Ham hesitated “No, ma’am, I didn’t:”
“Way to fucking go,” Marino said to him.
Ham was in his late thirties, a tall, nice-looking man with dark hair and big brown eyes and long lashes. It wasn’t uncommon for a little experience to begin seducing someone like him into believing he could do the forensic scientist’s and medical examiner’s work. But Ham had always stayed in bounds. He had always been respectful.
“And just how do I interpret the presence of any injury, now that you’ve introduced a hard object into one of her orifices?” I said to him.
He swallowed hard.
“If I find a contusion inside her rectum, can I swear in court that the thermometer didn’t do it? And unless you can somehow vouch for the sterility of your equipment, any DNA recovered will be in question, too,” I said.
Ham’s face was red.
“Do you have any idea how many artifacts you’ve just introduced to this crime scene, Officer Ham?” I asked him.
“I’ve been very careful.”
“Please move out of the way. Now.”
I opened my case and angrily pulled on gloves, stretching my fingers and snapping latex all in one motion. I handed Marino a flashlight and studied my surroundings before I did another thing. The storeroom was dimly lit; hundreds of six-packs of sodas and beer as far as twenty feet away were spattered with blood. Inches- from the body were Tampax and paper towels, the bottom of the cartons soggy with blood. So far, there was no sign the killer had been interested in anything back here except his victim.
I squatted and studied the body, taking in every shade and texture of flesh and blood, every stroke of the killer’s hellish art. I did not touch anything at first.
“God, he really beat the hell out of her, didn’t he,” said the cop who was taking photographs.
It was as if a wild animal had dragged her dying body off to its lair and mauled it. Her sweater and bra had been ripped open, her shoes and socks removed and tossed nearby. She was a fleshy woman with matronly hips and breasts, and the only way I had a clue about what she had looked like was the driver’s license I was shown. Kim Luong had been pretty with a shy. smile and shiny long black hair.
“Were her pants on when she was found?” I asked Ham.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What about shoes and socks?”
“They were off. Exactly like you see them. We didn’t touch them.”
I didn’t have to pick up her shoes and socks to see they were very bloody.
“Why would he take off her shoes and socks but not her pants?” one of the cops asked.
“Yeah. Why would someone do something weird like that?”
I took a look. There was dried blood on the bottom of her feet, too.
“I’ll have to get her under a better light when we get her to the morgue,” I said.
The gunshot wound in the front of her neck was plain to see. It was an entrance wound, and I turned her head just enough to see the exit in the back, angled to the left. It was this bullet that had hit her carotid artery.
“Did you recover a bullet?” I asked Ham:
“Dug one out of the wall behind the counter,” he said, barely able to look at me. “No shell so far, if there is one.”
There wouldn’t be if she was shot with a revolver. Pistols ejected their cartridge cases, which was about the only helpful thing they did when they were used for violence.
“Where in the Wall?” I asked.
“If you’re facing the counter, it would be to the left of where the chair would have been if she was sitting at the cash register.”
“The exit wound is also off to the left,” I said. “If they were face to face when she was shot, you may be looking for a left-handed shooter.”
Kim Luong’s face was severely lacerated and crushed, the skin split and torn from blows that had been made by some sort of tool or tools that had a pattern of round and linear wounds. It appeared she also had been beaten with his fists. When I palpatéd for fractures, bits of bone crunched beneath my fingertips. Her teeth were broken and pushed in.