Regrets Only

by Nancy Geary

  “Bring it on then,” she’d said, referring to the autopsy.

  But now that the moment had arrived, whatever bravado she’d mustered had disappeared.

  “You’re sure about this?” Jack asked, offering one more opportunity for her to beg off. She nodded. “Okay, tough guy. Here we go.”

  They registered at the front desk, showed their badges, signed a visitors’ log, and were given clearance for their firearms from the security officer. Lucy followed Jack as he headed down a circular staircase to the basement. She appreciated that he knew his way around without having to ask. Even after five months in Homicide, she felt lost as soon as she stepped inside the Medical Examiner’s office. Perhaps it was the overwhelming odor that disoriented her—the unique scent that Jack had described as a “sweet version of soured milk.” Now that smell of death filled her nostrils.

  “By the way,” he said, as he pushed the door open. “Crime Scene recovered a bullet from the soil just beneath where her body was found. It was a thirty-five caliber. Thing appears to have gone straight through her.”

  Ladd stood by a stainless-steel sink scrubbing his forearms. Hearing them enter, he shut off the water, dried his hands, and removed a pair of latex gloves from a box by the sink.

  “Let’s get started,” he muttered. “Ellie’s already done the preliminaries.”

  The preliminaries referred to the collection of digital photographs of the corpse both clothed and undressed before the medical examination had begun. They documented patterns of blood splattering and tears and burns on fabric, as well as the external condition of the body, any bruising, cuts, or abrasions. From an investigative standpoint, these often yielded the most information.

  Ellie Montgomery, a short, athletic woman, was the photographer for the Medical Examiner’s office. She’d taken the job as a way to finance her artistic career, but after more than twenty years on the squad, any distinction between the two had disappeared. Her reputation for perfection and precision was well known throughout the police department. Although she frequently testified at trial if the defense didn’t stipulate to the admission of her photographs, in one notable case the integrity of her picture had been challenged. It was that case that made her a legend. She’d been on the stand under heated cross-examination and, according to all accounts, hadn’t been the least bit shaken. “My work is my art and I take my duties extremely seriously. My allegiance isn’t to the judicial process. My loyalty is to these bodies,” she’d explained. “Besides, there’s no need to alter them. They’re absolutely beautiful just the way they are.” The defense attorney hadn’t known what follow-up question to ask, and had slinked his way back to his seat.

  Now Ellie stood in one corner, loading a cartridge into her digital camera.

  A stainless-steel gurney—one of three in the large room—held the body of Morgan Reese. She was naked but for an identification tag attached to her big toe by a wire. Beside her was a narrow stand on wheels, the top of which was covered with metal instruments—scalpels, knives, ladles, spreaders, tweezers, and a saw—as well as a tape recorder and a clipboard. Her skin appeared to have a violet hue under the fluorescent lights, and her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. Exposed, with her pelvic bones and ribs protruding, she appeared even smaller than Lucy had remembered from the night before. Part of her left breast had been shot away by the bullet’s trajectory; a large nipple and areola seemed to cover most of her tiny right breast. Her hair was matted against her head by blood, and her hands were encased in plastic bags.

  Lucy took a step back, hoping no one would notice. She wished she had a chair to lean against, but there was nothing. “Think of it as character building,” her mother always said about surviving difficult experiences. She wondered if an autopsy qualified.

  Ladd pushed the “record” button and began his narration in a low voice. “Morgan Reese. Forty-six-year-old Caucasian female. Five-four, one hundred nine pounds.” He turned the tag on her toe to read off her Social Security number, and then slowly walked a full circle around the table. “External examination reveals no skeletal deformities.” He pressed his thumb into her thigh and released it. Lucy watched the skin grow paler with compression and then return to its violet hue. “Mild hypostasis noted.”

  “That’s when blood pools in the lower body,” Jack whispered.

  Lucy forced a smile to indicate she appreciated the translation, but Jack mistook her grimace for nausea. Moving closer to her, he took hold of the back of her arm.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded even though she knew she couldn’t look convincing.

