by Kathryn Fox
Brody moved to the kitchen area with a glass conservatory overlooking more gardens. A granite island-bench dominated the area, with copper pots hanging from a chained metal grid above it. Dan obviously had no trouble reaching the utensils that were out of reach of most people.
His hands trembled as he loaded a small machine with a metal capsule and placed a demitasse cup, the only size small enough to fit, under the nozzle. The smell of rich coffee filled the air.
He pulled a carton of full-cream milk from a serving door in the stainless steel fridge and placed some in a steel mug adjacent to the machine. Within seconds, he poured frothy milk into a china mug and repeated the process.
Anya washed her hands in the sink and dried them with paper towel from a dispenser at the wall. The mug warmed her hands. She could appreciate the lawyer’s anxiety at the find. Despite dealing with criminal trials, he had probably never seen a human body before, let alone experienced the shock of discovering one in his parents’ wardrobe.
“Do you have any idea whose child it could be?”
He offered his guest a cane stool, which she accepted.
“This house has been in Dad’s side of the family since it was built three generations ago. It was always passed on to the eldest son.”
“Was there ever any scandal about illegitimate pregnancies?”
Dan shook his head and washed out the used steel mug. Apart from fresh basil in a small vase, the benches were empty of clutter.
“Do we need to call crime scene? I mean, will they want to photograph the…”
“Possibly. I’ll check with them, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think. With garden renovations, it’s not unheard of for someone to discover tiny remains, particularly given the number of stillbirths and backyard abortions in the past.”
Brody nodded but didn’t appear relieved in any way.
Anya excused herself to make the call. Moments later she returned, with a swab kit from the bag in her car.
“I just need to take some shots of the wardrobe with my mobile. I’ll take the box with me if you like, and take it to the morgue. There’ll have to be a post-mortem.”
“Of course. I’ll show you where I found it.”
“I should probably take a DNA swab from you now, if you don’t mind, for comparison to the child.”
Dan leaned against the bench. “It…it isn’t mine.”
“I’m not suggesting that. We know it’s old from the type of box and condition. But it would help us work out whether the child was born to someone in your family.”
“My grandparents always had servants. My grandfather had a reputation for being quite the ladies’ man, before and during his marriage.”
The irony of his own reputation with women appeared lost on Dan Brody.
Anya knew it wouldn’t have been the first time that a servant was impregnated by her boss and the results hidden. But to hide a dead child in the wardrobe wasn’t the wisest move. It would have made more sense to throw the remains away or bury them.
She removed the cotton-tipped swab from her kit and Brody bent forward, allowing her to scrape the inside of his cheek. She felt his breath on her face as she removed the swab and returned it to its sealed container.
Dan reached forward enough to brush her hand.
“I’m just…well, grateful you’re here. I didn’t know who else to call.”
Anya felt a surge of blood to her face. She had never seen Brody like this and had never imagined that he could be so vulnerable. At work he was always in control and his arrogance was incomparable, even in the egotistical domain of law. Then again, if anything could rattle a person, an unidentified dead body in the house was it. His girlfriend would no doubt comfort him soon enough. For a brief moment, she felt jealous of the new woman.
With a permanent marker from her kit, she labeled the specimen before returning to the drawing room. Brody stood in the doorway, keeping his distance.
Anya bent down and collected the tiny body in its makeshift coffin. She hoped for its sake, and for Brody’s, that the baby had died of natural causes.
12
The following afternoon Anya removed the wax-paper covering, held her breath and slowly lifted the remains from the box. Any uneven pressure could break off limbs. It was a wonder the body had survived the damaged floorboards and the subsequent car journey.
The white form seemed more delicate against the cold steel dissecting table.
Jeff Sales had been finishing off some paperwork and greeted Anya with something akin to excitement at her find. He was keen to examine the remains as soon as possible.
“It’s an adipocere all right, not that I doubted you.”
Unlike the normal process of decomposition, this skin and soft tissue had undergone transformation. What once was skin was now a hard waxy substance-adipocere-most obvious over the buttocks, abdomen and cheeks, the fattiest areas of the body.
“It’s a reasonable size and it’s possible that it was delivered full-term.” Jeff switched on the overhead surgical lights. “What do we know about it?”
“Only that it was found in a wardrobe, under the floorboards in an old wooden box. At the moment we have no idea who gave birth or how it got there, or whether it ever lived to take a breath.”
“So we’re looking to see if any signs of homicide are present.” He moved the light directly over the abdomen. “Remarkable, I think we can presume it’s a female judging by the genitalia. I’ve never seen anything quite this preserved before. There’s a stump of an umbilicus so at one stage someone cut the cord, post delivery.”
Determining whether or not the baby had taken a breath was not that easy. If the lungs had ever inflated, they were now collapsed and semidecomposed.
“Is there a chance you can rehydrate the umbilical stump and see histologically whether the child was freshly born or a few days old?”
“That’s an excellent thought, I’ll take some biopsies.”
The bright light highlighted splits to areas of the infant’s skin. It would be difficult to determine whether they had occurred during the adipocere formation or were due to blunt-force trauma to the abdomen, thighs and upper arms.
