Secrets, Lies & Alibis

by Patricia H. Rushford

  Kristen set out her instruments on the examination table, then depressed the foot activator for the microphone that was suspended above the table. “All quiet, please.” She then began her preliminary examination, stepping on the foot pedal while she spoke.

  Mac found that focusing on the camera and the smaller images helped him remain emotionally distanced. He used nearly two rolls of film and suspected Allison had as well.

  The forensics specialist finally set her camera on the counter behind her and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. She took a plastic bag from one of the boxes she’d set beside her satchel and approached the body. Allison then removed the paper sack that Kristen had placed on the victim’s right hand, placing the bag itself in an evidence envelope.

  “Would you hand me some more evidence bags, Mac?”

  Mac turned around and picked one off the counter. “Sure, these plastic ones?”

  “No, the paper ones, please. Mine can’t be plastic; the evidence has to breathe or it will only degrade more. Just hold open those little white envelopes while I take some standards from her, okay?”

  Mac didn’t ask what standards were. Instead he did what he was told and picked up a handful of plain white envelopes, holding them open one at a time for Allison as she collected the samples. She pulled hair samples from the head and pubic area, placing them in separate envelopes. “Go ahead and mark the envelopes, noting the sample and the part of the body I took them from.”

  Mac dutifully wrote a description on the front of an evidence standard, sticking his tongue out to seal the envelope. He quickly put the package down, realizing he almost licked the envelope’s seal. He glanced at Allison, hoping she hadn’t noticed. She had.

  “Yeah, you may not want to do that.” Allison smiled. “Just stack them up so I can seal them with evidence tape and initial the seal as the collecting agent.”

  “Good idea.” Heat crept up his neck and face.

  Allison clipped the fingernails on the right hand, collecting the shavings to examine later. “Hopefully we can get a standard from our bad guy. If she put up a fight, she might have scratched the offender and captured some DNA under her nails.”

  “I hope she did.” Mac pinched his lips together. Come on, Megan. Give us something to work with so we can catch the scum who did this.

  Allison collected dozens of hairs, fibers, pieces of vegetation, and flesh for eventual lab analysis. “The flesh may be degraded to the point that I can’t get a good molecular standard for DNA comparison. Kristen, would you give me a four-inch piece of her femur when you’re done, so I can recover some marrow? I’d also like some of the large muscle from her thigh. Hopefully I can extract some DNA from them for comparison later.”

  “I’ll get those now. You want the skull too?” Kristen asked. “If the other two samples fail, I can try to extract a sample from the roots of a tooth. That’s a tough one, though. I’ve only had that work two or three times.”

  “Save it. I’ll get back to you if I need the teeth.”

  Getting into the scientific aspect of the procedure and listening to the two professionals helped to put Mac’s intense feelings aside.

  The wooziness had left him and he was beginning to feel both confident and competent.

  They took standards from the victim’s anus and vagina. “I’m going to take some swabs of the genitalia in case there’s trace evidence from a sexual assault. Any opinions, Kristen? The area is fairly degraded.”

  “I checked during the preliminary examination. There are no fissures around the body openings, so no overt signs of forced entry trauma. She’s been in the elements too long to say for sure.

  Go ahead and take a sample, although I’d be surprised if you were able to recover anything of evidentiary value—even if it was there.”

  Allison went ahead with the attempt to recover any evidence of sexual assault, in the event the perpetrator had left saliva or semen.

  While she was doing that, Dr. Thorpe packaged the bone and muscle samples for Allison to take back to the lab.

  “Thanks,” Allison said. “Now if you can extract a urine sample, I’ll get this stuff to the lab and get going.”

  Henry pulled a large syringe from the cabinet behind him.

  “You want blood too?”

  Henry pushed the large syringe into the patient’s abdomen, pulling a reddish-brown liquid back into a six-inch long plastic receptacle.

  “Looks like her bladder has also degraded,” Kristen frowned. “The urine looks contaminated.”

