This was going to kill Schwartzman.
6
X-rays complete, Schwartzman unzipped the black body bag. With fresh gloves, she worked to remove it and folded it carefully into a trash bag. In the case of bodies found without clothing, it was vital to preserve any trace evidence that may have come off the victim. They’d recently had a case in which a bit of motor oil on the inside of the body bag had led the investigators to the crime scene—and the killer.
With the bag removed, Schwartzman palpated the skull and combed the long hair for evidence. Where her comb caught in the locks, she used her free hand to pull gently until they came untangled, the way you might comb a child’s hair. Behind the victim’s left ear was some sort of residue. Using a pair of small tweezers, Schwartzman worked it from the hair and put it in a petri dish.
Something like white sugar coated a red gummy substance. Like candy. Again, her mind returned to the child. Why take him if the intention was simply to kill him?
He had to be alive.
But the images that followed were not reassuring. She’d witnessed what became of victims who survived. Being alive was not always a good thing.
Using gloved fingers, she lowered the victim’s eyelids. She would need to open them again for the examination and to collect the vitreous, the fluid that filled the eye between the retina and the lens, material ideal for studying victim toxicology.
For the moment, she preferred not to see Aleena Laughlin’s eyes.
Even then it was impossible not to imagine the bright-eyed woman in the burqa. Not to picture the energetic boy, to hear his excitement as he spotted Buster. Had he been telling her about school? About his class? His white top had reminded her of a gi, the traditional uniform for martial arts.
His belt hadn’t been visible from the window. It would have told her his rank but not much else. There had been a patch on his left breast. Red and black, she’d thought, the words and design too small to make out. She’d passed them in a flash. His wide smile, the way he’d pointed at Buster, then the mother’s eyes. Schwartzman had observed nothing else.
After the boy’s smiling face, the burqa had caught her attention. When she saw women in traditional Muslim clothing, she always remembered Dr. Najah Mian, an oncologist she’d met during her chemotherapy treatments. In an unfortunate intersection of her personal and professional lives, Dr. Mian had been undergoing chemotherapy of her own, also for breast cancer.
The first time Schwartzman had seen Dr. Mian, three children had formed a small circle on the floor at her feet. Two were clearly young teenagers, but the third was smaller. She had to be twelve, the minimum age for visitors in the cancer center, though she seemed younger.
What was so impressive was their utter silence. Their stunning black-haired heads remained down as they worked on coloring books in which they were each applying geometrically shaped stickers into mosaics of bold, beautiful images. The boy was creating a castle with a fire-breathing dragon flying through the blue sky above. The younger girl worked on a beach scene with a whale cutting through the water, while the older girl built a series of intricate butterflies. Other than the rustling of the pages of their books, they made no noise at all.
During Schwartzman’s third treatment, the woman arrived again, her young family filing in behind her like children coming into church. Again, they formed a semicircle and worked on their books, different images this time.
“They won’t bother you,” the woman told her.
“Of course not. They’re incredibly well behaved.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m Anna Schwartzman.”
“Najah Mian.”
Schwartzman noticed the hospital badge clipped to her purse. “You work in the hospital.”
She gave a wry smile. “An oncologist, actually.”
An oncologist with cancer. “Your doctor probably appreciates how much you know about the disease.”
The word felt bulbous in her mouth. Disease.
“I drive him crazy,” Najah said.
“Well, they do say doctors are the worst patients,” Schwartzman said, feeling an instant affection for Najah Mian.
“They are,” she agreed. “And it’s so much worse when you’re dealing in your own specialty.” She studied Schwartzman. “Are you a physician as well?”
“I am, but I can say with confidence that I’ll never be in a position to worry about my specialty getting in the way of treatment.”
Najah’s eyes narrowed. “You’re what—a pediatrician? No,” she said definitively. “Then you’d always be treating your children and everyone else’s.” She paused. “A urologist?”
Schwartzman shook her head.
Najah gave it a little more consideration before shrugging. “I give up.”
“Pathology. I’m a medical examiner.”
Najah burst out laughing—the first time the mention of her job had ever elicited that response. “You’re absolutely right,” she said, her accent ticking along the words. “You will not have to worry about having yourself as a patient.” Then she covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed again.
Though the two had gotten to know each other during those treatments, Schwartzman had never asked Najah about her religion, though she was certain the woman would have happily answered her questions.
Was it the burqa that had made Aleena stick in her mind? Was that why she’d noticed the Jeep still parked on the side of the road when driving out of the park? If the woman had been in a sweatshirt with her hair up in a ponytail, would she have been so memorable? And what had Schwartzman missed?
If she had looked more closely, would Schwartzman have seen how her fingernails were bitten to the quick? Would that have given her some warning that something was wrong?
Had there been something in her eyes?
If the woman hadn’t been wearing a burqa that covered her mouth, would Schwartzman have seen fear? Would she have registered alarm?
But they hadn’t seemed afraid.
Moving to the victim’s face, Schwartzman studied the faint line that ran from just inside her left ear down to her jaw. At first, the thin mark looked like an impression on the skin. Under the magnifying glass, it became clear that the line was scar tissue.
