Damaged (8 page)

Tuesday, May 1, 4:00 p.m.

E
very time Ethan walked through the long, winding corridors in the basement of the Greater Halifax General Hospital, the word
bowel
sprang to mind. He knew his subconscious was bracing him for what was to come.

He glanced at Lamond. “You ready?”

He’d surprised Ethan by asking if he could come to the autopsy. Ethan had agreed. This would season him like nothing else.

The detective constable nodded. His expression of steely determination would have amused Ethan if he hadn’t been so bothered by the case.

“Is this your first one?” he asked.

Lamond nodded again. “But I used to gut fish.”

Ethan remembered thinking the same thing before his first autopsy. He hadn’t wanted to listen to any advice from the senior officer then, and he doubted Lamond would want to hear it, either. But still, he’d be remiss not to give him the basics: “Get close enough to see but not too close. The smell can sometimes set people off. And make sure you stand near a garbage can.”

They reached the end of the corridor. A sign on a large set of swinging doors said Morgue. Farther down was a single door with a smaller sign: Autopsy Suite. He headed toward it, dropping his coffee cup in a garbage can. He entered the room and reached for a scrub gown folded neatly on a metal shelf by the door. Lamond hung back at the doorway.

Ethan threw him an impatient glance and slipped his arms through the sleeves. “Remember, DNA contamination. We don’t want to leave our trace on her. And besides, sometimes the blood can spatter. I hope you’re not wearing your best shoes.” He picked up his briefcase. “Although in this case, I’m not sure how much blood she has left.”

Lamond hurriedly thrust his arms into a gown and followed him, the green edges flapping around his back.

A small cluster of people stood around the autopsy table. The medical examiner’s assistant had just lifted the body bag from the gurney onto the metal surface. A member of the FIS team stood by, readying his camera.

The M.E. glanced over his steel-rimmed glasses at Ethan and smiled. “Right on time.” His voice still retained the lilt of the Caribbean. It bounced off the stainless steel surrounding them, warming the room. His face grew somber. “It’s a nasty case, Detective Drake.”

Ethan nodded. “Tell me about it.”

“Have you identified her?” Dr. Guthro asked.

“Yes.” He was glad they had, but whenever they had a name to go with the body, it made it so much more personal. “Her name is Lisa MacAdam. A fifteen-year-old private school student. Her mother is Judge Hope Carson.”

“My Lord.” Even Dr. Guthro, a forensic pathologist who had seen a lot in his day, looked shocked. “How did this happen to her?”

“Good question. It’s been a challenging crime scene.”

“From what the FIS detectives have been telling me, you couldn’t find any clothes or personal effects?”

Ethan shook his head. “Nothing. No clothes, no purse…” He glanced at the body bag. It sagged in all the wrong places. “…and so far we haven’t been able to find her limbs.”

“Obviously she was killed somewhere else.” Dr. Guthro picked up his clipboard.

“Yes. We’re hoping that there may be some trace evidence on her body.”
Hope
was too mild a word. They needed something to go on. Now that the tire track was unusable, they had nothing. The fog had rolled in, making the search difficult. But even before that, the Ident guys had come up with very little. It was hard to believe that the dump site had yielded so few clues. It spoke volumes about the type of killer. He was smart. He was careful.

Dr. Guthro gazed over his bifocals. “The E.T.D. rules out fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints?” Lamond threw an astonished look at the M.E. “She has no fingers.”

Ethan frowned. “Dr. Guthro is referring to the killer’s latents.”

Lamond colored. “I didn’t know you could get latents off a corpse.”

Dr. Guthro nodded. “Latents are tricky to get off the skin. Since they usually only last for an hour or two after death has occurred, I’m afraid that is no longer an option for this victim.”

Ethan swallowed his disappointment. He knew their girl had been dead for too long for the killer’s prints—if he left any—to be lifted, but he had hoped Dr. Guthro might surprise them. They had so little to go with right now. “What time did she die?”

Dr. Guthro consulted his clipboard. “Based on the evening temperatures—which held pretty steady most of the night—we are estimating the time of death at approximately 2300 hours.” He put down the clipboard and removed his reading glasses. “Let’s have a look at what we’ve got, shall we?”

