Karin Slaughter - The Kept Woman

‘On my three.’ Sara counted down. Collier grunted as he lifted Harding’s shoulders and tried to roll him onto his side. The body was stiff and tilted like a hinge. The weight wouldn’t transfer without sending Harding face down into a pool of blood, so Collier had to brace his elbows against his knees to keep the body raised.

Sara peeled up Harding’s jacket and shirt so she could examine his back. Will gathered she was looking for punctures. She pressed her gloved fingers into the skin, testing for open wounds and finding nothing. The dark blood on the floor had made Harding look like he’d been dipped into a pan of motor oil.

She asked Collier, ‘You okay for another minute?’

‘Sure.’ The word got mangled in his throat. Will could see the veins in his neck popping out. Harding was at least two-fifty, maybe more. Collier’s arms were shaking from the effort of keeping him tilted up.

Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves. She reached into Harding’s back pocket and pulled out a thick nylon wallet. The Velcro made a ripping sound when she opened it. She called out her findings. ‘Ticket stubs, receipts for fast-food places, betting slips, two different photographs of a naked blonde courtesy of BackDoorMan.com. Some business cards.’ She looked at Collier. ‘You can put him down, but be careful.’

Collier groaned as he settled the body back to the floor.

‘You’re going to want to see this.’ Sara passed one of the business cards to Faith. Will recognized the full-color logo. He had seen it countless times on documents turned over by Marcus Rippy’s sports management team.

‘Motherfuck,’ Faith muttered. ‘Kip Kilpatrick. He’s Rippy’s manager, right? I saw him on TV.’

Will looked at Amanda. She had her eyes closed like she wished she could wipe the man’s name from her mind. Will felt the same way. Kip Kilpatrick was Marcus Rippy’s manager, head lawyer, best friend and all-around fixer. There was no legal proof, but Will was certain Kilpatrick had used his thugs to pay off two witnesses from the New Year’s Eve party and intimidated a third into silence.

Sara said, ‘I hate to make things worse, but the doorknob missed Harding’s jugulars and carotids. And his esophagus. And pretty much anything else that matters. There’s no blood in his mouth or nose. There was very little bleeding from the spindle, just a trickle that’s dried down the side of his neck. He doesn’t have any other significant injuries. This blood, or at least this volume of blood, isn’t from him.’

‘What?’ Amanda sounded more exasperated than shocked. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Positive. The back of his clothes wicked up blood from the floor, and the swipe of blood on his shirt is clearly from someone else. His major arteries are intact. There are no significant wounds in his head, torso, arms, or legs. The blood you see in this room is not from Dale Harding.’

Will felt surprised, and then he felt stupid for being surprised. Sara had read the scene better than he had.

‘So whose blood is it?’ Faith asked. ‘Ms. La Mer?’

‘It seems likely.’ Sara stood up carefully so she wouldn’t lose her balance.

Amanda tried to make sense of the information. ‘Our missing woman hit her head on the stairs, then she left her bloody footprints as she ran across the balcony, and then what?’

‘There was a violent struggle between two people in this room. There are signs of high-velocity spatter on the ceiling, which suggests that an artery was punctured, and as I said, it wasn’t Harding’s.’ Sara walked over to the far corner. ‘We’re going to need some alternate light sources because the graffiti is so dark, but can you see this swipe along the wall? That’s from someone’s hand, and the hand was covered in blood. The shape and span are small, more like a woman’s.’

Will had noticed the smeared line of blood before, but not that it ended with a visible set of fingers. They reminded him of the finger-shaped bruises on Keisha Miscavage’s neck.

Amanda told Sara, ‘There were no unsolved shootings last night. Are we talking stabbing, then?’

Sara shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ Amanda repeated. ‘Wonderful. I’ll tell the hospitals to maybe look out for an unexplained stabbing with a serious head injury.’

‘I can do that.’ Collier started typing into his phone. ‘I got a buddy works the precinct at Grady Hospital. He can check with the ER pronto.’

‘We’ll need Atlanta Medical and Piedmont, too.’

Collier nodded as he typed.

Faith said, ‘Sara, back up a minute for me. The doorknob didn’t kill Harding, but he’s obviously dead. So what happened?’

‘His bad choices happened. He’s morbidly obese. He’s unusually bloated. His eyes show signs of conjunctival erythema. I’m guessing he has an enlarged heart, hypertension. There are needle marks on his abdomen and thighs that indicate he’s an insulin-dependent diabetic. His diet was fast food and Skittles. He wasn’t managing his condition.’

Collier looked skeptical. ‘So Harding conveniently slipped into a diabetic coma during the middle of a death match?’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’ Sara indicated the area around her own mouth. ‘Harding’s face. You thought it was mold, but mold usually grows in a colony or clump. Think about bread when it goes bad. My first guess was seborrheic dermatitis, but now I’m fairly certain it’s uremic frost.’

Will said, ‘I thought I smelled urine.’

‘Good catch.’ Sara handed Collier a bag for his gloves and shoe protectors. ‘Urea is one of the toxins that’s supposed to be filtered out through the kidneys. If the kidneys don’t work for some reason-diabetes and hypertension are good reasons-then the body tries to excrete the urea through sweat. The sweat evaporates, the urea crystalizes, and that leads to uremic frost.’

Collier nodded like he understood. ‘How long does that take?’

‘Not long. He’s been living with chronic end-stage renal disease. He was getting treatment at some point. He has a graft for vascular access in his arm. Uremic frost is very rare, but it tells us that for whatever reason, he stopped getting dialysis, probably within the last week to ten days.’

‘Jesus,’ Faith said. ‘So is this a murder or not?’

Amanda said, ‘It seems they both tried to kill each other and both likely succeeded.’ She told Sara, ‘Let’s focus on the missing woman. You said there was a violent struggle in this room that Harding obviously lost, but not before he managed to do quite a bit of damage to his opponent, as evidenced by the blood. Given her wounds, could the woman walk out of here and drive herself away?’ She amended, ‘No maybes or possiblies. You’re not speaking to the court, Dr Linton.’

Sara still hedged. ‘Let’s start with the impact on the stairs. If it’s from the missing woman’s head, then she took a pretty hard blow. Her skull was probably fractured. At the very least, she’s concussed.’ Sara looked back over the kill room. ‘The volume of blood loss is the real danger. I’d estimate this is just over two liters, maybe a thirty to thirty-five percent loss. That’s a borderline Class III hemorrhage. In addition to stopping the bleed, she’d need fluids, probably a transfusion.’

‘She could use the tarp,’ Will said. ‘To stop the bleeding. The tarp is missing. There was a roll of duct tape found in the parking lot.’

‘Possible,’ Sara agreed. ‘But let’s talk about the nature of the injury. If the blood came from the chest or neck, she would be dead. It can’t be from the belly because the blood would stay in the belly. So that leaves the limbs. A good gash in the groin could do this. She would likely be able to walk, but not without difficulty. Same with the medial malleolus, the inside of the ankle. She could still drag or crawl her way out. There’s also this-’ Sara held up her arms as if to protect her face, palms out. ‘A horizontal cut to the radial or ulnar arteries, then the arms flail and blood sprays around the room like a garden hose, which is basically what the artery would be at that point.’ She looked back at Harding. ‘I’d expect him to have more blood on him if that was the case.’