The line had a consistent wavy pattern, too perfect to have been the result of even the steadiest human hand. Whatever cut her hadn’t moved in the wavy pattern. Instead, the instrument had that pattern. Schwartzman studied the scar to determine if one area was more pronounced, a sign of differing pressure along the length of the wound. Instead, the scar was uniform, equally faint.
Were it not for the anomaly in the pigment along the line of the scar, she might not have noticed it at all. The lighter pigmentation reminded her of stretch marks she’d seen on African-American victims. But when she consulted her dermatological reference book, it offered little information on what would have caused an alteration in the pigment at the site of what was most likely a superficial scratch.
A void occupied the center of the scar, as though perhaps it was not one scar but two made with the same tool. Its wavy pattern brought to mind a pair of scissors Schwartzman had used when she and her mother had joined a scrapbooking group for a brief time in high school, something her father had urged them to do in an effort to bond.
Somewhere in her mother’s house was an album with pictures of a father-daughter dance, her junior prom, and a few other occasions deemed worthy enough for photographs. A decorative backdrop surrounded each image, its edges wavy like the scar on Aleena Laughlin’s face.
The attempt to create mother-daughter bonding hadn’t worked. Her father’s efforts to unite the women in his life had rarely done much. And they were the only ones left—two women who had adored him but who were unable to bridge a world without him. She ran her finger along the mark one last time, unsettled by its appearance. There was something intimate about it, and Schwartzman felt as if she had discovered an entry in the victim’s diary, one that only
she could read.
Schwartzman found herself giving the scar more attention than necessary. It was not a recent scar. And it was possible that the pigmentation mark was the result of some chemical. The scar might have been a burn—chemical or heat. As it had fully healed, there was no way of knowing.
She would mention it to Roger. A pair of scissors might explain the void in the center where the blade wouldn’t have touched the skin. But the uniformity of the scar—that no section was deeper than any other—contradicted the idea of a pair of shears.
7
Schwartzman forced herself to move on from the mysterious scar on the victim’s face. She examined her arms and torso for any evidence of injury and made note of the small, round scars along her anterior—arms, belly, legs—particularly on the thighs. A bad case of chicken pox was the most likely explanation. She observed a few other marks and small, healed scrapes but no recent injuries. No defensive wounds on her face and hands—nothing to indicate she had been restrained.
Schwartzman shifted to the lethal wound on her abdomen. There were three distinct marks. In the center was the entry wound, consistent with a knife. The entrance diameter measured twenty-six millimeters, just over an inch, which was narrow for a knife.
The blade entered Laughlin exactly on the midline of the upper part of the abdomen that included the soft tissue below the rib cage. The location made it difficult to guess whether the assailant was right- or left-handed, though guessing handedness was never foolproof. Not by a long shot. It was possible, however, to infer the killer’s probable handedness by the directionality of the internal wound. From the entry point, the blade likely caused injuries to the stomach and liver. Depending on its length, the weapon might have reached other organs. The abdominal aorta also ran in the midline down the body. If the blade had struck the aorta, she would have died quickly.
Even if the blade had struck only the organs, death could have resulted from exsanguination. Because their team had discovered Laughlin facedown on damp ground, there was no way to measure how much blood she’d lost prior to death. Before an autopsy, the quantity of blood would have given Schwartzman an idea of whether she’d bled out. Without that, she studied other aspects of the victim. Depending on the location of the wound, a victim of stabbing—even a potentially fatal stabbing—might run miles and live hours before the injuries caused death. The lack of grass stains on her feet, arms, and hands, as well as the absence of defensive wounds, suggested that her death had been quick. There had been no running or struggling.
Aleena Laughlin had likely been incapacitated by the initial blow.
Nothing about Aleena Laughlin’s death presented as extraordinary, not for a stabbing death. But three things stood out. The first was the narrow entrance wound. Common household knives measured wider than a single inch, certainly at the point where the blade surface met the ricasso, the dull metal bridge between the blade and where the grip began.
The second thing that struck Schwartzman was that each side of the lethal wound tapered to a point. A knife would imply one sharp edge and one blunt one, but the incisions on Laughlin suggested a weapon sharpened on both sides. The blunt side of a knife sometimes made a mark like a sharpened edge if the skin were torn, but a tear would make the opening of the wound larger than the blade width. That meant that the actual weapon used on Laughlin would have been even narrower. Which made the weapon all that much more unusual.
The other possibility was that Laughlin had been killed by a double-edged blade, but that, too, was unusual.
Schwartzman’s third noteworthy observation concerned the horizontal marks on either side of the primary penetrating wound. Two thin incisions, as if made by the fine tip of a knife, ran exactly six inches on either side of the midpoint entrance wound. The side lacerations were largely superficial, although she noted several deeper points along the lines. Had the killer pressed harder in those places? No, the side wounds were too perfectly perpendicular to the fatal one to have been executed freehand. Even the most skilled surgeon made a crooked line.