The assistant pulled the sides of the body bag open. The smell of dead, bloody flesh hit Ethan’s nostrils. He glanced at Lamond. His eyes were wide.

I bet your fish never smelled like that.

Dr. Guthro stood poised over the body, inhaling deeply several times. “No cyanidic odor emitting from the decedent,” he said into his Dictaphone.

He picked up a digital camera from a metal table and circled the body, taking photos of the naked corpse. “You’ve got a tough case,” he said. “No clothes which might have trace evidence.” His glance fell on the severed joints. “Not having her limbs is really unfortunate. I usually find excellent trace evidence under the nails.”

Ethan looked at the girl. At
Lisa
. She looked inhuman without her limbs, like a mannequin. Yet she was all too human: the still-childish features, the defiant stripe of bleached blond in her hair.

“No sign of external injury on the torso,” Dr. Guthro said, bending forward. “But the neck is a different matter. She was strangled. See the bruising?” It radiated from a thin red line around her neck.

“Looks like he used a ligature,” Ethan said.

“I agree. The bruising shows even pressure was applied.”

“Is that the cause of death?”

Dr. Guthro nodded. “Most likely. See the petechiae?” He gestured toward small red blotches that marred her neck. “They are quite extensive, around her mouth and—”
he pulled down her lower eyelid “—in the lining of her eyes.” He gently rubbed a large cotton swab around the ligature marking, then placed it in an evidence envelope, noting the case, site and date. “Hopefully there is some residue left on her skin to indicate what the killer used to strangle her.”

“Let’s hope,” Ethan said, his eyes tracing the smooth line circling her neck.

The M.E. and the Ident guy circled her body, looking, searching. The assistant turned the girl on her side. Then the other side. The killer had to have left
something,
some sign, on her body.

There was nothing. No semen, no hair. Nothing. Ethan shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. Who was this guy who killed her? Clean dump site, clean corpse. He tried to ignore the sinking in his stomach.

“All right, let’s see if anything was left in her hair,” Dr. Guthro said encouragingly in the silence. He picked up a small black comb—it looked like the ones sold at the dollar store—and began to systematically comb through Lisa’s hair. “Ah.” Dr. Guthro used a pair of tweezers to carefully remove something. Ethan’s pulse surged. Between the pincers was a thread, about a millimeter in length. “This looks promising.”

“Right on,” Lamond breathed.

Dr. Guthro dropped it into an evidence envelope and again jotted the case, site and date.

Ethan tried to not get his hopes up. “We’ll have to rule out her clothes or her house.” He allowed a small smile. “But it could be from the kill site.”

The M.E. nodded. “We’ll send it to the forensic lab for processing.” Lisa’s hair now lay neatly combed about her head. He plucked a hair with the tweezers and placed it in another evidence envelope.

Ethan stared at Judge Carson’s daughter. “Did she fight the killer?”

Dr. Guthro shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. I don’t see any sign of self-defense injuries. No abrasions, no cuts, no blood smears…”

Ethan frowned. Had she known her attacker? Or had she been drugged? “You will check her out for sedatives or date-rape drugs?”

“We’ll do a full screen on her,” Dr. Guthro said. “But you know as well as I do, if the killer used ecstasy on her, it won’t be in her system now.” Ecstasy was the drug of choice for rapists who wanted compliant victims, because it only lasted in the victim’s system for about twelve hours, and they often had little memory of what happened. “For now, we’ll get some swabs, see if any trace shows up.” Ethan watched him swab around her mouth and around the gaping joints where her limbs used to be, using a fresh swab each time. He hoped one of those swabs would reveal under microscope the trace evidence they couldn’t see: skin cells, semen, saliva. Something.

Dr. Guthro nodded to the assistant, who turned the body onto its side. “Lividity in the lower lumbar region and buttocks.”

“What’s lividity?” Lamond whispered.

“It’s where her blood pools,” Ethan replied impatiently. Lamond needed to get his shit together and read the manuals instead of
Men’s Health
. He was in homicide now.

Dr. Guthro looked at Ethan. “She was supine when she was discovered?”

“Yes.” Ethan looked at Lisa. Fifteen-year-old private school student. Daughter of wealthy, professional parents. Resident of an upscale condominium. The ridges of her
spine showed through her skin. She looked so vulnerable. He wanted to throw a blanket over her.

