‘How worried should I be?’ I asked with concern.
‘It’s going to stop,’ Wesley said, as if he could profile the weather, too.
He took off his raincoat, and the suit beneath it was a dark blue that was almost black. He wore a starched white shirt and conservative silk tie, his silver hair a little longer than usual, but neat. His sharp features made him seem even keener and more intimidating than he was, but today his face was grim, and not just because of me. He and Marino went to a cart to put on gloves and masks.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Wesley said to me as I continued working. ‘Every time I tried to get away from the house, the phone rang. This thing’s a real problem.’
‘Certainly for her it is,’ I said.
‘Shit.’ Marino stared at what was left of a human being. ‘How the hell does anybody do something like that?’
‘I’ll tell you how,’ I said, cutting sections of spleen. ‘First you pick an old woman and make sure she isn’t properly watered or fed, and when she gets sick, forget medical care. Then you shoot or beat her in the head.’ I glanced up at them. ‘My bet is that she has a basilar skull fracture. Maybe some other type of trauma.’
Marino looked baffled. ‘She doesn’t have a head. How can you say that?’
‘I can say it because there’s blood in her airway.’
They got closer to see what I was talking about.
‘One way that could have happened,’ I went on, ‘is if she had a basilar skull fracture and blood dripped down the back of her throat, and she aspirated it into her airway.’
Wesley looked carefully at the body with the demeanor of one who has seen mutilation and death a million times. He stared at the space where the head should be, as if he could imagine it.
‘She has hemorrhage in muscle tissue.’ I paused to let this sink in. ‘She was still alive when the dismemberment began.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Marino exclaimed in disgust as he lit a cigarette. ‘Don’t tell me that.’
‘I’m not saying she was conscious,’ I added. ‘Most likely this was at or about the time of death. But she still had a blood pressure, feeble as it might have been. This was true around the neck, anyway. But not the arms and legs.’
‘Then he severed her head first,’ Wesley said to me.
‘Yes.’
He was scanning X-rays on the walls.
‘This doesn’t fit with his victimology,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’
‘Everything about this case doesn’t fit,’ I replied. ‘Except that once again, a saw was used. I’ve also found some cuts on bone that are consistent with a knife.’
‘What else can you tell us about her?’ Wesley said, and I could feel his eyes on me as I dropped another section of organ into the stock jar of formalin.
‘She has some sort of eruptions that might be shingles, and two scars of the right kidney that would indicate pyelonephritis, or kidney infection. Cervix is elongated and stellate, which could suggest she’s had children. Her myocardium, or heart muscle, is soft.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Toxins do that. Toxins produced by microorganisms.’ I looked up at him. ‘As I’ve mentioned, she was sick.’
Marino was walking around, looking at the torso from different angles. ‘Do you have any idea with what?’
‘Based on secretions in her lungs, I know she had bronchitis. At the moment, I don’t know what else, except her liver’s in pretty grim shape.’
‘From drinking,’ Wesley said.
‘Yellowish, nodular. Yes,’ I said. ‘And I would say that at one time she smoked.’
‘She’s skin and bones,’ Marino said.
‘She wasn’t eating,’ I said. ‘Her stomach is tubular, empty and clean.’ I showed them.
Wesley moved to a nearby desk and pulled out a chair. He stared off in thought as I yanked a cord down from an overhead reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. Marino, who liked this part of the procedure the least stepped back from the table. No one spoke as I sawed off the ends of arms and legs, a bony dust drifting on the air, the electric whir louder than a dentist’s drill. I placed each section into a labeled carton, and said what I thought.