“That’s precisely what I think was done.”
“You think someone carved some sort of pattern?”
“I think someone attempted to eradicate something. And when that didn’t work, he removed the skin.”
“Eradicate what?”
“Nothing that was already there,” I said. “He had no tattoos, birthmarks, or scars in those areas. If something wasn’t already there, then perhaps something was added and had to be removed because of the potential evidentiary value.”
“Something like bite marks.”
“Yes,” I said.
The body was not yet fully rigorous and was still slightly warm as I began swabbing any area that a washcloth might have missed. I checked axillas, gluteal folds, behind ears and inside them, and inside the navel. I clipped fingernails into clean white envelopes and looked for fibers and other debris in hair.
Susan continued to glance at me, and I sensed her tension. Finally she asked, “Anything special you’re liking for?”
“Dried seminal fluid, for one thing,” I said.
“1n his axilla?”
“There, in any crease in skin, any orifice, anywhere.”
“You don’t usually look in all those places.”
“I don’t usually look for zebras.”
“For what?”
“We used to have a saying in medical school. If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses. But in a case like this I know we’re looking for zebras,” I said. I began going over every inch of the body with a lens.
When I got to his wrists, I slowly turned his hands the way and that, studying them for such a long time that Susan stopped what she was doing. I referred to the diagrams on my clipboard, correlating each mark of therapy with the ones I had drawn “Where are his charts?” I glanced around.
“Over here.”
Susan fetched paperwork from a countertop. I began flipping through charts, concentrating particularly on emergency room records and the report filled in by the rescue squad. Nowhere did it indicate that Eddie Heath’s hands had been bound. I tried to remember what Detective Trent had said to me when describing the scene where the boy’s body had been found. Hadn’t Trent said that Eddie’s hands were by his sides? “You find something?”
Susan finally asked.
“You have to look through the lens to see. There. The undersides of his wrists and here on the left one, to the left of the wrist bone. You see the gummy residue? The traces of adhesive? It looks like smudges of grayish dirt.”
“Just barely. And maybe some fibers sticking to it,” Susan marveled, her shoulder pressed against mine as slue stared through the lens.
“And the skin’s smooth,” I continued to point out. “Less hair in this area than here and here.”
“Because when the tape was removed, hairs would have been pulled out.”
“Exactly. We’ll take wrist hairs for exemplars. The adhesive and fibers can be matched back to the tape, if the tape is ever recovered. And if the tape that bound him is recovered, it can be matched back to the roll.”
“I don’t understand.”
She straightened up and looked at me. “His IV lines were held in place with adhesive tape. You sure that’s not the explanation?”
“There are no needle marks on these areas of his wrists that would indicate marks of therapy,” I said to her. “And you saw what was taped to him when he came in. Nothing to account for the adhesive here.”
“True.”
“Let’s take photographs and then I’m going to collect this adhesive residue and let Trace see what they find.”
“His body was outside next to a Dumpster. Seems like that would be a Trace nightmare.”
“It depends on whether this residue on his wrists was in contact with the pavement.”
I began gently scraping the residue off with a scalpel.
“I don’t guess they did a vacuuming out there.”
“No, I’m sure they wouldn’t have. But I think we can still get sweepings if we ask nicely. It can’t hurt to try.”
I continued examining Eddie Heath’s thin forearms and wrists, looking for contusions or abrasions I might have missed. But I did not find any.
“His ankles look okay,” Susan said from the far end of the table. “I don’t see any adhesive or areas where the hair is gone. No injuries. It doesn’t look like he was taped around his ankles. just his wrists.”