He crossed his arms. He needed to be objective. Not let this victim get under his skin. For some reason, the longer he worked on this unit, the harder it was getting to keep his distance. He thought he’d get desensitized. But he’d only gotten more thirsty for retribution.

The assistant put her hand on Lisa’s waist and pulled her onto her back. She took out a measuring tape and ran it along the side of Lisa’s body. “Thirty-nine inches,” she called out briskly. Then she looked at the scale reading on the autopsy table. “Seventy-nine pounds.”

There was silence except for the sound of chalk scribbling. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking: in her case, these numbers didn’t mean much.

Dr. Guthro slipped a swab in her mouth. Her jaw had dropped open before rigor mortis had settled in. Ethan was relieved they wouldn’t have to break the rigor. He’d had to do it once at a funeral home to get a victim’s fingerprints, and he’d never forget the crack each bone made as he unlocked the hand. Now whenever someone cracked their knuckles, his stomach lurched.

Dr. Guthro began combing Lisa’s pubic hair with methodical thoroughness, plucking a hair and dropping it into an evidence envelope. He then picked up a long swab. Ethan forced himself to look as her genitals were examined and swabbed. He hated that invasion of her privacy. He could just imagine how a fifteen-year-old girl would feel to have all these strange men examining her. He clenched his jaw. He had to stop thinking about her feelings. She was dead. She had no feelings. He needed to focus on finding clues. Clues that would help them catch this bastard and make him pay.

He glanced at Lamond. The younger man shifted slightly on his feet. His eyes were glued to Dr. Guthro’s efficient hands. His color was getting higher by the minute. Ethan was surprised. The guy’d come from sexual assault. But he’d never had to watch a girl getting the rape kit. He’d only had to read the reports.

Just wait. It’s going to get a lot worse.

“No evidence of forced penetration in either the vaginal or anal regions,” the M.E. said. “In fact, no indication of any sexual intercourse prior to her death. The hymen is intact.”

“Intact?” Ethan started.

“Holy sh—cow,” Lamond said at the same time. Then looked sheepishly at Dr. Guthro.

“Not your typical teenage rebel,” Dr. Guthro said, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

“No.” The discovery of Lisa’s virginity unnerved Ethan. It brought to the surface all his protective instincts. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d taken a hard line at any punk who’d tried to mess around with his sister. Until she’d told him to stop scaring off her boyfriends. She could handle herself, she told him.

He bet this girl thought she could, too.

He was thankful for Lisa’s sake that she had not been raped before her death, although the lack of sexual assault meant a potential source of DNA was eliminated. But it also shed some light on the killer’s profile. He—or she—was likely not a sexual predator.

Dr. Guthro peered at the raw open wounds below Lisa’s hips. He ran his finger lightly along the edges of flesh, pulling back the skin and tissue to reveal the bone. It gleamed under the large lamp.

He then looked at where her arms had been cut off. For several minutes he went back and forth between the wounds
on her hips and her shoulders. “Her limbs appear to have been severed by a bone saw,” he said, his voice puzzled.

“A bone saw?”

Dr. Guthro nodded. “Yes, like this.” He held up a small handsaw. It resembled a saw Ethan had in his shed.

“How easy is it for someone to get a hold of one of those?” Ethan asked.

Dr. Guthro pursed his mouth. “Not too difficult, I would think. They are found in any hospital. It wouldn’t take much to steal one.” Dr. Guthro pulled the skin back on one of the hip sockets. “But it wouldn’t have been used by just anybody. See this—” he pointed to the smooth bone beneath the pink tissue “—this is a very clean cut. It was done by someone who knew how to dissect a joint.”

Ethan stared at the M.E. “You mean like a doctor?”

Dr. Guthro nodded. “Yes. Or someone who is familiar with anatomy.”

He turned to Lisa’s right shoulder. “There is one finding that is unusual. See this cut here?” He pointed to the joint.

At first glance it looked as smooth as the other cuts. But as Ethan stared at it, he could see a small marking on the bone. “Is that from the teeth of the saw?”

Dr. Guthro picked up a magnifying glass and held it over the bone.

Ethan leaned forward to peer through it. “It looks like two lines with a circle in between.” He studied it for a moment longer, then stared at it incredulously. “Those aren’t geometric shapes. Those are letters.”