At the end of the hall, Brock had posted a sign that Sara recognized from the hospital morgue: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. Roughly translated, “This is the place where death delights to teach the living.”
The swinging doors to the embalming suite were propped open with old bricks from the house. Artificial light bounced off the white tile walls. While the upstairs had been drastically changed, the downstairs looked exactly the same as Sara remembered. There were two stainless steel gurneys in the middle of the room with large industrial lights spring-mounted above them. A workstation stood at the foot of each gurney, plumbing connected at the ends to help evacuate the bodies. Brock had already laid out the autopsy tools—the saws, the scalpels, the forceps, and scissors. He was still using the pruning shears Sara had bought at the hardware store to cut through the breastbone.
The back of the room was wholly devoted to the funeral business. Beside the walk-in freezer was a rolling tray containing the metal trocar that was used to pierce and clean out organs during the embalming process. Neatly tucked into the corner was the embalming machine, which looked like a cross between a buffet-style coffee warmer and a blender. The arterial tube hung limply in the sink. Heavy rubber gloves were laid out on the basin. A butcher’s apron. A pair of construction goggles. A splatter mask. An industrial-sized box of roll cotton for stopping leaks.
Incongruously, there was a hair dryer and a pink makeup kit opened on top of the cotton box. Pots of foundation and various shades of eyeshadows and lip glosses were inside. The logo for “Peason’s Mortuary makeup” was embossed on the inside of the lid.
Sara took a pair of disposable surgical gloves from the box mounted on the wall. She opened the freezer door. A gust of cold air met her. There were three bodies inside, all zipped into black bags. She checked the tags for Allison Spooner.
The bag unzipped with the usual hassle, catching on the bulky black plastic. Allison’s skin had taken on the waxy, iridescent tone of death. Her lips were blackish blue. Pieces of grass and twigs were stuck to her skin and clothing. Small contusions pebbled her mouth and cheeks. Sara slipped on the surgical gloves and gently folded back the girl’s bottom lip. Teeth marks cut into the soft flesh where Allison’s face had been pressed into the ground. The wound had bled before she died. The killer had held her down in order to kill her.
Carefully, Sara turned Allison’s head to the side. The rigor had already dissipated. She could easily see the gaping stab wound at the back of the girl’s neck.
Brock was right. She wasn’t killed bad. There was no fury written on the body, just a deadly, precise incision.
Sara pressed her fingers to the top and bottom of the wound, stretching the skin to reconstruct its probable position at the time of injury. The knife would have been thin, approximately half an inch wide, probably no more than three and a half inches long. The blade had gone in at an angle. The bottom of the incision appeared curved, which meant that the knife had been twisted to ensure maximum damage.
Sara pulled up the girl’s jacket, matching the slice in the material to the wound in the neck. Lena was right about this, at least. The girl had been stabbed from behind. Sara guessed the killer had been right-handed, and very sure of himself. The blow would have been as swift as it was deadly. The hilt of the knife had bruised the skin around the injury. Whoever had killed Allison had not hesitated in driving home the blade, then twisting it for effect.
This was not the work of Tommy Braham.
Sara zipped back the bag with the same difficulty. Before she left the freezer, she put her hand on Tommy’s leg. Obviously, he couldn’t feel the pressure—it was too late for Sara to give him comfort—but it made her feel better knowing that she was going to be the one to take care of him.
She slipped off the gloves and tossed them into the trash as she made her way to the back of the basement. There was a small windowless room that, in the Victorian’s early days, was meant to store wine. Red bricks lined the walls and wrapped around the floor and ceiling. Brock used the space as an office, despite the fact that the temperature was much cooler inside. Sara grabbed the jacket hanging by the door, then quickly changed her mind when she smelled Brock’s aftershave.
The desk was empty but for the autopsy forms and an ink pen. Brock had put together two packets for the procedures. He’d stuck Post-it notes on each with the name, date of birth, and last known address for each victim.
Georgia law required a medical autopsy to be performed only under certain circumstances. Violent death, death in the workplace, suspicious death, sudden death, unattended death, and surgical death all required further investigation. For the most part, the information gathered was always the same: legal name, aliases, age, height, weight, cause of death. X rays were taken. The stomach contents would be examined. Organs were weighed. Arteries, valves, and veins were explored. Contusions were noted. Traumas. Bite marks. Stretch marks. Lacerations. Scars. Tattoos. Birthmarks. Every detail, remarkable or not, that was found on or in the body had to be noted on the corresponding form.
Sara had hooked her reading glasses on her shirt before getting out of the car. She slipped them on and started on the forms. Most of the paperwork would have to be filled out after the procedures, but every label attached to a specimen or sample had to have her name, the location, and the proper date and time. In addition to that, every form had to have the same information at the bottom along with her signature and license number. She was halfway through the second packet when she heard someone knocking at the metal door.
“Hello?” Will’s voice echoed through the basement.
Sara rubbed her eyes, feeling as if she’d just woken from a nap. “I’ll be right there.” She pushed herself back from the desk and walked toward the stairs. Will was standing on the other side of the security door.
