“Are you aware that our case is parked in the hall?” She hesitated, blushing. “I was taking her over to X ray when the phone rang. Sorry.”
“Have you weighed and measured her yet?”
“No.”
“Let’s do that first.”
She hurried out of the autopsy suite before I could comment further. Secretaries and scientists who worked in the labs upstairs often entered and left the building through the morgue because it was convenient to the parking lot. Maintenance workers were in and out, too. Leaving a body unattended in the middle of a corridor was very poor form and could even jeopardize the case should chain of evidence be questioned in court.
Susan returned pushing the gurney, and we went to work, the stench of decomposing flesh nauseating. I fetched gloves and a plastic apron from a shelf, and clamped various forms in a clipboard. Susan was quiet and tense. When she reached up to the control panel to reset the computerized floor scale, I noticed her hands were shaking. Maybe she was suffering from morning sickness.
“Everything okay?” I asked her.
“Just a little tired.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. She weighs one-eighty exactly.”
I changed into my greens and Susan and I moved the body into the X-ray room across the hall, transferring it from the gurney to the table. Opening the sheet, I wedged a block under the neck to keep the head from lolling. The flesh of her throat was clean, spared from soot and burns because her chin had been tucked dose to her chest while she was inside the car with the engine running. I did not see any obvious injuries, no bruises or broken fingernails. Her nose wasn’t fractured. There were no cuts inside her lips and she hadn’t bitten her tongue.
Susan took X rays and slipped them through the processor while I went over the front of the body with a lens. I collected a number of barely visible whitish fibers, quite possibly from the sheet or her bed covers, and found others similar to the ones on the bottoms of her socks. She wore no jewelry and was naked beneath her gown. I remembered the rumpled covers on her bed, the pillows propped against the headboard and glass of water on the table. The night of her death she had put curlers in her hair, gotten undressed, and at some point, perhaps, had been reading in bed.
Susan emerged from the developer room and leaned against the wall, supporting the small of her back with her hands.
“What’s the story on this lady?” she asked. “Was she married?”
“It appears she lived alone.”
“Did she work?”
“She ran a business out of her home.”
Something caught my eye.
“What sort of business?”
“Possibly fortune-telling of sorts.”
The feather was very small and sooty, clinging to Jennifer Deighton’s gown in the area of her left hip. Reaching for a small plastic bag, I tried to recall if I’d noticed any feathers around her house. Perhaps the pillows on herbed were filled with feathers.
“Did you find any evidence she was into the occult?”
“Some of her neighbors seemed to think she was a witch,” I said.
“Based on what?”
“There’s a church near her house. Allegedly, the lights in the steeple starting going on and off after she moved in some months ago.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I saw them go on myself when I was leaving the scene. The steeple was dark. Then suddenly it was lit up.”
“Weird.”
“It was weird.”
“Maybe it’s on a timer.”
“Unlikely. Lights going on and off all night would not conserve electricity. If it’s true they go on and off all night. I saw it happen only once.”
Susan did not say anything.
“Possibly there’s a short in the wiring.”
In fact, I thought as I continued to work, I would call the church. They might be unaware of the problem.
“Any strange stuff inside her house?”
“Crystals. Some unusual books.”
Silence.
Then Susan said, “I wish you’d told me earlier.”
“Pardon?”
I glanced up. She was staring uneasily at the body. She looked pale.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
I asked.
“I don’t like stuff like this.”