John Zimmer wandered in with a female crime scene officer, both in their work overalls.
“The secretary said you were here.”
Zimmer had a sixth sense for unusual deaths. As part of his job, he frequently attended autopsies. “Thought we’d get the heads-up on whether this one will be ours.”
“We still don’t know whether the death was suspicious or not.”
Regardless, Jeff Sales invited them both in. “The more the merrier, I always say.”
Zimmer dwarfed his younger colleague. “This is Milo Sharpe, she’s just transferred from down south.”
After introductions, Milo stood, hands behind her back.
“You have an unusual name,” Jeff said, glancing up over his half-glasses. “What’s the derivation?”
“It’s a nickname. I have below average motor skills which came to the attention of fellow officers here, before I arrived.” She seemed to ignore Zimmer.
The senior CSO rocked on his heels. “Well, it is our job to investigate and scrutinize.”
“Why Milo?” Anya dared ask. The rationale behind the name had to be obscure and less than complimentary.
“On the 26 January I attended a car accident in the rain.” She spoke in a monotone as if tired of repeating the story. “My gloves were wet and my superior threw me the car keys. I failed to catch them and they slid down the drain. I spent the next fifty-four minutes successfully extricating them.”
Milo, who didn’t offer her real name, stopped without further explanation and turned her attention to the tools the pathologist had laid out for the post-mortem.
“Get it?” Zimmer said.
Anya raised her eyebrows.
“Venus de Milo. The armless statue. You’ve got to HAND it to her. It’s a classic.” He grinned.
Apparently the officer endo
wed with the name didn’t agree.
“It could be worse,” Zimmer added. “‘ Showbags’ liked his nickname until he realized what it meant. He looks great but is full of shit.”
Anya hoped she hadn’t acquired a nickname she was yet to learn about.
Jeff Sales refocused. “What we have here, detectives, is an adipocere. It’s a form of preservation.”
Milo’s face was now centimeters from the table, studying the body. “Is it a cultural phenomenon?”
“Good question. We’re not talking mummification through embalming. This sort of preservation is mostly seen in bodies that have been immersed in water or left in humid or damp environments. It occurs where fat is present.”
“How?” Milo spoke without sounding either interested or bored.
“Bacterial enzymes and body enzymes alter the free fatty acids but don’t cause the normal signs of decomposition, like bloating and discoloration. These remains had to have been protected from insects, or the story would be completely different.”
Obviously the box had been well sealed, as Dan Brody had described. The wax-paper wrapping would have contributed to the process.
The technician arrived with a portable X-ray machine and slid an X-ray plate gently beneath the fragile form. He had only one lead gown for protection, the one he was wearing.
Milo slowly circled the table, as if looking for clues. “Who would just stick a baby in a box and hide it? The mother had to be mentally ill.”
Anya looked up. “Not necessarily. We don’t know how long the child had been in the box or how young the mother was. That box could have been in the wardrobe for decades. And if you think about it, babies buried in gardens weren’t that unusual even a few years ago. Unmarried mothers were ostracized and received no government support. Backyard abortions were rampant. Some of the mothers were even sent to prison-like institutions or reform schools.”
The pathologist stepped back and ushered them out of the suite into the corridor while X-rays were taken.
“And,” Anya continued, “in the past stillborns were buried in nameless mass graves or just thrown out with other hospital refuse. Maybe this mother loved the child and didn’t want to see that happen.”
“Logically,” Milo added, “landscapers and home gardeners should find these babies.”
It was unclear whether the CSO was being flippant or serious.
Jeff checked inside the room that it was safe to return and ushered them all back inside. “There are other variables to consider. Fetal bones are far less resilient. They’re relatively low in calcium so dissolve quite rapidly, particularly if there’s lime in the soil. The most anyone would find is a couple of small bones they might assume are bird remains.”
“Any specific reason you’re doing the X-rays?” Zimmer checked his watch as if he had to be somewhere else.
“Routine. The bones are so fragile, fractures don’t necessarily suggest trauma, but if they’re intact, it helps exclude significant blunt-force injury.”
“Is there any way of proving if the child ever took a breath outside the womb?”
Zimmer was asking if they could prove that the child have ever been legally alive. If it had, homicide could not be excluded, homicide had no statute of limitations. Their job would be a lot simpler if the child could be proven to have been stillborn. And Anya could let Brody know there would be no further investigation.
“I won’t know until I examine the internal organs, which could be in any condition. If there’s a chance, I’ll test the stomach contents for milk. But after who knows how long, I won’t lift your hopes. You can take the box with you, to examine it for blood, perhaps date it. Anything that can help with an approximate time frame.”
The female CSO had noticed it on the bench. “Do you mean the chocolate box?”
Zimmer looked surprised by his new recruit.
“How do you know what it is?”
Milo stood, hands behind her back again. “My father collects boxes, among other things. This one would have originally had sweets inside. It should still smell like chocolate caramel.”
