
"I dunno, Audrey might get upset."
She gave a theatrical sigh as she tied off the last of the stitches.
I blinked, trying to change gears. It wasn't often that I fumbled for something to say, but when I did I usually locked up tight. As I stood there looking like an idiot, Alex picked up the top of the victim’s skull, tried the fit. She didn't like it so she turned it a degree or two, tried it again. She nodded and this time flipped the reflected scalp back into place.
I saw her lips curl up under the mask. She was using finer stitches on the head, in case a family claimed the body and wanted to have an open casket funeral.
I changed the subject. "So what do you think about my victim here?"
Her brows furrowed. Because I was changing the subject or because of my question, I wasn't sure. "I'm still putting everything together in my head. Give me a few minutes to think. I want to make sure I haven't missed anything."
Mandy and I bagged all the clothing in separate brown paper sacks. We gave the room a once over before we left, to make sure we hadn't left anything.
Mandy was a trooper. She walked over to the can she had puked in, pulled the bag out and tied a knot in it. "Where does this go?"
Alex pointed at the biohazard can.
"Drop it in there. It all gets incinerated. Don't ever puke in the biohazard can though. You can get some nasty backsplash if it's already been used."
She was cool about it. I appreciated that. Some people would have taken a shot at Mandy.
Mandy gathered the evidence bags and headed out to her car.
I headed towards Alex’s office, trying to make all the evidence fit together in my head. I was also trying to ignore the fact that I was looking forward to being alone with Alex in her office, even just for a few minutes.
Chapter Six
While Mandy stowed the victim’s clothing in the trunk of her car, I went in Alex's office. I had to resist the urge to snoop in her stuff. I told myself it was just professional curiosity. I liked to keep my skills sharp and looking through a person’s office was a good way to find out about them. From where I was sitting, I couldn't see the front of Alex's computer monitor, but it was reflected in the window. It was open to her email program. Despite myself, I was trying to read the backward words in the reflection.
"Ok,” Alex said from behind me. I jumped, looked away from the window. She gave me a puzzled look. "You ok, Dent?"
"Uh, yeah. Just staring out the window. You startled me."
Alex had left her hair undone. It spilled all down her back. She smelled good.
"Want me to email photos of the victim’s face to your phone while we're waiting for your partner?"
I nodded and she went to work. In a few seconds, my phone was buzzing with incoming pictures.
"So," I asked. "How's your dad?"
"He's good. Doing consulting work for the Oregon Attorney General and the Feds." Her fingers tapped away at the keyboard. "He was just talking about you the other day. Said it was a shame you were dating somebody and I should ask you out. He said you always seemed like a decent guy."
My mouth hit my chest. Pace had said that? She had to be pulling my leg. He had taken great pains to keep his young, attractive daughter away from anybody with a PPB badge. Alex gave me a cool gaze and smiled. For the second time that night I was speechless.
Mandy walked in and saved me. She sat down next to me, gave me a funny look. I shook my head.
"Ok," Alex said, suddenly all business as she scooted forward on her seat. "Keep in mind all the tox screens aren't in. I don't have any lab work back."
We both nodded.
"I think your victim was manually strangled, and in a somewhat unusual way. Ordinarily, when somebody is strangled, there's damage to the trachea and larynx. It's fifty-fifty whether the victim dies of lack of air to the lungs due to a damaged trachea, or a lack of blood to the brain due to compression of the carotid arteries."
Alex didn't look at me as she said this. I’d once gotten into a fight with a suspect who had nearly killed me with his bare hands. I choked him to death instead and had been lucky to keep my job.
Alex shuffled some papers, cleared her throat. "Anyway. Your victim was choked out by somebody that knew what he was doing. There's only slight bruising to the throat. Trachea and larynx are intact. He knew how to compress the carotids and hold them there long enough to starve her brain of oxygen. On a young, healthy woman like her, it probably took five, six minutes of constant pressure to be sure."
That was a special kind of killer. The guy who could hold that choke for that long to make sure.
"There was a little bit of a struggle," Alex went on, still not meeting my eyes. “There's bruising on the back of her head, consistent with hitting her head on something with a blunt edge, maybe the corner of a table or something. Abrasions on the back and elbow are consistent with squirming around on a floor with coarse carpet. She was dressed, at least from the waist up while this was going on. The bra straps marked her back and there's fiber from the sweatshirt in the wounds."