She pushed open the latch. “I guess my notes worked.”
He gave her a careful look, almost like a warning.
Sara waved him back to the autopsy suite.
“Quite a spread,” Will told her, taking in the room. His hands were in his pockets. She saw that his jeans were wet and muddy at the hem.
She asked, “How did it go this morning?”
“The good news is that I found out where Allison was killed.” He told her about his walk in the forest. “We were lucky the rain didn’t wash it all out.”
“Blood is five times more dense than water. It would take weeks for the soil to filter it out, and I’d bet that water oak will hold on to it for years.” Sara explained, “The plasma would break down, but the proteins and globulin would remain in an indefinite colloidal stage.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
She smiled. “What’s the bad news?”
He leaned his hand on the gurney, then thought better of it. “I executed a search warrant on the wrong property and tainted some evidence.”
Sara didn’t speak, but her expression must have conveyed her surprise.
“Tommy lived in the garage, not Allison. The search warrant Faith got listed the garage address. Anything I found is tainted. I doubt a judge would let it through in court.”
She suppressed a rueful laugh. At least he was seeing firsthand how Lena managed to screw up everything and everyone around her. “What did you find?”
“Not a lot of blood, if that’s what you mean. Frank Wallace was cut while he was standing at the front of the garage. The stain on the floor by the bed was probably from Tommy’s dog, Pippy, trying to hork up a sock.”
Sara winced. “Do you still think Tommy did this? His confession doesn’t line up with the facts.”
“Lena’s been working on the theory that Tommy took Allison out to the woods on his scooter and murdered her there. I suppose he was sitting on the cinder blocks the way you’d put a kid on some phone books at the kitchen table.”
“That sounds completely believable.”
“Doesn’t it just?” He scratched his jaw. “Have you examined Allison
’s body yet?”
“I took a preliminary look at the wound. The attacker was behind her. Most knife injuries to the throat are from behind, but usually the blade is drawn across the front of the throat, oftentimes resulting in a partial decapitation. Allison was stabbed from behind with the blade going into the neck from the rear, the trajectory going toward the front of the throat. It was one thrust, very calculated, almost like an execution, then the killer twisted the blade just to make sure.”
“So, she died from the stab wound?”
“I can’t say for sure until I have her on the table.”
“But you have an idea.”
Sara had never liked giving her opinion unless she had strong medical fact to support it. “I don’t want to make assumptions.”
“It’s just us down here. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
She was only vaguely aware that she was relenting much more easily than she should have. “The angle of the wound was designed to deliver a quick death. I haven’t cut her open yet, so I’m not sure—”
“But?”
“It looks like the carotid sheath was cut, so we’re talking an instant interruption of the common carotid and more than likely the internal jugular. They’re branched together like this.” She lined up the index fingers of both her hands. “The carotid’s job is to carry oxygenated blood at a rapid speed from the heart into the head and neck. The jugular is a vein. It’s gravity fed. It collects the deoxygenated blood from the head and neck and sends it back to the heart via the superior vena cava, where it’s oxygenated again and the whole process starts all over. You follow?”
Will nodded. “Arteries are the water supply, veins are the drain. It’s a closed system.”
“Right,” she agreed, giving him points for the plumbing analogy. “All arteries have a little muscle spiraling around them that relaxes and contracts to control blood flow. If you cut an artery in two, sever it, the muscle contracts, curling up like a broken rubber band. That helps stanch the blood flow. But, if you slice open the artery without cutting it in two, the victim dies from exsanguination, usually very quickly. We’re talking seconds, not minutes. The blood shoots out, they panic, their heart beats faster, blood shoots out faster, and they’re dead.”
“Where is the carotid?”
She put her fingers alongside her trachea. “You’ve got one carotid on each side, mirror images. I’ll have to excise the wound, but it appears that the knife followed this route, entering near the sixth cervical vertebra and traveling along the angle of the jaw.”
He stared at her neck. “How hard is that to hit from behind?”
“Allison is very small framed. Her neck is the width of my palm. There’s so much going on in the back of the neck—muscles, blood vessels, vertebrae. You would have to pause, to take a second, to aim so that you hit the exact spot. You couldn’t go straight in from the back. You’d have to go from the back toward the side. With the right knife, at the right angle, the odds are pretty good that you’ll end up opening both the carotid and the jugular.”
“The right knife?”
“I’m guessing it had a three-and-a-half- to four-inch blade.”
“So, we’re talking about a kitchen knife?”
He obviously wasn’t good with measurements. She showed him the distance using her finger and thumb. “Three and a half inches. Think about the size of her neck. Or my neck, for that matter.” Sara kept the measurement between her fingers and held her hand to her neck. “If the blade had been any longer, it would’ve exited the front of the neck.”
He crossed his arms. She couldn’t tell if he was pleased or annoyed with the visual aids. He asked, “How wide do you think the blade was?”
She narrowed the space between her thumb and finger. “Five-eighths? Three-quarters? The skin is elastic. She must have struggled. The incision is wider at the bottom, so the killer jammed in the knife to the hilt, then twisted the blade to make sure he was doing maximum damage. I’m sure it wasn’t over an inch wide.”
