The front door opened. Silence descended inside the car as they watched a man and woman leave the building. They were both in their late fifties. Both bent over with grief. Alexandra McAllister’s parents, Sara assumed. They were dressed in black. They would’ve been asked to select a coffin. Gently prodded into choosing a pillow and colored satin lining. Told to bring in the last outfit their daughter would ever wear. Gently instructed to include underwear, shoes, jewelry. Made to sign paperwork and write checks and hand over photographs and set a date and time for visitation and the service and the burial—all of the things a parent never wanted to do for their child.
Or that a wife never wanted to do for her husband.
Amanda waited until the McAllisters were driving away to ask, “What happened to Jeffrey’s case files?”
Unbidden, Sara recalled the artful slope of Jeffrey’s handwriting. Part of her had fallen in love with him over his precise cursive. “Everything is in storage.”
“I need those files. Especially his notebooks.” Amanda got out of the car.
Instead of going through the front entrance, Amanda led Sara around the side of the building. Sara thought through the logistics of getting Jeffrey’s files to Atlanta. He had been a meticulous record keeper, so there would be no problem locating the correct boxes. She could ask Tessa to drive them up. But then Tessa would want to argue. Sara knew there was going to be some tension with Will. She couldn’t let the day go by without talking to Faith. Suddenly her To-Dos were sounding like a shit list.
The side door wasn’t locked. There was no security outside the building, not even a camera. Amanda simply opened the door and they both walked inside. She had clearly been given directions. She took a right up a long hallway, then started down the stairs to the basement.
The temperature turned chilly. The odor was antiseptic. Sara saw a desk under the stairs and file cabinets along the back wall. An accordion gate blocked off the open shaft of the freight elevator. The walk-in cooler gave off a low hum. The floor was tiled in gray laminate with a large drain in the center. The faucet on the stainless-steel industrial sink had a slow leak.
Sara had spent more than her fair share of time inside of funeral homes. While she wasn’t a fan of Georgia’s You Can Be a Coroner! gameshow of an election process, she was always grateful when the local guy—and it was usually a guy—was a funeral director. Licensed morticians had a textbook understanding of anatomy. They were also more likely to absorb the nuances of the forty-hour introductory course the state mandated for all incoming coroners.
Amanda looked at her watch. “Let’s not dilly-dally here.”
Sara hadn’t planned on it, but she wasn’t going to be rushed. “I can only do a preliminary, visual exam here. If she requires a full autopsy, I’ll have to take her back to headquarters.”
“Understood,” Amanda said. “Remember, the official cause of death at the moment has been ruled accidental. We can’t take her anywhere unless the coroner revises his finding.”
Sara doubted that. Amanda had a way of changing minds. “Yes, ma’am.”
There was a loud whir as the freight elevator lowered to the basement. Sara could see a pair of black wingtips. Black dress pants. Matching jacket. Vest buttoned a few inches below the neck. A black tie and a white shirt completed the look.
The elevator stopped. The gate folded back. The man who got off looked exactly how Sara expected. His gray hair was combed back, his mustache neatly trimmed. He was probably in his late seventies. He had an old-fashioned look about him and a somber air that fit his occupation.
“Good day, ladies.” He pulled a gurney off of the elevator and rolled it into the middle of the basement. A white sheet covered the body. The material was thick cotton with a monogrammed logo for the Dunedin Life Services Group, a multinational conglomerate that owned half of the funeral homes in the state.
The man said, “Deputy Director, welcome. Dr. Linton, I’m Ezra Ingle. Please accept my apologies for making you wait. I advised against it, but the parents insisted on seeing their loved one.” His soft Appalachian accent told Sara that he was a hometown boy. When he shook her hand, it was with practiced reassurance.
She said, “Thank you, Mr. Ingle. I appreciate your allowing me to look over your shoulder.”
He shot Amanda a wary glance, but told Sara, “I welcome a second opinion. However, I must admit I was surprised by the request.”
Amanda said nothing, though they obviously knew each other. Which was great for Sara. This was exactly the right moment for more tension.