  “If anyone needs a bathroom, it’s the door by the sink,” Ladd said without looking at his audience. “At some level we all get used to this process, but at another we never do. These are human beings—lives that are now over. That puts us in a sacred position.” He reached for Morgan’s left wrist, and turned it over in his hand. “Perpendicular scarring, apparent self-inflicted lacerations. Given the coloration and condition of scar tissue, these wounds are old—somewhere between fifteen and twenty years.”

  He released the arm and repeated on the other side. “Lateral bruising on right forearm consistent with a defensive posture. Extensive bruising on left cheekbone and around left eye.” Moving to the end of the table, he gently lifted Morgan’s head and cradled it in his two hands. He turned it slightly to the right and then leaned forward to examine the area around her left ear. He closed his eyes and Lucy could see movement in his fingers as he felt along her skull. After a moment he pulled something from Morgan’s hair, replaced her head on the table, and put the fragment in a small plastic dish. He then studied the blackened hole in her chest, which appeared almost star-shaped. Rolling her body onto her side, he examined the exit wound, which was substantially larger and had shredded tissue protruding from it.

  Watching him manipulate this corpse, Lucy felt a wave of nausea, and her mouth filled with saliva. Pull yourself together, she thought. This is your job. You could have stayed in violent crimes and avoided death altogether, but you didn’t. And witnessing the unthinkable is the price of being in Homicide. The image of Archer slumped over the breakfast table staring down at his untouched eggs and cold toast gave her courage. He needs these answers, she reminded herself.

  Ladd made several notations on the clipboard, marking locations of the holes on a standardized form for females.

  As he returned to the examining table, Lucy leaned in to see what he had done. From the diagram, it was clear that the bullet’s trajectory had been almost a straight line, exactly what Jack had said given the location of the recovered bullet in the ground.

  “Left anterior superior medial to left posterior inferior lateral at twenty degrees. Extensive stippling appears. You got this, Ellie?” he asked, pointing to the pattern of pinpoint hemorrhages.

  “I did. And I got you the perfect star, too,” she replied, anticipating his next question.

  “Visible abrasions on right shoulder,” he continued. He removed the paper bags from Morgan’s hands. “Gunpowder residue appears on the left palm and fingers. None on the right hand.”

  Lucy glanced over at Jack. Whoever shot Morgan had done so at very close range. The star-shaped entrance wound was indicative of actual contact between the gun and the skin. The particular type of hemorrhage could be caused only by the discharge of burned gunpowder on her flesh. But what was the shoulder abrasion? Lucy took a step closer and peered around Ladd to get a closer look at what was a reddish rectangle, approximately two inches wide and four inches long. “Could that be from a seat belt?” she asked, remembering the car accident.

  “Possibly.”

  She imitated the sweeping motion of pulling the strap diagonally across her body. “Meaning over the right shoulder and buckled at the left hip,” she muttered.

  Ladd glared at her. No doubt he didn’t like to be interrupted during the examination. “That’s right.”

  She turned to Jack. “That means she was a pass
enger. A driver’s abrasion would be on the other side. Someone else drove her Mercedes into that tree.”

  “Now aren’t you glad you’re here?” he whispered.

  Next, Ladd attempted to wiggle Morgan’s jaw, which was immobile, and then moved her arms, hands, ankles, and feet. “Postmortem rigidity is incomplete, consistent with a time of death between nine P.M. and midnight.” With that, he removed goggles from the pocket of his scrubs, adjusted them over his eyes, and reached for the saw. “Ellie, I’m ready.”

  With three strides, the photographer bounded across the room and positioned herself to photograph Morgan’s head with its skull removed. Squatting, she looked through the viewfinder.

  Lucy stepped away and closed her eyes. The mechanics she didn’t need to see. She knew what was happening. With a scalpel, Ladd was making a careful incision around the skull, ear to ear behind the head, detaching the skin flap from the cranium and pulling it forward over her face. With a circular saw, he cut through the skull. She could hear the grating sound and almost sensed the dispersed white dust settling onto her skin. She shuddered again, and then decided it was better to watch. Her imagination was getting the best of her. At least the horror of reality would keep her grounded.

