“. . . deep penetration. Four inches over the left lateral back, through twelfth rib and- aorta, over a liter of blood in left and right chest cavity,” Dan Chong was dictating into the microphone clipped to his scrubs as Amy Forbes worked across the table from him.
“Did he hemoaspirate?”
“Very minimally.”
“And an abrasion on the left arm. Maybe from the terminal fall? Did I tell you I’m learning to scuba dive?”
“Huh. Good luck around here. Wait until you do your open water dive in the quarry. That’s real fun. Especially in winter.”
“God,” Fielding said. “Je-sus Christ.”
He was spreading open the body bag and bloody sheet inside it. I went to him and felt the shock all over again as we freed her from her wrappings:
“Jesus Christ,” Fielding kept saying under his breath.
We lifted her onto the table and she stubbornly resumed the same position she’d had on the bed. We broke the rigor mortis in her arms and legs, relaxing those rigid muscles.
“What the fuck’s wrong with people?” Fielding loaded film into a camera.
“Same thing that’s always been wrong with them. ‘ l said.
We lock-attached her transportable autopsy table to one of the wall-mounted dissecting sinks. For a moment, all work in the room stopped as the other doctors came over to look. They couldn’t help themselves.
“Oh, my God;” Chong muttered.
Forbes could not speak as she stared in shock.
“Please,” I said, searching their faces. “This is not a demo autopsy and Fielding and I will handle it.”
I began going over the body with a lens, collecting more of that long, fine hellish hair.
“He doesn’t care,” I said. “He doesn’t care if we know all about him.”
“You think he knows you went to Paris?”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “But I suppose he could be in touch with his family. Hell, they probably know everything.”
I envisioned their big house and its chandeliers and myself scooping water out of the Seine in possibly the very spot where the killer waded in to cure his affliction. I thought of Dr. Stvan and hoped she was safe.
“He’s got a dusky brain, too.” Chong had gotten back tohis own work in progress.
“Yeah, so does the other one. Heroin again, maybe. ‘Fourth case in six weeks, all in the city.”
“Must be some good stuff going around. Dr. Scarpetta?” Chong called over to me as if this were any other afternoon, and I was working any other case. “Same tattoo, tike a homemade rectangle. In the web of the left hand, must of hurt like hell. Same gang?”
“Photograph it,” I said.
There were distinctive pattern injuries, especially on Bray’s forehead and left cheek, where the crushing force of the blows had lacerated the skin and. left striated impact abrasions that I had seen before.
“Possibly the threads of a pipe?” Fielding ventured.
“It doesn’t quite fit a pipe,” I answered.
The external examination of Bray took two more hours as Fielding and I meticulously, measured, drew and photographed every wound. Her facial bones were crushed, the flesh lacerated over bony prominences. Her teeth were broken. Some were knocked out with such force they were halfway down her throat. Her lips, ears and the flesh of her chin were avulsed off the bone, and X rays revealed hundreds of fractures and punched-out areas in bone, especially the bone table of the skull.
I was taking a- shower at 7:00 P.m., and the water running off of me was pale red because I had gotten so bloody. I felt weak and light-headed, because I hadn’t eaten since early morning. There was no one left in the office but me. I walked out of the locker room drying my hair with a towel, and Marino suddenly emerged from my office. I almost screamed. I placed a hand on my chest as adrenaline shocked me.
“Don’t startle me like that!” I exclaimed.
“Didn’t mean to.” He looked grim.
“How’d you get in?”
“Night security. We’re pals. I didn’t want you walking out to your car by yourself. I knew you’d still be here.”
I ran my fingers through my damp hair, and he followed me into my office. I draped the towel over my chair and began collecting everything that needed to go home with me. I noticed lab reports Rose had left on my desk. Fingerprints on the bucket found inside the container matched the unidentified dead man’s.