Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(5)

“No, thank you.”

Clearly August shared the details with her, and he shouldn’t have. I imagine Maggie then passing them along to Fabian, giving directives as if she runs the place, and that shouldn’t have happened, either.

“YOU SURE YOU DON’T want me to drive?” He flashes a smile, and he can turn up the charm when he wants, I’ll give him that.

A physician’s assistant in Louisiana before working here, he’s in his late twenties and could pass for a goth model with his silver jewelry, tattoos, fine features and Cher-like long black hair. By far he’s the best investigator of the three I’ve got, one of them about to retire, the other nothing to brag about.

“I’ll let you know if I need you,” I tell Fabian. “But I don’t think so.”

“I haven’t heard about any deliveries,” Wyatt is quick to pipe up over the noise of the microwave oven, looking at me suspiciously. “There’s nothing expected, isn’t that right?”

“Not so far, and we’ll hope it stays that way,” I reply.

“It sounds like where you’re headed might be related to the murdered lady from the railroad tracks.” Fabian pours a cup of his strong coffee, a smoky chicory blend that his mother ships to him from Baton Rouge.

“Possibly,” I reply, wondering why everybody thinks it’s okay to crash my boundaries and interrogate me.

“I mean, if it’s important enough to ask you to look?” He stirs in his preferred sweetener of agave nectar. “You sure you don’t want some help? It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the case.”

He worked with me at last Friday night’s scene, but that doesn’t mean I need his assistance now. It’s but another example of what happens when the person in charge is shuttered away, not paying attention. Elvin Reddy has managed to foster a pervasive spirit of entitlement.

Telling Fabian and Wyatt good night, I walk off. I’m avoiding elevators whenever possible since the coronavirus. My boots echo dully inside the concrete stairwell, and on the lower level I open the windowless fire-escape door. I step into another corridor, this one hospital-white with bright lights, and there’s no sign of anyone. No one alive that is.

The CT scanning room is locked up, the light green outside the door, the technician gone for the day. The autopsy suite is empty, its stainless-steel tables, carts and countertops shiny-clean, awaiting new cases. There always will be more. The next accident or homicide. Another person ends it all or drops dead unexpectedly, those left behind irreparably altered.

As I near the anthropology lab, I hear the quiet clatter of bones defleshing in bleach-infused water that will simmer for days. Through observation windows lining both sides of the corridor, I can see the five-gallon stockpot steaming on the portable cooktop, the decomposing skeletal remains discovered last week by a hunter.

Through another window I see his rotting boots, clothing, a pack of Marlboros, a pint of Fireball whisky, a wallet and its contents spread out on a paper-covered table inside the evidence room. The cause and manner of death are still undetermined. I suspect he died a year ago based on what the police discovered when going through the retired mechanic’s house near Fort Belvoir.

Inside the intake area, the cloying odor of industrial deodorizer is strong as I set my scene case, my briefcase down on top of a cart in front of the walk-in cooler and freezer. Their digital displays show the temperatures and other information that I can monitor on an app. Everything’s in the green, and I put on exam gloves and a surgical mask.

Finding a six-inch plastic ruler, I tuck my phone inside an antimicrobial protective sleeve so I can take additional photographs if needed. Opening the cooler’s stainless-steel door, I walk inside, the loud blowing air frigid and foul. Her black pouch is on a gurney in a back corner, and there’s nothing on the toe tag except the date 11/30 and a location of Daingerfield Island RR tracks scrawled in smeared ink.

I partially unzip the heavy vinyl, and the murdered woman’s face looks worse than when I autopsied her a few days ago. Abrasions and contusions are an angrier red in contrast to her pale, bloodless body. The vital tissue response to her injuries indicates she survived long enough for her killer to finish what he’d started.

There’s no obvious indication of sexual assault, but that doesn’t necessarily mean very much. No question this is a sexually motivated homicide, all about overpowering, and I suspect she didn’t know her assailant but may have trusted him at first. Otherwise, I don’t understand how he gained access to her home or wherever it was that he confronted her.

After she was dead, he lewdly displayed her nude body along railroad tracks to shock those aboard the next train going by. That’s if you ask my forensic psychologist husband with his internal database of nightmares, and he’s probably right. Benton usually is. There’s no question that her body was deliberately displayed, and I take a picture of her face.

The pupils of her cloudy eyes are fixed and dilated, her lips a purplish-blue and crusty. The gaping wound to her neck is dark red and dry, and I smell the stale stench of refrigerated decomposition as I manipulate her head, turning it to one side. She hadn’t been dead very long when I examined her at the scene, her extremities beginning to stiffen.

Since then, rigor mortis has come and gone, her muscles unclenching as if unable to resist the inevitable any longer. The shaved back of her head is cold and boggy through my nitrile gloves as I palpate the depressed skull fracture, feeling the edges of bone punched in by a single crushing blow. Possibly by the kettlebell in question, and I’ll know better when I can take a closer look at the scene.