“The parents confirmed the girl was an experienced hiker. They told me that it wasn’t unusual for her to spend the entire day alone inside the park.” He walked toward the desk and retrieved the paperwork. “I think you’ll find that I’m very thorough.”
“Thank you. I’m certain you are.” Sara couldn’t blame the man for feeling like his toes were being stepped on. All she could do was make this as painless as possible.
Ingle’s notes had been typed on an actual typewriter. She could still smell the fresh Wite-Out where he’d corrected a single typo.
The body was located fifty yards from Smith Creek in Unicoi State Park, which was in the northeastern part of the state. The park was over one thousand acres. Smith Creek was a six-and-a-half-mile tributary of the Chattahoochee River. The body was oriented east-to-west, approximately sixty yards from the 7.5 mile Mountain Bike Trail, a compacted soil surface trail rated as moderate to strenuous. The figure-eight circuit looped between the Unicoi and Helen side of Smith Creek and was marked with a white blaze.
Sara turned the page.
The creek was fifty yards down a 25-degree incline from the body. The victim was fully dressed in professional-level hiking attire. The moderate level of decomposition was conducive with an ambient temperature between 58–70 degrees over the prior week. The woman’s Subaru Outback had previously been located at the park entrance off of Georgia State Route 75, approximately 4.2 miles away from where the body was later found. Her phone and purse were locked inside the vehicle. The Subaru key fob was zipped inside the interior breast pocket of her rain jacket. A stainless-steel water bottle, partially filled, had been found two yards down from her body.
Sara said, “Mr. Ingle, I wish my teachers had been as thorough as you. Your preliminary report is incredibly detailed.”
“Preliminary,” Ingle repeated.
Sara glanced at Amanda for help. All she could see was the top of her head. She was typing on her phone, or being extremely rude, as it was known in local parlance. Sara’s own phone had buzzed in her pocket but nothing was more important than what was right in front of her.
“If I may.” Ingle laid around two dozen 4x6 color photographs on the wooden desk.
He’d been concise in his documentation. The body in situ from four different angles. The exposed torso showing predator activity. The hands. The neck. The eyes with and without the sunglasses she had been wearing. Nothing was in extreme close-up except the inside of the mouth. The image was slightly out of focus, but there were no visible blockages in her throat.
Ingle said, “This next series of pictures tells the most likely story. The Mountain Bike Trail was crowded that day, so my assumption is she was cutting through the forest to find the lesser-trafficked Smith Creek Trail. It’s pretty tough going through there. Overgrown with brambles and such. She fell at some point. Hit her head on a rock, I’m guessing. There’s quite a few in the area. She was incapacitated by the head injury. The rain came, and hard. You’ll see my weather report on the back page. It came down in buckets that night. Poor thing did what she could to protect herself, but she eventually succumbed.”
Sara studied the second series of inkjet-printed photos. As with the first, the blacks and browns were muted. The light wasn’t very good. Alexandra McAllister was twisted at the waist, her bent knees pointing deeper into the forest, her torso facing the direction of the stream. Sara’s attention was drawn to the close-up of th
e torso. The animal activity was significant, but unusual. Unless there was an open wound, carnivores typically went for body orifices—the mouth, nose, eyes, vagina and anus. The photos showed most of the damage was isolated to the stomach and chest area.
Ingle seemed to anticipate her question. “As you can see, she was wearing a very good rain jacket. Arc’teryx brand, Gore-Tex, completely waterproof, cinched at the sleeves and around the hood. Problem was, the zipper up the front was busted, so it wouldn’t stay closed. The pants were Patagonia, some kind of waterproof mountain climbing material, cinched at the ankles, tucked into the tops of her hiking boots.”
Sara understood why he was calling out these details. In Ingle’s scenario, the cinched hood had protected the face. The sunglasses had protected the eyes. The seals on the sleeves and pants had acted as a barrier against insects and animals. That left one area exposed for the predators. The broken zipper had let the jacket flap open. Her undershirt was more like a tank-top, sleeveless with a deep V at the neck. From the looks of it, more than one creature had fought over the body. That could explain why she had been pulled in different directions.
