“It could, but then why doesn’t the brain show that she survived long enough to have a seizure?”
“I guess we’ve got the same unanswered question.”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s still very confusing.” When we turned the body, I absorbed myself in studying the peculiar mark that was the point of this grim exercise as the forensic photographer arrived and set up his equipment. For the better part of the afternoon we took rolls of infrared, ultraviolet, color, high-contrast, and black-and-white film, with many special filters and lenses.
Then I went into my medical bag and got out half a dozen black rings made of acrylonitrile-butadiene- styrene plastic, or more simply, the material that commonly composes pipes used for water and sewage lines. Every year or two I got a forensic dentist I knew to cut the three-eighth-inch-thick rings with a band saw and sand them smooth for me. Fortunately, it wasn’t often I needed to pull such an odd trick out of my bag, for rarely was it necessary to remove a human bite mark or other impression from the body of someone murdered. Deciding on a ring three inches in diameter, I used a machinist’s die punch to stamp Emily Steiner’s case number and location markers on each side.
Skin, like a painter’s canvas, is on a stretch, and in order to support the exact anatomical configuration of the mark on Emily’s left buttock during and after its removal, I needed to provide a stable matrix.
“Have you got Super Glue?” I asked Dr. Jenrette. |j “Sure.” He brought me a tube.
“Keep taking photographs of every step, if you don’t mind,” I instructed the photographer, a slight Japanese man who never stood still. Positioning the ring over the mark, I fixed it to the skin with the glue and further secured it with sutures. Next I dissected the tissue around the ring and placed it en bloc in formalin. All the while I tried to figure out what the mark meant. It was an irregular circle incompletely filled with a strange brownish discoloration that I believed was the imprint of a pattern.
But I could not make out what, no matter how many Polaroids we looked at from how many different angles. We did not think about the package wrapped in white tissue paper until the photographer had left and Dr. Jenrette and I had notified the funeral home that we were ready for their return.
“What do we do about this?” Dr. Jenrette asked.
“We have to open it.” He spread dry towels on a cart and set the gift on top of them.
Carefully slicing the paper with a scalpel, he exposed an old box from a pair of size-six women’s loafers. He cut through many layers of Scotch tape and removed the top.
“Oh my,” he said under his breath as he stared in bewilderment at what someone had intended for a little girl’s grave. Shrouded in two sealed freezer bags inside the box was a dead kitten that could not have been but a few months old. It was as stiff as plyboard when I lifted it out, its delicate ribs protruding. The cat was a female, black with white feet, and she wore no collar. I saw no evidence of what had killed her until I took her into the X-ray room, and a little later was mounting her films on a light box.
“Her cervical spine is fractured,” I said as a chill pricked up the hair on the back of my neck. Dr. Jenrette frowned as he moved closer to the light box.
“It looks like the spine’s been moved out of the usual position here.” He touched the film with a knuckle.
“That’s weird. It’s displaced laterally? I don’t think that could happen if she got hit by a car.”
“She wasn’t hit by a car,” I told him.
“Her head’s been twisted clockwise by ninety degrees.”
I found Marino eating a cheeseburger in his room when I returned to the Travel-Eze at almost seven p. m. His gun, wallet, and car keys were on top of one bed and he was on the other, shoes and socks scattered across the floor as if he had walked out of them. I could tell he had probably gotten back here not too long before I did. His eyes followed me as I went to the television and turned it off.