  “It’ll do, Henry,” Allison said. “I can still test for illicit or prescription drugs. Just can’t do the alcohol.”

  Henry deposited the samples into temporary glass jars and placed them in prefabricated cardboard containers for transport to the lab. Allison gathered the recovered items Mac had labeled and placed them in a large paper bag.

  “I’ll give you a call when I get my results. Don’t expect anything until the middle of next week.”

  “That long?” Mac asked then wished he hadn’t.

  Allison shook her head. “Welcome to the real world of forensics, Mac. Unlike the CSI actors, we can’t wrap this up in an hour.”

  “I know,” Mac stammered. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s okay, Detective.” Allison tossed him an understanding smile. “Everybody wants results right away.”

  “All done?” Kevin said as he reentered the room.

  “Ha,” Allison laughed. “Like you didn’t plan this down to the last second. Just like you to leave your partner holding the bag.”

  Mac chuckled. “Holding the bag. That’s a good one.”

  Detective Bledsoe rolled his eyes. “Here’s my card with my pager number on the back. Please call me when you know anything.”

  “Like I said, I’ll take care of you guys. When I have the name and number of the bad guy, you’ll get a call.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kevin grinned. “Really—thanks, Allison. I for one know we couldn’t do our jobs without you.”

  “We’ll do our best to get you something. You two be careful now.” She glanced back at Mac. “You did good in there. Thanks.”

  Mac nodded his appreciation.

  “My turn.” Dr. Thorpe turned back to the victim.

  “You mean we’re not finished?” Mac didn’t mean to make the comment out loud, but no one seemed to mind.

  “Not by a long shot, Mac.” Dr. Thorpe washed the maggots and debris from the body with the table’s hose. “Okay, Henry, time for some fancy cutting.”

  Henry produced a shiny new scalpel from a paper package. He made the Y cut from the shoulder blades to the sternum, then a straight line down the patient’s stomach to the navel area. The flaps of skin were pulled back to expose the dull yellow fat layer covering the ribs.

  Mac’s wooziness came back full force. He reached into his pocket and extracted the second whiff stick.

  “Her insides aren’t too bad,” Dr. Thorpe said. “Go ahead and remove the rib cage, Henry.” Henry walked past the shiny medical instruments on the table before him, taking an old pair of garden shears from a hook on the wall. “Nothing works as well as this old thing,” Henry said.

  He cut each rib, one at a time, and removed the rib cage and sternum from the body. Dr. Thorpe examined the organs, removing and dissecting them after Henry weighed them on the overhead scale. He wrote the respective weight on the grease board behind him, as Dr. Thorpe verbally recorded the procedure on her Dictaphone. “No obvious outward sign of trauma to the victim, and all internal organs are in good shape, under the circumstances.” “What about that cut on her right hip?” Mac interrupted.

  “You mean this one here?” Dr. Thorpe pointed to a three-inchlong, football-shaped wound.

  “Yeah, it looks like a stab wound or something.”

  “See the stringy layers of flesh connecting the wound? Those are called skin bridges. If a knife or blade cuts flesh, these skin bridges are not present due to the cut. With these present
, the wound is an obvious sign of skin tearing. In this case, the wound occurred postmortem, due to the bloating of the body. Bloating puts extreme stress on the skin where it covers bone. As a result, the skin stretches and rips.

  “These jagged edges on the flesh also indicate a tear. A slash or stab wound would be much cleaner. There are some curious marks around the base of the throat, see those dark lines? It could be the imprint of some type of ligature, but I can’t say for sure with the animals eating on her.”

  She sighed. “Let’s take a look at that skull, Henry.”

  Henry washed it off with the disinterest of a cook cleaning a head of lettuce. He squeezed the fluid from the mass of hair, placing them both on the examination table. Dr. Thorpe positioned the skull and what was left of the flesh on top of the patient’s shoulder area. She examined the lower mandible, peeling the remaining flesh away. “You may want a photograph of this, Mac.” Dr. Thorpe pointed to a rough groove, about an inch long, at the base of the jawbone. “She’s had some trauma here. I’d guess her throat was cut.”

