THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (41 page)

Tay cleared his throat yet one more time. “Thank you, doctor. It’s good of you to offer, but I have no doubt your report will cover everything quite satisfactorily. It won’t be necessary for me to view your work personally.”

“Oh, but I think it is. You do need to see this, and anyway you’re just across the street. You know where we are, don’t you? I’ll send someone out to wait for you in reception. Shall we say fifteen minutes?”

“Really, doctor, I can’t—”

“Fifteen minutes then,” Dr. Hoi interrupted again. “I’m looking forward to meeting you, Inspector.”

And with that she hung up.

Inspector Tay sat looking at the receiver for a long moment before he slowly replaced it in its cradle. He rubbed his eyes and slapped his forehead with his palm a few times. He knew he was trapped. He would rather have a root canal than to go over there and peer at that poor woman sliced open from neck to pelvis, but what was he going to do now? Call this doctor back and tell her he tended to throw up at the sight of dead bodies? No, that was out of the question.

The Centre for Forensic Medicine was located in a building called Block Nine of the Singapore General Hospital just on the other side of New Bridge Road behind the National Heart Centre. The building itself was a nondescript, modern two-story structure that looked to Tay like it could shelter almost any kind of commercial activity. But of course he knew all too well what actually took place inside Block Nine. Equipped as he was with that knowledge, the otherwise unremarkable structure with the aluminum chimney pipes poking out here and there took on a genuinely creepy appearance. Normally it would take him no more than five minutes to walk from his office in the Cantonment Complex to Block Nine. On this day, however, he wondered if he might be able stretch it out a little, perhaps even a lot.

Like, maybe, to a year or so.

A MAN WAS waiting for Tay in Block Nine’s tiny reception area. He was wearing a starched lab coat with a breast pocket full of ballpoint pens and shifting from foot to foot. He seemed very young, too young to be a doctor, and Tay wondered if he was. He also wondered briefly whether it was really that this man in particular looked so young or if everyone was starting to look young to him; and of course, if that was so, he knew full well what
that
meant.

“Are you Inspector Tay?”

“Yes, although I’m not particularly happy about it right now.”

“Pardon me?”

“Never mind.”

The man looked doubtfully at Tay and pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. Finally, he gave a little half shrug, which apparently signaled the end of his interest in whatever Tay may or may not have said.

“This way, please.”

Tay followed the young man through a door, down a long, white corridor, and through another door. Beyond the second door was yet another long, white corridor, but the man stopped abruptly and knocked lightly at an unmarked door on the right. Without waiting for an answer, he opened it and tilted his head to indicate that Tay should go through.

The prospect of dealing with whatever was on the other side of that door was decidedly unappealing and Tay tried to catch the young man’s eye hoping to see there some possibility, however slight, of a reprieve. The man wouldn’t look directly at him and Tay didn’t know exactly what to make of that, but he doubted it could be anything good. There seemed to be only two alternatives open to him. Fling up his arms and flee, or take a deep breath and walk through that door.

Tay took the coward’s way out. He walked through the door.

To his considerable surprise, the door did not open into some kind of Frankenstein laboratory where rows of partially dissected corpses were laid out on steel tables with unidentifiable fluids draining out of them. Instead, he found himself in an institutional looking office not all that different from his own. Behind the gray metal desk, a woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties was writing in a file.

“Give me a second before I lose my thought,” she said, not looking up.

“Take your time.”

At the sound of Tay’s voice the woman shifted her eyes toward him without lifting her head and, although she continued to write, he saw her examine him with evident curiosity.

“Please sit down,” she said, moving her eyes back to the file she was working on. “I’ll just be a moment.”

Tay sat on a straight chair in front of the desk and took the opportunity to make his own assessment of Dr. Susan Hoi. She was a looker. He had not been prepared for that. Her hair was short and stylishly cut and, although mostly black, there were highlights that appeared almost red under the fluorescent lights of her office. Beneath her white lab coat he could just see what looked like a square-necked black dress and a single strand of pearls. Pearls and a little black dress to cut up dead bodies? Who would have thought?

