City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(35)
Two stories are visible aboveground but plenty goes on below. Square-edged columns separate the short arms of the U. Both are accessed through gleaming glass doors. The right-hand door lets you into what you’d imagine: refrigerated closets where bodies are stacked like firewood; spillover corpses lying on gurneys in the hall; brightly lit rooms filled with stainless steel where bodies are taken apart and interpreted; the offices of those who cut and probe and squint into microscopes.
To the left is administrative space: clerical offices and a check-in counter where next of kin fill out forms, wait to collect belongings, and arrange for body transport. A lot of weeping goes on in the left-hand space. For some reason, little black flies like to congregate just outside the left-hand doors, as if summoned to remind visitors what to expect.
As we headed for the clinical wing, I saw a young, grim-faced couple get out of an SUV and trudge toward the left. The woman clutched papers. Both she and the man looked shell-shocked. Maybe here to see about a parent. Or a child.
I’ve accompanied parents seeing about the remains of their children. Give me gurneys and autopsies and even decomp, any day of the week.
* * *
—
Basia Lopatinski, M.D., Ph.D., was in her office, a small, windowless space not far from the dissection rooms.
She’s somewhere in her forties, five-two and slender with soft brown eyes, feathered blond hair, full lips, and a wide smile that nearly bisects a triangular face when she turns up the wattage. Today she wore a gray cashmere dress kicked up by a gold silk scarf artfully knotted.
Trained in Warsaw, she’d had to endure a probationary period before being hired on. Last year she’d been promoted to deputy coroner, the county exhibiting a burst of atypical wisdom.
She’s single, rides horses for recreation, and that’s about all I know about her, personally. Work-wise, she’s brilliant, inevitably cheerful and tireless, never hides behind jargon.
She hugged both of us and settled behind a desk piled neatly with files. “Good to see you guys.”
“Same here,” said Milo. “You scared me with that ‘interesting’ bit.”
Basia let the grin spread. “As the psychopaths like to say, it is what it is.”
Lifting the thickest file, she hefted but didn’t open.
“First, your female victim, Ms. Gannett. No big surprises there, well nourished and in good health before the murder. Death from blood loss caused by a single incised wound to the left side of the neck. Likely a right-handed assailant coming from behind. The carotid and jugular were both severed and when I retracted the skin flaps, some spine was immediately visible.”
“Deep cut,” said Milo.
“Deep and inflicted with considerable force,” said Basia. “That could imply rage but the lack of overkill makes me wonder. Alex?”
I said, “Maybe focused rage. Stew on it, devise a plan, put it into action.”
Basia considered that. “So you’re okay with premeditation despite use of an opportunistic weapon?”
Milo flourished a hand at me.
I said, “Every kitchen has knives.”
“Hmm…interesting. The opportunistic attacks I’ve seen have tended to be frenzied and far less organized so yes, you’re making sense. In any event, whatever struggle took place was minimal, her defensive wounds were comparatively shallow. Now on to your male victim, still unidentified.”
Milo said, “Damn. His prints still haven’t matched anything?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Basia flipped the file open, read for several moments, and closed it.
“Apparently he’s got no criminal history or a job that required him to get printed. At this point, he’s John Doe Number Twenty-Three. But don’t despair, the interesting part is what his body tells us.”
Milo scooched forward, pad and pen at the ready.
Basia said, “The first thing I noticed was how atypical his wounds were for someone interacting with a motor vehicle, especially such a large one.”
“No damage except the head.”
“Exactly. When people confront an oncoming force of that magnitude, the tendency is for the body to fly upward and travel along the hood toward the windshield. That causes significant injury to the entire front of the body—knees, ankles, wrists, ribs, face. This gentleman had none of that, just, as you said, damage to his face, with a slight bias toward the right side. In addition to that, the photos I saw indicate relatively minimal damage to the van’s bumper, suggesting a single carom-like bounce. As if he’d been propelled toward the van.”
Milo said, “Pushed in front of it.”
“That was my initial assumption. Then as I continued to examine the body, something else interesting arose. In addition to the frontal damage, there’s a single crushing blow at the back of his skull, along the lower edge of the occipital bone. Just above the foramen magnum, where the spine enters the skull. With the major damage being frontal, I found that placement puzzling. How could he incur such serious frontal damage then bounce back and get in dorsally? Theoretically, I suppose it could be due to a fall backward after impact with the back of the head bouncing on the sidewalk. But there’s no scraping at all to the rest of his dorsal skull. The other theoretical possibility is he spun in some weird way and incurred damage to both front and back. But neither feels right to me, especially the spinning scenario.”