She took a long sniff. “But it doesn’t. It was a limited edition put out by an English company named Molly’s Originals. My father will have the year recorded in his catalog. From memory, it was late 1960s. He makes records of everything he owns.”
A limited edition box could pin down a possible year the baby was placed there.
“How sure are you that it’s exactly the same?” Anya asked.
Milo replied, matter-of-fact, “I have a photographic memory and an IQ of one hundred and forty-five.”
The comment was met with silence. Obviously, the CSO was capable of dropping more than just keys at an accident scene. The monotone speech pattern and lack of eye contact made Anya wonder whether she had a mild case of autism, perhaps Asperger’s syndrome. It would explain the computer-like approach to facts, limited social skills and completely absent sense of humor. Then again, she was similar to any number of university professors or MENSA members who chose not to bother with “trivialities” like interpersonal skills. Obsessive-compulsive behaviors like box collecting could even run in her family.
Anya excused herself before Jeff Sales began the internal examination. Once she could have performed the procedure herself, but since becoming a mother she had found child cases especially difficult. Not having to stay made it easier. John Zimmer instructed Milo to observe while he headed upstairs.
“Milo takes a bit of getting used to,” he said as they left the suite. “She’s like an encyclopedia but you need more than that if you’re going to last in this game. Put it this way, you’d never accuse her of being too sensitive.”
Anya almost laughed. John Zimmer was complaining about someone being insensitive. She would never have thought it possible. “Give her a chance. I agree that she’s unusual, but you took some getting used to as well.” At the elevator, Anya pressed the up button.
“I always thought women were more aware of people’s emotions. I can’t risk taking her upstairs for the interview. You’re sitting in?”
Anya had intended to check on Sophie Goodwin but hadn’t heard about any interview. “You’ve lost me.”
“I assumed you knew. Sophie’s defied all the odds and woken up. The detectives are on their way to get a statement.”
13
Kate Farrer and Hayden Richards were outside the ICU, along with a uniformed officer who stood guard.
“The father’s asked for you. I was about to call,” Kate said. “I didn’t want to waste your time if she was drifting in and out of consciousness.”
Anya wondered why Mr. Goodwin had asked for her when they had never even met. It gave her the opportunity to make sure that, if awake, Sophie was well enough to be interviewed. If not, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell the detectives to come back when the teenager was more coherent and up to being questioned.
With Sophie’s physically and emotionally frail state, she couldn’t afford a setback like being upset by a grilling. She had also been hypotensive for a prolonged period due to blood loss, and the long-term effects on her brain still hadn’t been determined.
“We’ve got a video camera on standby and a room to view from down the corridor. Just let us know when we’re ready to start the interview.”
“Wait,” Anya said. “If she’s only just woken up, she could be disoriented and confused. Add to that, she might have just remembered what happened and may be too upset to-”
“We understand that,” Kate interjected. “But she needs to help us catch whoever did this as soon as possible. If she can just give us an ID, that’s all we need for an arrest warrant. Then we’ll be happy to back off until we get the okay.”
Anya appreciated the urgency, especially given the brutality and violence involved in the attacks, but Sophie’s wellbeing was the priority. Causing distress and setting back her recovery wouldn’t bring her sister back. As with the doctors treating Sophie, having examined the young wo
man Anya had taken on a role as her advocate. That was her duty of care. The doctor-patient relationship always took precedence over any duty she had to the police. Even if the detectives didn’t like it, they had to abide by any medical decision for now. She decided to see how Sophie was for herself.
Inside the specialized unit, Anya scrubbed her hands at a sink by the door and pulled on a white gown. Sixteen curtained cubicles contained patients. Three private rooms existed for patients requiring isolation.
Sucking noises from breathing ventilators filled the communal area around the central nurses’ station. Occasional alarms beeped and nurses calmly checked the monitors before resetting the offending machines. A glance at the whiteboard on the wall told Anya which bed Sophie was in.
Usually reserved to quarantine infectious patients, room eighteen kept the teenager safe from prying eyes and opportunistic photographers.
A male nurse greeted her. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Doctor Crichton. Anya. Apparently Mr. Goodwin asked me to see him.”
“He did. He wants to thank you for the holy medal you gave his daughter-he’s convinced it saved her life. Frankly, to have survived those injuries, something bigger than medicine had to be on her side.”
He gestured toward a single room close to the nurses’ desk. Through the open door she could see the figure of a man sitting, face hunched over the bed as if in prayer.
“She’s still ventilated but has woken for a few minutes at a time.”
“Does she know where she is?”
“She’s not panicking or trying to fight the ventilator and seems to recognize her father. We’re keeping the analgesia up because of her wounds and that’ll make her drowsy. Endotracheal tube will stay until that neck wound heals, so long conversations might have to wait.”
Anya took a breath and entered the room.
Mr. Goodwin sat in the same clothes he had been wearing the morning his daughter had been brought in. Wrapped around his shoulders was a blue hospital-issue cotton rug.
An air-conditioning duct pulsed cold air right on to the bed and Anya felt the chill in the room. The father stood but didn’t let go of his daughter’s hand.