The woman sat very straight in her chair, her shoulders back and squared to her work, and wrote quickly with long, fluid strokes. There was something about her posture that Tay found very attractive, enticing even, but how could that be? When encountering a beautiful woman, surely not many men found themselves attracted to her posture. Legs, of course; breasts, yes; face and eyes, naturally; even occasionally arms and hands. Tay had heard there were some men who were attracted to women’s feet, but he couldn’t see Susan Hoi’s feet under her desk and doubted he was one of those men in any case. But to be attracted to a woman’s posture? What in the world did that say about him?

Before he could decide, she closed the file, adjusted its position on her desk in an unconscious gesture of tidiness, and smiled at him with what seemed to be genuine warmth.

“I’m glad you could manage the time, Inspector.”

“It wasn’t time I was short of.”

“Oh, I see.” Dr. Hoi readjusted the position of the file, although it was obviously unnecessary. “Actually, no, I don’t see.”

Tay nodded a couple of times while he was trying to decide what to say. He could make some kind of idiotic excuse, he supposed. Or perhaps he could just tell her the truth. If he did that, he would no doubt either get high marks for honesty or come off as a complete jerk. Unfortunately, right off the top of his head he couldn’t think up a convincing lie so it looked like he was stuck going with the truth by default.

“It’s just that I don’t like looking at dead bodies,” Tay said. “The sight of them makes me nauseous.”

“But you’re the investigating officer in a homicide.”

Tay nodded in resignation.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “This must be your first.”

“No, I’ve been in CID-SIS for nearly fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years? And you’re still avoiding dead bodies?”

“Yes.”

He waited for her to fill in the rest. It didn’t take long.

“So you’ve never attended an autopsy,” she said.

“No.”

“Or examined the deceased after the autopsy was completed.”

“No.”

“I see.” Dr. Hoi folded her arms over her chest and made a little clicking noise with her tongue. “Well, then. What shall we do here?”

“May I make a suggestion?” Tay asked, shifting his weight on the chair.

“By all means.”

“Why don’t you just tell me about what you wanted me to see? You could even draw some diagrams if it would help, or you know…”

Tay trailed off into silence, feeling like an idiot.

Dr. Hoi nodded slowly. “All right. That’s fine, I guess.”

She reopened the file she had been working on when Tay came in, glanced at it briefly as if to refresh her memory, then leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers, unconsciously tapping the points of her forefingers against her lips.

“The deceased is a healthy, well-nourished Caucasian woman in her early to mid-forties. My guess is that she’s probably an American. I can’t be certain, of course, but both her dental work and the polish on her finger and toenails are consistent with an American origin. On the other hand, perhaps she’s French but gets her dental work done in the US and wears American nail polish.”

“That sounds pretty unlikely to me.”

“As it does to me.”

Dr. Hoi glanced down at her file again.

“From the temperature of the deceased, and taking into account the setting of the air conditioning in the room where she was found, my best guess is that the time of death was between eighteen and twenty hours prior to the discovery of the body.”

“That means she was killed…” Tay paused to calculate, “between five and seven Monday evening.”

Dr. Hoi nodded in acknowledgment of Tay’s mathematical acumen.

“Fingernail scrapings produced no organic matter and the body was relatively unmarked, except of course for the destruction of the face. There were, however, marks on her wrists and ankles that in my view are consistent with restraints having been placed on her in some fashion. At first I thought that might suggest the deceased had engaged in sadomasochistic sexual activity.”

Dr. Hoi glanced at Tay and in embarrassment he flicked his eyes to the blank wall just over her shoulder.

“On the other hand there was no evidence of recent intercourse, certainly no semen in the vagina, the anus, or the mouth. Of course, that’s not conclusive. The vagina was badly mutilated by the flashlight and I can’t be absolutely certain no penetration occurred, but the anus was intact and I saw no signs of penetration there. And, of course, her attacker might have used a condom.”

Dr. Hoi glanced at Tay again, but he was studying the wall with intense concentration.

