Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

“ What is it?” asked Stadtler, instantly curious. “Didn't you already do that?” He was asking about the depth and length measurement of the wound itself.

She replied with a question. “Have you checked the condition of the windpipe?”

“ What for?”

She instantly ran her hand into the open chest cavity and up through the throat, massaging the layers of gristle that form the upper part of the windpipe, the cricoid cartilage, and she knew in an instant that the blue coloration around the throat was not due to the blue light or to the slash. She knew for a fact that the killer had also strangled his victim; but he had done so with so gentle a touch that it was not obvious, or likely provable.

Her confusion gave her away. The three men stared at her. “Just curious,” she lied.

“ Anyone can see she's not been strangled,” said Stadtler. “May we get on with it?”

“ I'm going to have to take a section here,” she said, indicating the throat.

“ What? What for? We were praying we'd save something of her for burial,” Stadtler said sarcastically.

“ Sorry, Doctor.”

“ Okay, I'm sorry. I was out of line on that,” he replied. “But what are you getting at here?”

“ I won't know until I get back to Quantico. I need electron microscopic photography on this.” With her scalpel she sliced a deep square of skin around the pale jugular section, her eyes intent on the area of the clean, deep cut that was necessary. She then realized yet another hidden message below the surface. “Oh, God,” she moaned.

“ What is it?” Stadtler was now crazy, and he all but pushed her aside. “What?”

“ Here, and here.” She pointed with her scalpel, which fit neatly into the cut on either side of the jugular, and each went deep, but there were two cuts and they did not connect. The long slash that connected each was superficial at the center. Something else had penetrated the jugular, and the scar from this wound was near invisible below the larger throat slash that hid it.

She explained this to Stadtler.

He was shaken. “I… I thought you examined this last night.”

“ Obviously not close enough.”

“ What… does it mean?”

“ It means that a second instrument was used at the jugular, and this large laceration is just a cosmetic masking of that fact.”

“ What other instrument?”

“ I don't know, and I won't know unless I take part of her throat back with me to Virginia.”

He stared long at her. “I suppose it's… necessary.”

“ Absolutely.”

He stepped away and then turned. “Gets worse every moment, doesn't it? Maybe I'm getting too old for this business. This world, perhaps.”

“ Given the dismemberment, it'll be a closed casket, of course.”

“ Yes, well, what's one more missing part?” said Stadtler. “No one will miss it.”

Jessica finished removing the square cake of flesh from the throat, and Stadtler's silent, able assistant held out a small jar filled with preserving fluids for the pulpy, layered section. “This information remains in this room, gentlemen,” she told them. “We've got to keep this to ourselves. Not a word.”

The estimate of time of death was made the more precise by a combination of items: livor mortis, the dark discoloration of death, and the degree of that coloration; algor mortis, the cold touch of death; and rigor mortis, the degree of stiffness or limberness told them much. Annie “Candy” Copeland had died between midnight and 2 A.M., the night before her discovery. According to Stadtler, the last man to see her alive was a swinish, small-town pimp who used her and put her on the street, a man named Scarborough, known locally as Scar. The man was under arrest for suspicion of murdering Annie Copeland.

Finished with Copeland's corpse at last, Jessica stepped away from the autopsy table, the hum of the A.C. drumming in her ears. She peeled away her rubber gloves and the mask, depositing both in the bins provided at the door. “Please have a copy of your report, along with the samples I've taken, ready to leave with me for Virginia. We'll be leaving the municipal airport sometime this afternoon. If there's a problem getting everything to me by fourteen-ah, two o'clock-please contact me, either at the inn or at the airport.

Stadtler nodded, and their eyes met, and in the silence between them, she came to realize that somewhere along the way, she'd gained his respect. He said, “Dr. Coran, I'll see to it personally.” She breathed deeply, licked her lips, and in a near feline expression of gratitude, she said, “Dr. Stadtler, it has been a very worthwhile experience working with you and your staff.” She was grateful that she was no longer his “dear Dr. Coran.”

She peeled away the green garments of her trade just outside the autopsy room in an anteroom where more bins stood, and where she could wash up. She splashed some water on her face and glanced into the mirror, taking her reflection in. She felt that she looked as if she'd been on a week's binge, and somewhere in the back of her head she heard the wafting music of a Jimmy Buffet tune strike up.

' 'Wasting away in Wekoshaville,'' she said to her reflection. Fieldwork was tough. Maybe she should've stayed in the lab.

She tamped her face with a clean, white linen, straightened her outfit, fixed her lipstick and then pushed through the door, going for the nearest exit. She needed the one thing Wekosha was good for-fresh air.?

Outside the university hospital, she saw the campus filled with young people, most well dressed and energetic and rushing to someplace of importance. She wondered what had gone wrong in Candy Copeland's life, why she wasn't here, or in a similar school, working and alive and looking toward a bright future. She wondered how many of the young men rushing between classes had known Candy, and how many had used her.

A car pulled up that she recognized and Otto got out and went to the rear to help out a man in handcuffs. He cursed Otto's rough handling of him. She guessed it to be Scarborough from both his dress and his foul mouth.

“ Someone I want you to meet, Thomas,” he told Scarborough, towing him toward Jessica.

Boutine found a pair of stone benches, where he parked Thomas Scarborough below the warm sun and the crisp leaves of a white oak. Where he sat, the shadows creased his rough features. He was called Scar for good reason. He had three scars on his face from what looked like knife wounds suffered at an early age. She guessed him to be little older than Candy had been.

“ How many times I got to tell you people, I loved Candy! I'd never harm her. She… she was my best girl. I loved her. We even talked about… about getting married someday.”

“ Cut the crap, Thomas, and shut up, and just tell Dr. Coran what you told me about your goddamned pig farm.” Otto stood over him like an angry father. Scarborough's head was forward, his eyes on the earth in the learned position of those beaten and intimidated all their lives. He hadn't so much as glanced at Jessica until she spoke to Otto, his eyes sneaking to one side, rolling like a snake's to take her in, all without lifting the head.

“ What's this all about, Otto?” she asked.

Otto poked the kid in response.

Tommy “Scar” Scarborough spit on the ground in response. The young man was unclean, unshaven, and he smelled both of bad breath and booze, not to mention body odor. Jessica chose the bench across from him to sit, rather than get too close. Even handcuffed, he made her flesh crawl. His eyes were deep, black cinders, smoldering with rage, his complexion pockmarked from terrible years of bouts with acne and perhaps chicken pox and other diseases. His long-sleeved, unkempt shirt did little to hide the needle marks, both old and recent. It looked as if the cops had nabbed him while he was sleeping in his clothes and his own filth, and he hadn't had a bath in days.