  Mac took photographs, once again glad to be watching through the camera lens, while Kristen held a small ruler next to the wound.

  “I’m going to rule this one a criminal homicide,” she said. “My official report will be that her death was a result of trauma to the head and/or neck area. My unofficial opinion is that someone cut her throat with a heavy blade, which may or may not have been what killed her. The fact that the animals were eating away at the neck first supports this opinion; there must have been a wound there for them to get at.

  “There isn’t much activity around the genitals or anus, which is just as accessible to the maggots and birds. They were more interested in the neck, so there must have been an easy access wound there. I’ll bet on it. You guys should be looking for a stout blade, possibly even a box cutter–type instrument.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Kevin said. “We’ll keep it in mind as we get further into the investigation. Anything else?”

  “Just catch the creep who did this to her.” She walked past Mac, making eye contact with him as though offering a personal challenge. “You get him.” Mac’s heart quickened at her words.

  “Sew her up, Henry,” Kristen pulled off her gloves. “We’ll wait until the family confirms her identity before she’s released.”

  “You got it, Doc.” Henry pulled a large needle and heavy twine from a floor-level cabinet. He placed all the internal organs in a clear plastic bag then pushed the bag into the chest cavity like he was kneading bread. The rib cage and sternum were then set on top of the bag and the skin stretched over the entire molded heap.

  Then Henry went to work with his needle, stitching the incision with large loops through the flesh.

  “I hem my own pants too.” He smiled at the stern-faced detectives. “But I don’t do windows.” His laugh sounded hollow in the big room. “I don’t do windows.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kevin opened the door to his car and backed up as the hot air assaulted him. No problem; he’d just make the call while he waited for the car to cool down. “The medical examiner’s office ruled it a criminal homicide,” he said to Eric when his friend answered. He and Mac were still parked in front of the medical examiner’s offices. “Did you get the victim’s identification from Russ and Philly?”

  “Yeah. Based on the general description and that rose tattoo, it looks like our victim is Megan Tyson. I checked her criminal history and came back with zip. That means no fingerprints on file, unless she had a concealed weapon permit or was in the military. Nothing so far, though.”

  Kevin ran a hand through his graying hair. “Allison Sprague took some forensic evidence at the post; hopefully she can give us a DNA printout if we can give her something to compare it to. Do you have Troutdale P.D. in the loop yet?”

  “I just got off the phone with them,” Eric said. “I’m on the way to their office now. Philly and Russ should already be there. They were trying to contact the victim’s sister—Cindy, I think her name is. Apparently they both have the same tattoo, got them a couple of years ago in Florida on a spring break.”

  Kevin pulled at the neck of his shirt. Man, it was hot. “Mac and I will head down to Troutdale and meet you guys. What time is the briefing?”

  “Let’s see, it’s almost noon now. Why don’t you grab some lunch and meet us at the Troutdale P.D. about one-thirty? That should give the rest of the gang a chance to finish up their business.”

  “One-thirty it is.”

  “Say, how’s your new partner working out?”

  “Seems like a good guy. Fast learner.” Kevin glanced over at Mac, who tossed his sports jacket and briefcase on the backseat before getting into his vehicle. The engine turned over on the first try. Mac flipped on the air conditioning and got back out.

  “That’s good,” Eric said. “ ’Cause I was just saying to the Lord this morning, ‘Lord, I am so glad I don’t have to be Kevin’s partner anymore.’ ”

  Kevin chuckled, not believing a word of it. Eric missed him as much as he missed Eric. “You’re just jealous.”

  “Me? No way. You are such a drag to be around, I feel sorry for Mac.”

  “Obviously you’re lost without me. Try not to mess things up before I get there, and quit biting your nails.” Kevin could almost see Eric pulling his pinky out of his mouth and squinting at his jagged nail.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Ve haf our vays.” Kevin did a fair Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.