  Morgan’s face was completely covered by what appeared to be a burgundy bathing cap with sandy hair protruding. With a small chisel, Ladd opened the skull and removed the skullcap. With a few deft motions, Morgan’s brain tumbled from her head into a sterilized bowl. Ellie’s shutter started clicking.

  “Subdural hematoma. Significant bruising and swelling.” Ladd turned to his audience and sighed. “This woman suffered a head injury from a blunt force. With the bruising on her forearm, I’d say she attempted to deflect the first blow, but the second landed on the side of her head and knocked her out.” He glanced back at the wood splinter in the plastic dish. Without a word, he picked it up, walked over to a cabinet against the far wall, and removed a microscope. He placed the splinter under the viewfinder. As he looked through, he said, “We’ll examine this fragment in more detail, but I’d say you’re looking for a baseball bat. The old-fashioned kind—a Louisville Slugger.”

  Lucy envisioned hours of combing through sales receipts from neighboring sporting goods stores and poring through local baseball team rosters, then cross-referencing those records with criminal offender information. As she was the junior member of this Homicide Unit, that endless task would inevitably fall to her. Unless, of course, they got enough real leads to fill her time.

  “Why the gunshot? Couldn’t the hematoma have killed her?” she asked.

  “We’re just getting started. I’ll get you your answers, but you have to be patient with this process. We haven’t even opened her up yet.”

  Apparently brain removal didn’t count. It was going to be a long morning.

  2:51 p.m.

  Homer Ladd covered Morgan’s corpse with the sheet, pulled off his gloves, and walked over to the sink to wash his hands. Her body now had a Y-shaped incision from both shoulders to the abdomen and down to her vagina. Her heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs had been removed, weighed, analyzed, and replaced. Lucy had somehow expected the human body to be like a suitcase, so perfectly organized that everything fit on the way out but, by the end of the trip, couldn’t be repacked. Instead, Ladd had managed to put everything back exactly where it belonged. In a few moments, Morgan would be wheeled out to the anteroom and sewn shut by a technician—suitable for an open-casket funeral if that’s what her next of kin wanted.

  Ellie collected her cartridges of film. “I should have prints ready in a couple of hours,” she said, making a hasty exit.

  Lucy and Jack followed Ladd out of the autopsy room, into the elevator, and up to his office on the second floor. The combination of a head injury and a bullet wound had made the autopsy longer and more complicated than most, and Ladd collapsed into a chair, obviously exhausted. They all were. But the investigation had just started. Now they were ready for some information.

  “Cause of death was massive hemothorax and hemopericardium due to a gunshot wound to her chest.”

  “What about the blow to the side of her head?”

  “People certainly can recover from subdural hematomas; the draining process is relatively straightforward. But she might have had memory loss, or even brain damage, depending upon what type of medical care she received and when. I can’t predict the degree of permanent injury, but I can tell you it is highly unlikely she’d be dead. In any event, at this stage it’s an unnecessary hypothetical. The point is that someone knocked her unconscious and only later—possibly as much as two hours later—was she killed by a gunshot wound.”

  Jack and Lucy exchanged glances. The situation was even more bizarre than they’d appreciated initially.

  “In my opinion, the shot was a crude attempt to make it appear that the death was a suicide. The killer put the gun in her left hand after the fact—that’s why we’ve got gunpowder residue on her left palm. Given the location of the bullet hole, Reese would have had to be a contortionist to get her wrist, hand, and chest aligned in that manner. And that’s ignoring the fact that she was probably still unconscious when she was shot.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Was she left-handed?” Lucy asked. “I mean, if you wanted the death to look like a suicide, wouldn’t you put the gun in the hand you’d assume she’d use? Most people are right-handed. Unless you had specific knowledge to the contrary, you’d guess the right hand.”

