Scene of the Crime (19 page)

TABLE 5
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How You Can Use Experts

A theory says that
provided you do your library research first
you should be able to locate any known fact (as long as it is neither a government secret nor a proprietorial trade secret), in a maximum of five telephone calls.

When I heard that, I couldn't believe it. So I tested it—and it worked! I then began passing the theory on to my students, and they also tested it. It worked for them, too, and it will work for you.

But you have to do it right. Here's how:

1. Use the best library accessible to you, and look up all you can find (within reason) about whatever the question is.

2. From your reading, or from common sense, determine who is likely to be the most convenient expert on that topic. Be cautious! Some people claim expertise in subjects they are not in fact experts in. (I am a fingerprint expert. I am not a firearms expert. I asked many questions about firearms in the course of writing this book.)

3. Formulate a list of intelligent questions.

4. Telephone the expert.

5. Introduce yourself and ask whether this is a convenient time to talk.

6. If it is not, ask when you may call back.

7. When you reach your expert with time to talk, ask your questions.

8. Don't stick so rigidly to those questions that you don't follow a lead the expert gives you that opens up something you hadn't thought of. But don't ramble all over the universe; experts are busy people.

9. Thank your expert, and ask permission to call again if you come to a point you don't understand.

Of course it works—and almost always, your expert will not only be delighted to tell you but will even look up information for you. As I write this, I am extremely grateful to Utah gunsmith Mark McComb for spending hours looking up names of modern manufacturers of single-shot revolvers, after I read a book that said nobody manufactures single-shot revolvers anymore. (And this is an example of being careful about our experts. The guy who wrote the book was fairly up on firearms. But Mark makes them, repairs them, sells them, and loves them. He was the real expert.)

Why are these experts so happy to talk to you? Look at it this way: You become an expert only on something that interests you. If it interests you, you not only want to learn about it, you also want to talk about it. So you talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it, until all those around you are sick of hearing about it.

And now what happens? Some fresh new person calls and actually
wants
you to talk about your pet topic! It's terrific!

How would you feel, if you were the expert?

That's how they feel. Not one in a thousand will grouch at you or want to charge you for the advice—and if you do get a grouch, that's all right. Start looking for another expert.

Now, as in 1934, identification of a corpse may present extreme difficulty. In one case I worked, a transient who had been in the habit of sleeping in a storeroom where volatile oils were stored accidentally set the oils afire. The body was burned beyond recognition; the only thing I could tell for certain was that the victim's left and right ears were distinctly different in size and the smaller ear was set somewhat higher on the head than the larger. The transient, whose name we knew, seemed the most likely person to have burned to death in the fire. I went to talk with the transient's brother and eventually, reluctantly, took the brother to view the remains.

The brother was adamant that his brother had not had any difference in the size of his ears, and therefore this could not be his brother.

I spent the better part of the next week checking out all possible leads as to who else could have been sleeping there and where the missing man was if he was not in fact in the morgue. But every lead brought me back to the same place. Arrest photos of the transient were useless, as they showed his full face and one profile but not the other, and the full face was not adequate to determine differences in ears.

I kept looking, and finally found one photograph in which a new technician had taken the wrong profile for a mug shot—so finally I had two photographs, one of the left side of the head and one of the right, to lay side by side. I took them back to the brother, showing him irrefutable evidence that his brother's ears were indeed somewhat mismatched.

Staring at the photos, he said, "I'll be damned! You know, I never had noticed that before."

And at last, our corpse had a name.

The Condition of the Remains

That one was hard enough. But what about cases in which all identification points —handprints, footprints, ears, facial features — have been completely removed, either deliberately to prevent identification, or simply as a result of advanced decomposition?

Many corpses, many skeletons, are never identified. But science continues to close in on even the most difficult cases.

At this point, I want to warn readers that some of the contents of this chapter will be offensive to those with weak stomachs. When you are writing fiction, you can decide how graphic or how vague you want to be. But I have the responsibility to tell you what really happens, what things really look like and smell like. If you're not sure of the stability of your stomach, do not eat while reading.

Beyond Identification

Bear in mind, also, that what I have said in this book about determining the cause of death is no more than scratching the surface. For a far more definitive study aimed at writers rather than at pathologists, I recommend Keith Wilson's
Cause of Death,
Writer's Digest Books, 1992.

Identification is not the only thing that must be done about a corpse, and in many cases identification falls rather late in the process. So let's start from the beginning. We have a corpse. Or we have a skeleton. Or we have bone fragments that might eventually, if we're lucky, add up to a skeleton. What do we do? In what order?

Where to Start?