"Finally, judging by the vaginal abrasions she was raped. I took swabs and I'll have them tested for ejaculate and common spermicides and lubricants."
"So you think time of death was last night?" Mandy asked. Alex nodded, looked at the clock on the wall. Ten o'clock.
"Yes. Right about twenty-four hours ago. Some of the lab tests will help fix it, but I wouldn't guess they will change it within four hours either way."
This was a weird one. A handcuffed dead girl who had been strangled with a carotid choke. I hadn’t seen that before.
"What else do you think about her Alex?" It was an open-ended question. I wanted Alex to tell me whatever was on her mind. She was sharp, both about the medical side of things and the psychology.
Alex hesitated, then finally answered. "I think once you find out who ran her porn shoot, you'll have your killer."
That took me aback for a second. I was pretty close to naming a cop as her killer, or maybe a security guard or cop wanna-be. The cuffs, the neck restraint, they were two big pieces to the puzzle I thought. But where was this porn business coming from? This was why I liked to get other opinions, particularly from women if a female victim was involved. They saw stuff I didn't. I realized Mandy was nodding her head.
"Ok," I said, leaning forward. "You left me behind there."
"This girl was living on the streets," Alex said. "Her clothes had dirt ground into them so they hadn’t been washed in a long time. Her shoes were shot. Her feet were hamburger from walking with those ratty socks on. Her nails were ragged. But her body was clean, her hair had been shampooed recently."
I nodded. I got that much.
"Her intestines were empty. No food. Nothing. But her stomach was full. Right before she died somebody fed her shrimp, looks like maybe a steak, baked potato, I'm guessing a little red wine. That takes money. Money she didn't have. If she ripped somebody off for say, the thirty to fifty bucks a good dinner would cost, she would have gone to McDonald's, made the money last for a while. She couldn't have gotten into a nice place with those clothes anyway. No, somebody bought that for her. In exchange for what?"
"Why porn? Why not just straight up sex?" I asked. "Maybe he thinks they have an understanding. He feeds her this bi
g meal, she never had that understanding or backs out. He decides it's happening one way or another."
Alex and Mandy both shook their heads.
"Nope,” Alex said. “It's gotta be a porn shoot. She's young, good looking. I could believe maybe the guy lets her take a shower, wants her to shave, even that he buys her some new underwear to get her all dolled up. It would be cheaper for him just to hire a professional escort, they already have all that stuff. But it's gotta be porn. It's the make up that tells the tale."
I blinked. I still wasn't getting it.
"The makeup. On her razor burns," Mandy said. "The makeup would be obvious in person. But the shade matched her skin pretty well, so it probably wouldn't be so noticeable on the camera."
"Can't they just take that stuff out with a computer anymore?" I asked.
Alex nodded. "Yeah, but maybe your guy doesn't know how. Maybe she covered them up herself without being prompted, but either way, I’m guessing there were pictures involved. Maybe for publication, maybe for your guy's personal use. But definitely some pictures."
"Ok," I said, trying the idea out in my mind. "He feeds her, lets her shower somewhere, she shaves, he gives her new undies…"
Alex cut me off. "Probably a whole new set of clothes. I'm guessing the photos start with her clothed, end with her naked. He might recycle the clothes, but he's classy enough not to reuse underwear."
How the hell did Alex Pace's little girl get to know so much about how porn shoots were done, and high priced escorts, for that matter? I shoved that out of my mind. It was a question for another time. Like never.
"So he takes pictures. How do we go from there to her dead and dumped in a park?"
"Maybe it's like you thought," Mandy said. "Maybe they had two different understandings. Maybe she thought it was just pictures, but he expected a happy ending."
"Ok." It made a certain amount of sense. "But where do the handcuffs come in?"
Alex swiveled her monitor around. On the screen were the photos she'd taken during the autopsy. "The cuffs were put on way too tight. See how deeply they are in the flesh?" She flipped forward a frame, now the cuffs were off and there was an indentation all the way around the girl’s wrist. "The flesh is indented, but there's no bruising. The cuffs were put on after her heart stopped."