  “Or the shooter was left-handed. If left-handedness were what you were conscious of, you might forget that you’re in a minority,” Jack added.

  “Well, I can’t help you on that scenario, but”—Ladd paused, and scanned his notes—“I can help on the first point. I’m almost certain that Dr. Reese was left-handed. There is a substantial callus on the inside of her left index finger from holding a pen or pencil.”

  Jack made a note to himself. Then he summarized. “So she’s in a car accident, gets out of her car, gets smashed in the head with a baseball bat, and then gets shot.”

  “That’s correct in essence. But before she was dealt the blow to the head, remember there was some sort of struggle. We’ve got the bruising on her forearm. And we’ve got the yarn fibers under her fingernails.”

  “That’s right,” Lucy mumbled, remembering the scrapings he had taken from under Morgan’s nails once the bags on her hands had been removed. He’d been able to ascertain that the material was wool, but he’d been unable to determine whether it was lambswool, cashmere, mohair, or something else. The minuscule amount would have to be analyzed.

  “The victim may well have grabbed at her attacker’s arm or torso and come away with a sweater sample.”

  “But she wasn’t shot at that point,” Jack interrupted.

  “That’s right. The bullet trajectory indicates the victim was prostrate and the shooter most likely knelt down beside her, put the gun against her chest, and pulled the trigger.”

  Lucy instantly regretted the promise she’d made to Archer.

  “What about the drugs, the prescription medication found in her purse?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the toxicology report to come back to see if she ingested any of it herself.”

  “Who are we looking for?” Jack asked.

  Ladd leaned back in his chair. “Given the angle of the bruising, the person is definitely taller than the victim. And the hematoma didn’t come from a ninety-eight-pound weakling. Someone nailed her with considerable strength”

  “A male then?” Jack asked.

  “Aren’t we stereotyping just a little bit?” Lucy responded. There were plenty of strong women in the world and the height threshold was only five feet four inches. Despite her own small stature, that requirement hardly ruled out the female population.

  “Not necessarily,” Ladd echoed.

  “Since she was found wearing an expensive watch, I’m assuming robbery isn’t a motive,” Lucy added.

  “I’
d agree. But remember your killer isn’t sophisticated in a criminal sense. This has the hallmarks of a crime of passion—not well planned and very hastily executed.”

  “Plus the killer had some familiarity with his victim,” Jack added.

  “What about the time lag, the time between the knockout and the shot?”

  “All I can tell you is that there was one. I don’t know why there was an approximately two-hour lapse.”

  “And no one found her in the interim. That’s the weirdest part. Where can you lie unnoticed, bleeding and unconscious, for up to two hours?” Jack asked incredulously.

  “Apparently within the Philadelphia city limits,” Ladd replied.

  Lucy’s mind raced with possibilities. What had caused the delay? Had the killer experienced second thoughts, panic, or remorse? Perhaps it was something as simple as that he or she wasn’t sure the job was finished. Maybe the gun was sought in the interim to make certain. But couldn’t the killer have known by checking Morgan’s pulse? And once it had been established that she was still alive, why wouldn’t more blows have been inflicted to end it then and there? Did the killer actually think the staged suicide would cover up the crime? Or . . . or . . . just maybe— “Could there have been two?”

  “Two different killers?”

  She nodded. “A baseball player and a shooter.”

  The Assistant Medical Examiner sighed. “I don’t see why not.”

  She thought through the combination of scenarios. They needed a driver, a hitter, and a shooter. How many of the roles overlapped? Instead of narrowing the field, she’d expanded the possibilities.

  “If there were two, I’d bet my pension they’re connected. Otherwise you’re talking about an almost apocryphal amount of coincidence.”

  “Perhaps,” Lucy said. “It’s also possible that the hitter may not have intended to kill. Maybe only the shooter intended to kill.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

  “Well, it’s a possibility, that’s all I’m thinking.”

  Ladd leaned forward and raised one eyebrow. “Let’s leave that theory to defense counsel.”