Always—always —always—the first thing we do is take photographs and measurements—that triangulation we spoke of in chapter one. Note the body position: Is it face up? Face down? Hands drawn in toward the body? Hands extended, or stretched out above the body? In the case of a fire, very often the arms are bent at the elbows, hands clenched into fists, as if the person were in a defensive position in a boxing match. This, called the
pugilist position,
frequently is assumed by the unknowledgeable to mean the person was trying to fight an assailant; in fact, it has to do with the contraction of muscles as a result of the heat, and has no further meaning.

Cadaveric Spasm

In the case of violent death not involving a fire, here are some things to look for: Is anything in the hands? In the case of
absolutely instantaneous
death when the muscles were in work at the time of death, the body may go into an instant cadaveric spasm, which precedes, and may be mistaken for, ordinary rigor mortis; indeed, some pathologists maintain that it is an unusual instant rigor mortis. In this case, whatever the person was holding at the time of death is clutched permanently-and if you're lucky, that might be part of the hair or clothing of the assailant.

A Suicide That Was: Cadaveric Spasm

I was called about midnight. Her husband, a petty gangster, was in a rage, fighting like a wild thing; he didn't want any pictures taken, and it took several strong male officers to hold him as I went by with my camera to enter their beautiful, very expensive house. She was in a locked bedroom, and again, it took several of us to break the door down and find her lying on her bed, the pistol still pressed to her head. She was in a cadaveric spasm; it took three of us to pry her hand open to remove the pistol.

She'd been making chocolate chip cookies earlier in the day, before she and her husband began quarreling. Some of the cookies had been set out on the table to cool, and others were still stuck to the pan, where she had left them when the shouting began. Her son, who had left the house when the quarreling started and returned when he saw police cars converging, was in the living room crying, and I tried to talk with him to no avail.

It wasn't until years later, when he and his aunt were living in the same apartment complex I was and his father was in prison on a totally unrelated charge, that I learned the boy sincerely believed that his father had murdered his mother and the police just hadn't figured that out. I explained to the aunt, and asked her to explain to the boy, that the position of the pistol, and the cadaveric spasm, made it absolutely impossible for anybody but the victim herself to have fired the fatal shot.

I don't know whether it helped him or not. But he had only one parent left alive, and no matter what his father had in fact done, there was no reason to let him go through life believing his father guilty of that one crucial crime he
hadn't
committed.

Unusual Coloration of the Body

You already know to look for the color and type of the clothing, but what about any unusual coloration of the skin? Most people are aware that carbon monoxide poisoning will turn the skin on a white person a bright cherry red; although this coloration might be less visible on a person with darker skin, it can still be noted in areas that are normally light in color, such as the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, various mucus membrane surfaces in the mouth and other places. Other conditions might cause other unusual colorations. Note this as carefully as you can in your notes, and don't count on a photograph to show it: Very few color films are able to show such subtle gradations in color.

Defense Wounds and Hesitation Wounds

Are there defense wounds? In a knife murder, almost always the hands, particularly the area between the wrist and the little finger, will have multiple cuts, usually parallel, stretching from the little finger to the wrist and sometimes above the wrist, caused by the victim's attempts to ward off the knife. Sometimes a gunshot victim at close range will show one or more defense wounds if s/he attempted to grab the muzzle of the gun at the time it was firing.

Is there a question whether it is suicide or murder? If it involves slashed wrists or throat, check for hesitation cuts. Very few people will commit suicide with one slash; there are almost always several

small hesitation cuts while the person was working on his or her nerve. A lack of hesitation wounds is likely—though certainly not definite—evidence of murder.

Other Visible Marks

What other visible wounds and marks are there? If there are no more than one or two wounds, photographs and measurements may be adequate by themselves. But I have seen victims of multiple stab wounds in which it was necessary, after the body was adequately cleaned, to lay a piece of tracing paper over the body and mark the location of each wound.

If it is a stabbing and you have a suspect weapon, never attempt to fit the knife into the wound. Let the medical examiner (or whoever does the postmortem examination) decide whether this knife could have made this wound. Bear in mind that if the wound looks very slightly smaller than the weapon, that does not always rule out the weapon; the skin stretches. (This applies to gunshots also. A .38-caliber bullet does not always leave what looks like a .38-caliber entry wound. The exit wound is another matter; it may look like a .45 or a shotgun, depending on what happened to the bullet inside the body.)

Was the shooting at close range? If so, there will be powder tattooing, and possibly even visible grains of powder or burns from the muzzle flash, on the skin and/or the clothing.

Spontaneous Human Combustion

And what about spontaneous human combustion — that is, cases reported in
Fate
magazine and various Fortean books and tabloids in which a living person suddenly, without warning, bursts into flame? Scientists say that it does not occur; other people insist they have witnessed it, and scientists do not seem to be able to adequately explain away situations in which the body is burnt to ashes but nothing else in the room, except perhaps the chair or bed on which the remains are lying, is even singed. Even less can they explain cases in which the remains are on a street or sidewalk and witnesses insist they saw the person burst into flames.