These three pieces of evidence led her to one conclusion—whatever made the side cuts was attached to the blade that killed her. The killer had used some sort of cross-shaped weapon. The variation in the depth of the side incisions suggested the blade might have been rounded, or that it narrowed in some areas and then thickened again. Otherwise, the incision depths would have been identical across the incision. She couldn’t picture what kind of weapon might have made these marks. She was taking pictures when Hal entered the morgue.
“Find something good?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Hal stood beside her. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said. “Any news?”
“Nothing. I went to her address. I talked to her neighbors. The husband is deployed in Afghanistan. I’ve got a call into the State Department to try to get in touch with him.” He seemed about to say something else but stopped.
“No sign of the boy,” she finished for him.
“No.”
Hal motioned to the incision across the victim’s stomach. “What do you think it is? A scratch from a shrub or brush? She might have been running.”
Schwartzman pulled over the magnifying glass and peered at the injuries. “It’s too symmetrical. Look at it under the glass.” She stepped away so Hal could take her place.
“Huh.”
“I believe the weapon that killed her had side blades that made those marks. The main blade was double-edged and very narrow.”
She explained her reasoning as Hal studied the wound under magnification.
“That is narrow,” he said.
Schwartzman measured the incision side to side. “Twenty-six millimeters.”
Hal frowned.
“An inch—slightly over,” she said before he asked. Hal was not a fan of the metric system, though it was standard for forensic pathology.
“Like a dagger.”
“A very narrow one.”
Hal nodded. “More like a skewer.”
“But I’ve never seen a skewer that’s sharp on the sides. Most skewers have only a single point.”
“Right,” Hal agreed. “Otherwise, people would slice open their hands eating shish kebabs.” He studied the wound.
Again she considered the deeper marks in the abdominal skin. A curved blade would penetrate deeper in the area where the peaks hit the skin. The valleys of the blade would cause more superficial cuts.
Like a wave.
Like the scar she’d examined earlier.
“Look at this old wound on her face,” Schwartzman said, excitement taking over. She wheeled the magnifier along and set it up over the scar. “Do you see the wave-like motion to it?”
“I see it,” Hal said. “Like she was scraped by a serrated knife.”
“Exactly. But not like any serration I’ve ever seen.” She used a thin plastic ruler to measure the distance between the deeper cuts. “Twelve millimeters between each peak.”
He gave her a blank stare.
“About half an inch,” she told him.
“Huh,” Hal said. “More like a wide-tooth saw than a knife.”
“But there’s no sign of the barbed shape present on most saw blades. Instead, the peaks and troughs of the serrations are completely symmetrical—like the instrument has a wave pattern along the blade.”
“Plus, it’s not that long,” Hal said. “Even a short saw would be ten or twelve inches.”
“Right. And a saw doesn’t have a point, so it wouldn’t have been the weapon that made the wound that killed her.”
“Unless the assailant was carrying two weapons.”
“I don’t think so.” She pointed to the abdominal wound, then back to the scar on the victim’s face. “See the similarities?”
He looked between the victim’s face and the abdomen. “You mean the same weapon created the wound that killed her and the marks on her face?”
“There are similarities,�
� she said, knowing it wasn’t an answer. But she didn’t have one to give.
Hal examined the scar and the wound again, his face set in an expression of concentration. “If it’s the same weapon, then Aleena Laughlin was injured by it before.”
“I’ll get these to Roger, see if he can find something like that.” Schwartzman lifted her camera and thumbed through the images she’d taken.
Hal crossed his arms, and she sensed his unease. “What?” she asked.
“The weapon looks like something ancient, ceremonial.”
“And?” she prompted.
“Brings to mind a ritual killing.”
“What kind of ritual?” she asked.
“A Muslim woman, her religious gown removed, killed by a single stab wound with some sort of strange blade, left naked.”
“Like a statement, you mean? Some sort of hate crime?” she asked. The incidence of hate crimes in the new political environment had risen across the country. Every police department was on high alert for crimes against minorities.
And no city was more sensitive to issues facing those groups than San Francisco.
“Exactly like a hate crime,” Hal said.
8
Hal watched as Schwartzman massaged the muscles along the victim’s jaws, working her fingers up into the muscles beneath the ears to relax the rigor.
“You need help?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her ponytail bobbed behind her as she used her upper body to work at the problem. He rarely saw her hair up. It made her look younger. “I thought you usually checked the mouth early in the autopsy,” he said.
“I do,” she said.
Schwartzman glanced up at him. “I got distracted by the scar on her face,” she admitted, contrition in her voice.
And by the missing boy, Hal didn’t say. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that there might be a missing eight-month-old, too.
Before Hal left Aleena Laughlin’s apartment building, Phyllis Johnson had shown him the paperwork that assigned her emergency custody for the Laughlin children should something happen to Aleena while Jared Laughlin was in Afghanistan. As Jared and Aleena no longer had relationships with their respective families, granting custody to someone else had been a smart decision. It also gave Hal the authority to tell the Johnsons about Aleena’s death. As painful as it was, he preferred leaving them with the truth rather than false hope.
Expose (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 3) Page 4