“There’s also something else to keep in mind,” she went on when Tay wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Sadomasochism frequently doesn’t entail intercourse, at least not in the usual sense, so we can’t rule out the possibility of sexual activity based purely on the lack of any evidence of intercourse. She had been restrained, that we can say for certain, but the killer may have snapped the handcuffs around both her wrists and ankles simply for the purpose of killing her, not because they were engaged in some form of sexual activity.”

“Handcuffs?”

“Yes, definitely handcuffs. My guess is they were the plastic disposal type.”

“You mean like police cuffs?”

This time Dr. Hoi’s response came after a short but perceptible pause.

“Yes,” she said. “Quite similar or even possibly identical to police cuffs.”

A silence fell as Tay processed what he was hearing. Somewhere in the distance some sort of machinery whirred to life emitting a low-pitched humming sound.

“I gather you’re aware of the cause of death?” Dr. Hoi asked after a few moments had passed in silence.

“I assume it must have been the beating.”

“Certainly not. The woman was shot.”

Tay’s mouth dropped open.

“She was shot with a .22 caliber hollow point,” Dr. Hoi continued, “fired from a revolver with its muzzle placed in contact with her right ear.”

She made a little gun with her thumb and forefinger and then reached up and placed her forefinger into her ear.

“One shot,” she said. “Like this. Straight into the ear. Bam!”

It took Tay a moment to regain the power of speech, but when he did the words spilled out involuntarily.

“You’re shittin’ me.”

Dr. Hoi couldn’t suppress a smile. “No, Inspector, I shit thee not. This was why I wanted you to come over and look at the deceased yourself. Very unusual thing to see here in Singapore. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

“I’m sure.” Tay’s mouth was dry and he tried unsuccessfully to swallow. “Thank you.”

“Pity. As I said, very unusual thing.”

Dr. Hoi pursed her lips as if she was trying hard to recall something, although what it might be wasn’t clear to Tay.

“In any event,” she continued after a moment, “the entry wound is very small and completely hidden inside the ear. That’s probably why you missed it when you examined the deceased at the scene.”

“Probably,” Tay mumbled.

“The stippling is apparent once you find the point of entry and it leaves no doubt at all that this was a contact wound. The bullet took a downward path, entering through the primary motor cortex. There was extensive subdural hemorrhaging that ripped linear fractures through the entirety of her skull, then extended down to her neck. The consequential shock wave brought about major tissue trauma, which brought her nervous system to an immediate halt causing her blood pressure to drop like a rock.”

Dr. Hoi abruptly stopped talking.

“I’m sorry, Inspector. From the look on your face, I’m not sure you’re staying with me here. Is something distracting you?”

“Is something distracting me?” Tay rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, does a cat have an ass?”

Dr. Hoi burst out laughing. “You do have a very colorful way of expressing yourself, Inspector.”

“My father was an American. He willed me his vocabulary.”

“That must come in handy in your line of work.”

“Particularly now. I’m bowled over.”

“Yes, firearms deaths in Singapore are unexpected, aren’t they?”

“I can’t think of one in years.”

“Well, you have one now.”

“There was no blood,” Tay said.

“What?” Dr. Hoi asked.

“There was no blood around her ear. None on the bed either.”

“Ah,” Dr. Hoi said. “I see what you mean.”

“Wouldn’t there have been bleeding? If she was shot?”

“Some perhaps. Not very much. As I said, the damage to the brain would have caused her blood pressure to drop very quickly and the entry wound was quite small. You didn’t see any blood at all?”

“No. The bed had been stripped.”

“Well, there you are. There wouldn’t have been enough blood to soak through the sheets to the mattress. It would have been easy to clean up the body as well. Although, offhand, I’m not sure why a killer would—”

“Did you recover the bullet?” Tay cut in.

Susan Hoi opened the center drawer of her desk, removed a clear plastic vial that looked like a pill bottle, and placed it on the desk in front of Tay. When he picked up the vial, it rattled loudly in the quiet office. Tay saw it contained nothing but some flecks of vaguely yellowish metal that looked more like pieces of glitter than a bullet.