  “I’ll bet. In the meantime, mind your own business. I’ll see you at one-thirty.”

  “That was Eric,” Kevin said to Mac after hanging up. “If you don’t mind driving, I’d like to drop off my car at the Portland Patrol Office and ride with you. We need to be at the Troutdale P.D. in a couple of hours for a briefing, so I thought we’d grab a bite first.”

  “Sounds good, sir—um, partner.”

  “That’s better.” Kevin ducked into his car. “I’ll see you at the office.”

  DRIVING BACK TO THE PORTLAND PATROL OFFICE, which was about fifteen minutes away, Mac thought again about the woman Dr. Thorpe had just dissected. Pictures of the petite blonde who had once been Megan Tyson filled his mind. What horrible things had happened to her? Kristen thought the killer had slit her throat. Tears burned his eyes. During his years as a trooper and months with the child abuse unit, he’d seen some horrible things, but none of them had affected him as much as the brutality of this crime. “How could You let this happen?” Mac pounded the steering wheel and glanced upward. “Why her?” He gripped the steering wheel tighter. He remembered Kristen’s challenge at the end of the autopsy.

  “Just catch the creep who did this to her.” She’d looked right at him as if issuing a challenge. “You get him.”

  “I will, Kristen. Count on it.” Mac sucked in cold air through his clenched teeth. He yanked a tissue from the box on the passenger seat and wiped the moisture from his eyes and blew his nose. “You gotta pull yourself together, McAllister. Can’t let your boss see you like this.”

  Static, then voices came across the police radio. A trooper responded to an injury accident in rural Clackamas County, his siren audible on the radio as he spoke to dispatch. Poor guy. Mac had covered his share of accidents during his stint as a trooper, before making the detective rank. Car wrecks, suicides, and domestic assaults had produced their share of victims.

  He had never quite gotten used to death and had tried to distance himself from the personal side of tragedy. His efforts usually didn’t work. The victim of a fatal car crash wasn’t real to him—until he peered into a wallet for identification and found photographs of children or loved ones. Phone numbers of friends and notes written for future meetings were graphic reminders of their reality—their humanness. Dealing with the devastation and heartbreak of those left behind proved even harder than dealing with the dead.

  Mac realized he would much rather collect the remains in a body bag than knock
on the door to inform family members that someone they loved had died. That was the most agonizing part of dealing with death. That’s what he and Kevin would soon have to do. Megan had family, people who loved her and who were waiting to hear what the police had found.

  Mac guided his Grand Prix up to the chain-link fence surrounding the Portland Patrol Office. He entered the four-digit code on the gate’s alarm system, activating the automatic opener, then eased his car through the gate, stopping near the employee entrance. Kevin pulled his car in behind him and parked in an open space.

  While he cleared the front passenger seat for his boss, Mac changed his FM radio station from a modern rock station to an easy listening channel. Although he rarely listened to mood music, he had it programmed in his car radio so he could quickly switch over when he had older passengers in the car. Not that he was all that sensitive.

  His grandmothers had always made him change the channel when they rode with him. Eventually, to escape the inevitable lecture about his choice of music, he began switching to the alternative station beforehand.

  Detective Bledsoe placed his briefcase in the backseat of the Grand Prix, along with his navy blue blazer. He made some notes in his police notebook and slumped down in the passenger seat.

  “You name it, partner—my treat.”

  “What’s that?” Mac frowned, still trying to rein in his morbid thoughts.

  “You know, grub, chow, eats. I’m hungry.”

  “Oh, right.” Mac wasn’t quite ready to think about food. His stomach still hadn’t returned to normal, but at least he didn’t need the smelling salts anymore. “There’s a good Asian place around the corner, if you’re into that.”

  “Perfect. I’m always up for Asian.”

  Mac backed around, driving over the underground sensor that automatically opened the gate. He passed the point where the sensor was located with no response from the gate. “Jesus Christ, this thing is slow.”

  Kevin gave Mac a sharp look. “Well, you’ve got His attention, so go ahead.”