“But mostly what I’m seeing is inconsistency.”
“Such as?” He incised the scalp behind the ears, folding it down to expose the skull, and the face suddenly collapsed into a sad, slack mask.
“Just as we found no bottle of perfume to account for the fragrance he had on, we found no women’s clothing in the house except what he had on,” I said.
“There was only one condom missing from the box. The rope was old, and we found nothing, including other rope, that might be the origin of it. He was cautious enough to wrap a towel around his neck, yet he tied a knot that’s extremely dangerous.”
“As the name suggests,” said Jenrette.
“Yes. A hangman’s knot pulls very smoothly and won’t let go,” I said.
“Not exactly what you want to use when you’re intoxicated and perched on top of a varnished bar stool, which you’re more likely to fall off of than a chair, by the way.”
“I wouldn’t think many people would know how to tie a hangman’s knot,” Jenrette mused.
“The question is, did Ferguson have reason to know?” I said.
“I guess he could have looked it up in a book.”
“We found no books about knot tying, no nautical- type books or anything like that in his house.”
“Would it be hard to tie a hangman’s knot? If there were instructions, let’s say?”
“It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would take a little practice.”
“Why would someone be interested in a knot like that? Wouldn’t a slip knot be easier?”
“A hangman’s knot is morbid, ominous. It’s neat, precise. I don’t know. ” I added,” How is Lieutenant Mote? ”
“Stable, but he’ll be in the I.C.U for a while.” Dr. Jenrette turned on the Stryker’s saw. We were silent as he removed the skull cap. He did not speak again until he had removed the brain and was examining the neck.
“You know, I don’t see a thing. No hemorrhage to the strap muscles, hyoid’s intact, no fractures of superior horns of the thyroid cartilage. The spine’s not fractured, but I don’t guess that happens except in judicial hangings.”
“Not unless you’re obese, with arthritic changes of the cervical vertebrae, and get accidentally suspended in a weird way,” I said.
“You want to look?”
I pulled on gloves and moved a light closer.
“Dr. Scarpetta, how do we know he was alive when he was hanged?”
“We can’t really know that with certainty,” I said.
“Unless we find another cause of death.”
“Like poisoning.”
“That’s about the only thing I can think of at this point. But if that’s the case, it had to be something that worked very fast. We do know he hadn’t been home long before Mote found him dead. So the odds are against the bizarre and in favor of his death being caused by asphyxia due to hanging.”
“What about manner?”
“Pending,” I suggested. When Ferguson’s organs had been sectioned and returned to him in a plastic bag placed inside his chest cavity, I helped Jenrette clean up. We hosed down the table and floor while a morgue assistant rolled Ferguson’s body away and tucked it into the refrigerator. We rinsed syringes and instruments as we chatted some more about what was happening in an area of the world that initially had attracted the young doctor because it was safe. He told me he had wished to start a family in a place where people still believed in God and the sanctity of life. He wanted his children in church and on athletic fields. He wanted them untainted by drugs, immorality, and violence on TV.
“Thing is. Dr. Scarpetta,” he went on, “there really isn’t any place left. Not even here. In the past week I’ve worked an eleven-year-old girl who was sexually molested and murdered. And now a State Bureau of Investigation agent dressed in drag. Last month I got a kid from Oteen who overdosed on cocaine. She was only seventeen. Then there are the drunk drivers. I get them and the people they smash into all the time.”
“Dr. Jenrette?”
“You can call me Jim,” he said, and he looked depressed as he began to collect paperwork from a countertop.