“We get a lot of gray foxes up here,” Ingle said. “Had a rabid one bite a woman a couple of years back.”
“I remember.” Sara pulled a pair of exam gloves from the box on the desk. She told Ingle, “So far, everything you’re telling me, everything I’ve read, points to an unfortunate accident.”
“I’m glad to hear you agree with me.” He added, “So far.”
Sara watched him remove the thick, white sheet covering the body. There was another sheet wrapped mummy-like from the shoulders down. This was clearly meant to keep her parents from seeing more than they probably should. Ingle used a pair of scissors to cut open the thin material. He was gentle in his movements, moving slowly from chest to foot.
The man had obviously taken great care with Alexandra McAllister before letting the parents see their child. Her nude body smelled of disinfectant. Her face was bloated, but not to the point of disfigurement. Her hair had been combed. Ingle must have massaged the livor mortis out of her face as he’d set her features to look as relaxed and natural as possible. He’d judiciously applied make-up to erase the horror of the woman’s last few hours. These acts of decency reminded Sara of Dan Brock back in Grant County. Especially after the death of his own father, Brock had shown an almost saintly kindness toward mourners.
Sara had experienced it first-hand when Jeffrey had died.
Ingle folded away the thin sheet. There was still another layer. He had covered the torso in plastic to keep the fluids from bleeding through. The effect was like cling film covering a full pot of spaghetti.
“Doctor?” Ingle was postponing removing the plastic until the last minute. Even with the precautions he’d taken, the smell would be potent.
“Thank you.” Sara started her visual exam at the head. She was able to appreciate the open fracture at the back of the skull. Dizziness. Nausea. Blurred vision. Stupor. Loss of consciousness. There was no way to tell what state the victim had been in post-injury. Every brain reacted differently to trauma. The one common denominator was that skulls were closed containers. Once the brain started to swell, there was nowhere for it to go. It was like blowing up a balloon inside a glass ball.
She pressed open the woman’s eyes. The contact lenses had fused to the corneas. There were signs of petechiae, the red, scattershot bursting of blood vessels in the eyes. This could be the result of strangulation, but it could also indicate that the brain had swelled into the brain stem, depressing respiration to the point of death. An autopsy might show a broken hyoid, indicating manual compression, but this wasn’t an autopsy.
At this point, Sara did not see a reason to suggest one.
She palpated the neck with her fingers. The structure felt stiff. There were multiple explanations for that finding, from whiplash sustained during the fall to swollen lymph glands.
She asked Ingle, “Do you have a flashlight?”
He took a penlight out of his pocket.
Sara pushed open the woman’s mouth. Nothing appeared any different from the photo. She pressed down the tongue and used the light to look inside. Nothing. She stuck her index finger down the throat as far as it would reach.
Ingle asked, “Do you feel an obstruction?”
“I don’t feel one, no.” The only definitive way to tell would be to dissect the tracheal block. Again, there was no reason to do so. Sara was not going to put this family through one more second of grief based on the theories of a pedophile with an ax to grind.
She told Ingle, “Ready.”
He slowly peeled back the plastic covering the torso.
The sucking sound lurched against the low ceiling. The abdomen looked as if a grenade had gone off inside. The smell was so noxious that Sara coughed. Her eyes watered. She looked back at Amanda. The top of her head still showed, but she was typing with one hand. She’d put the other hand under her nose to block the smell.
Sara did not have that luxury. She took a few deep breaths, forcing her body to accept that this was how it was going to be. Ingle seemed unfazed. The corners of his lips turned up in a well-earned smile.
Sara returned to the body.
The line of demarcation between where the waterproof materials had protected sections of the body and where the thin, cotton shirt had covered the torso could have been made with a ruler. Everything above the clavicles and below the hips was pristine. The belly and chest were a different matter.