“That sounds like a large folding knife.”
Sara thought he was right based on the bruise from the hilt, but she told him, “I really need to look at the wound in a better setting than inside the freezer.”
“Was it serrated?”
“I don’t think so, but really, let me get into the wound and I can tell you everything you need to know.”
He chewed his lip, obviously thinking about what she had told him. “It takes less than two pounds of pressure to penetrate skin.”
“As long as the knife is pointed and sharp and the blade is forcefully thrust.”
“Sounds like something a hunter would know how to do.”
“Hunter, doctor, mortician, butcher.” She felt the need to add, “Or anyone with a good search engine. I’m sure you can find all kinds of anatomical diagrams on the Internet. Whether they’re accurate is up for debate, but whoever did this was showing off his skills. I hate to keep banging the same drum, but Tommy had an IQ of eighty. It took him two months to learn how to tie his shoes. Do you really think that he committed this crime?”
“I don’t like to speculate.”
She gave him his own words. “It’s just us down here. I won’t tell anyone.”
Will didn’t give in as easily as Sara had. “Was Tommy a hunter?”
“I doubt Gordon would’ve let him have a gun.”
Will took a moment before asking his next question. “Why not drown her? She was standing by a lake.”
“The water must have been close to freezing. There was the chance of a struggle. She could’ve yelled. My house is—was—across the lake from Lover’s Point, but sometimes when the wind was right, I could hear music playing, kids laughing. Certainly, any number of people would have heard a young girl screaming for her life.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to cut the front of the throat instead of going in through the back?”
She nodded, saying, “If you cut the trachea, the victim wouldn’t be able to speak, let alone yell for help.”
Will pointed out, “Women tend to use knives.”
Sara hadn’t considered the possibility, but she was grateful his mind was moving off Tommy. “Allison was small. A woman could have overwhelmed her, then carried her to the water.”
“Was the killer left-handed? Right-handed?”
“Well—” Sara was going to ask if it mattered to someone who could not tell the difference, but answered him instead. “I’m assuming right-handed.” Sara held up her right hand. “The attacker would have been at a superior position, standing above her, possibly straddling her, when the blade went in.” She paused. “This is why I don’t like to make assumptions. I need to check her stomach and lungs. If we find lake water, then that means she was probably facedown in the water when he stabbed her.”
“Knowing whether she was in the water or in the mud when she was stabbed will be instrumental to my investigation.”
She furrowed her brow. “Are you being a smart-ass, Agent Trent?”
“Based on how you asked that question, I think my answer should be no.”
Sara laughed. “Good call.”
“Thank you, Dr. Linton.” He looked around the embalming suite and gave a shiver. “It’s cold down here. Aren’t you cold?”
She realized he was wearing the same clothes from yesterday but for the black T-shirt, which he’d changed for a white one. “Didn’t you bring a coat?”
He shook his head. “I’m in an awful situation with my clothes. I need to borrow your mom’s washer and dryer tonight. Do you think she’ll mind?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Have you heard from Frank Wallace today?”
She shook her head.
“It’s starting to annoy me that he hasn’t bothered to show up. Does he normally let Lena do all the heavy lifting?”
“I don’t know how they work together now. She used to go back and forth between Frank and my husband, whoever needed her at the time.”
“I’m just wondering if she’s reporting back to Frank or if they’re both doing their own thing.” Will gestured toward the gurneys. “Can I help you with anything?”
“What’s your squeamish level?”
“I don’t like rats and I’m bad around vomit.”
“I think we’re safe on both points.” Sara wanted to get started so she wasn’t here past midnight. “Can you help me get Allison onto the table?”
The joking camaraderie from before quickly turned into a more serious collaboration. They worked in silence, rolling the gurney into the freezer, lifting the body in unison. There was a scale in the floor. The digital readout already took the gurney into account. Sara rolled the bed onto the plate. Allison Spooner had weighed 102 pounds.
When Sara put on a pair of surgical gloves, Will followed suit. She let him help unzip the body bag and roll the girl left, then right, to slide the black plastic out from under her. He held one end of the measuring tape so she could get the girl’s height.
Will said, “Sixty-three inches. Five foot three.”
“I need to write this down.” Sara knew there was no way she could remember all these numbers. There was a whiteboard mounted to the back wall over the counter. Sara used the marker hanging on a string to record Allison’s height and weight. To be thorough, she then added age, sex, race, and hair color. The girl’s eyes were open, so she noted that her eye color was brown.
When Sara turned around, she found Will looking at the numbers. Sara had used abbreviations that even a reading person would have trouble understanding. She pointed to the letters. “Date of birth, height, weight—”
“I got it,” he said. His tone was as close to curt as she’d ever heard.
Sara resisted the urge to talk about the elephant in the room, to tell him that it was foolish for him to be ashamed. He had spent a lifetime hiding his dyslexia, and she wasn’t going to fix that by confronting him about it in the basement of the funeral home. Not to mention that it was none of her business.
The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 149