The intestines had been gutted. The breasts had been ripped away. Most of the organs were missing. The ribs had been licked clean. Sara could see teeth marks where bone had been gnawed. She pulled the left arm away from the body to follow the trail of carnage from the shredded breast around to the side. The armpit had been eviscerated. The nerves, arteries and veins stuck out like strands of broken electrical cords. She opened the right arm and found the same type of destruction.
She asked Ingle, “What do you make of the axilla?”
“You mean the armpits?” he asked. “Foxes can be extremely vicious, especially when they fight. They’ve got claws as sharp as razors. They would’ve been frenzied.”
Sara nodded, though she didn’t quite agree with his assessment.
“Here.” Ingle went back to the desk. He found a magnifying glass in the top drawer. “You’ll see bits of blue material from the cotton shirt. I didn’t have time to pick it all out.”
“Thank you.” Sara took the magnifying glass. She knelt down beside the gurney. The teeth and claw marks were clearly visible. She had no doubt that several small animals had fed on the body. What she wanted to examine was the damage to the armpits.
Predators were drawn to the blood in organ meat and muscle. There wasn’t a lot of reward in the axilla. The nerves, veins and arteries of the brachial plexus extend from the spinal cord, through the neck, over the first rib and into the armpit. There were more complicated ways to describe the structures, but basically, the brachial plexus controlled the muscles of the arms. The various strands were distinguishable by their color. Veins and arteries were red. Nerves were pearly white to yellow.
Under the magnifying glass, Sara could see that the veins and arteries had been ripped open by teeth drawn to the blood.
By contrast, the nerves looked as if they had been cleanly sliced by a blade.
“Sara?” Amanda was finally looking up from her phone.
Sara shook her head, asking Ingle, “What about the scrape on her back?”
“The wound?”
“You called it a scrape in your notes.”
“Wound. Cut,” he said. “I guess she scratched the back of her neck on something? Perhaps a rock? The clothes weren’t torn, but I’ve seen it happen. Basic friction.”
He was using wound, cut and scratch interchangeably, which was like saying a dog was a chicken was an apple. Sara asked, “Can we turn her onto her side?”
Ingle replaced the pl
astic over the abdomen before rolling the shoulders. Sara rotated the hips and legs. She used the narrow beam of the penlight to examine the woman’s back. Livor mortis blackened the area like a bruise slashing down the spine. The skin had stretched and cracked from decomposition.
Sara counted the cervical vertebrae down from the base of the skull. She remembered a mnemonic from medical school—
C 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive.
The phrenic nerve, which controls the rise and fall of the diaphragm, branches off from spinal nerves at the third, fourth and fifth cervical vertebra. When assessing spinal cord injuries, if those nerves are left intact, then the patient did not need a ventilator. Any damage below C5 would paralyze the legs. Damage above C5 would paralyze the legs and the arms, but it would also cut off the ability of the patient to breathe on her own.
Sara found the injury from Ingle’s notes directly below C5.
The scrape, because the skin had been scraped, was roughly the size of a thumbnail, deeper at one end, trailing off like a comet at the other. She understood why Ingle had dismissed the mark. It looked like the sort of accidental injury that happened all of the time. You rubbed your neck against something sharp. You scratched an itch a little too deeply. There would be pain, but not much. Later on, you would ask your husband or wife to look at it because you had no idea why your neck was hurting.
But there was more to this particular injury than an itch. The scrape was clearly meant to obscure a wound. And not just a wound, but a puncture. The circumference of the hole was roughly a quarter the size of a drinking straw. Sara immediately thought of the awl in a Swiss army knife. The round, pointed tool was ideal for punching holes in leather. Her father used a similar device called a counterpunch to sink the heads of nails in fine carpentry work.
When Sara pressed against the puncture, a watery, dark brown liquid wept out.
Ingle asked, “Is that fat?”
“Fat would be more rubbery and white. This is cerebrospinal fluid,” Sara said. “If I’m right, the killer used a metal tool to rupture her spinal cord. He sliced the nerves of the brachial plexus to immobilize the arms.”
The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10) Page 11