Robert Knightly - The cold room

The autopsy finally complete, Hyong took the crime scene photos to a metal shelf extending from the wall opposite the door, where he re-examined them under a large magnifying glass. Knowing my place in Hyong’s scheme of things, I waited patiently for him to complete this examination. A few minutes later, he called my attention to a full-length photo of the victim as I’d discovered her.

‘Tell me what happened here. Tell me why her skin is pink.’ Kim Hyong was short and thick, his torso running in a straight line from his armpits to his hips. His hands, by contrast, were very small, his movements precise enough to appear finicky.

‘I’ve seen this before, doctor, with a suicide. The man-’

‘Carbon monoxide, fine. What else?’

‘Cyanide?’

‘Very good. What else?’

My first impulse was to smack him, then count the revolutions before he contacted a solid object, say the far wall. But ever the goal-oriented detective, I merely sighed before shrugging my shoulders.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Then answer another question. This woman died from blunt force trauma resulting in severe intracranial hemorrhaging. Now, why would anyone strike her with enough force to produce this level of injury if she’d already been poisoned?’

‘I’ve been trying to figure that out from the time I found her.’

Hyong glanced at me before shaking his head. ‘Exposure to cold temperatures prior to death will produce lividity anywhere from pink to cherry red. We commonly see this in alcoholics who pass out on the streets in winter, and in cold-water drownings. Of course, we’ll test for carbon monoxide and cyanide, but I’d be shocked if either test was positive.’

Now he had my full attention. ‘Prior to death?’ I asked. ‘Is that what you said? Or after?’

‘Certainly prior, though perhaps both. Let me explain.’ Hyong was smiling now, exposing the yellowed teeth and coated tongue of a heavy smoker. ‘Lividity was fully set before the removal of the victim’s organs. I know this because the volume of blood in her body would have been greatly reduced if she’d been eviscerated immediately after death, producing a much fainter lividity. I can’t be certain, of course, that she was returned to a cold space in the hours between her death and the removal of her organs. But it does make sense.’

Hyong’s response directly addressed an anomaly I’d already considered. Blunt force injuries are almost always driven by passion, by the heat of the moment, yet the preparation of the body for disposal had been carefully thought out. A gap of many hours between the two events would go a long way toward resolving the dilemma. Perhaps the killer simply cooled down enough to get his act together, or perhaps a second actor had arrived, somebody more experienced, to lend a guiding hand.

‘The organ removal,’ I asked, ‘do you think it was done by somebody with medical knowledge?’

‘No, this is the work of a hunter or somebody who works at a slaughterhouse. The victim’s sternum was cut with a heavy-bladed knife, and there are nicks, probably from the same knife, on her ribs.’

I considered this for a moment, before asking an obvious question. ‘You said she was exposed to cold prior to her death. How much cold?’

‘Thirty-five to forty degrees would be my guess, the internal temperature of a common refrigerator. But I want you to take a look at her dentition.’ He pulled down the woman’s jaw, then stretched her lips away from her teeth. ‘Please, look,’ he said.

Though I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just describe whatever he’d discovered, I walked over to the table and stared down at my victim’s molars, two of which bore gold crowns. But that wasn’t what struck me as odd. It appeared that she had no cavities.

‘Notice those fillings?’ Hyong asked.

‘Do you mean the crowns?’

Hyong’s face was round and slightly dished in the center. When he compressed his lips, his disapproval apparent, his mouth all but vanished. ‘Look closer,’ he demanded.

I did as I was told, noticing that my victim’s many fillings were white instead of the silver I was used to seeing. ‘It’s quite likely your victim was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain. In the East, they use composite fillings, the white you see in her mouth; in the West, metal or silver. Notice the gold crowns, common in Europe, while here we cap teeth with porcelain.’

My first thought was of the neighborhood just to the north of Williamsburg, to Greenpoint and the many thousands of Poles who’d emigrated there following the break-up of the Soviet Union. From even the furthest reaches of Greenpoint, it was only a few miles to where my victim’s body was discovered. Now I had a place to begin.

‘I hope you’re not going to ask me about time of death,’ Hyong declared when I turned away from the body and took up a position near the door.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point.’ In fact, every physical indicator of time of death is altered by cold: rigor mortis, livor mortis and insect activity are greatly retarded, while the loss of body heat is accelerated.

‘There’s a case reported by the DiMaios, father and son,’ Hyong announced, ‘in which the body of a young boy who’d drowned in a cold lake was still in full rigor when it was recovered seventeen days later.’

I looked back at my victim. Hyong had left her with her mouth agape, her lips folded back in what could have been mistaken for a smile. ‘How long will she be here?’ I asked. ‘If I can’t find someone to claim her body?’

‘A couple of months.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then the city will pick up the cost of her burial.’

‘On Hart’s Island?’

Hyong snorted. ‘What were you expecting, detective? A mausoleum?’

I moved toward the door without responding. What questions could be answered had been answered and there was other work to be done. With no tools, I’d been unable to collect the cut link in the fence on South Fifth Street. I’d take care of that now, on my way to work, as I’d prepare myself for the briefing Lieutenant Drew Millard would undoubtedly demand.

‘That’s it?’ Hyong asked.

I turned to face him, suddenly remembering my conversation with Adele. ‘One more thing. Will you test her blood to find out if she was pregnant?’

‘What makes you ask that question?’ Hyong was standing at the sink, washing his hands.

‘It’s possible that her organs were removed because her killer was after a developing fetus. The idea was to prevent a comparison with the father’s DNA.’

‘Now that is brilliant. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet. The blood test in question is for a hormone called human chorionic gonadotrophin. We run it routinely.’

I got a call from Adele on my way to the Nine-Two. She’d used her connections at the DA’s office to reach the NYPD’s profiler, John Roach, who would grant me an interview on the following morning, should I so desire. I had no more faith in profilers than in Gypsy fortune tellers, but I wasn’t about to rain on Adele’s parade. There was something in her voice, some hint of regret that I didn’t care to acknowledge.

‘I think that’d be a very good idea, Adele, because the puzzle has suddenly gotten more complex. According to Hyong, the red lividity was most likely caused by prolonged exposure to cold before she was killed.’

‘How much cold?’

‘Refrigerator cold.’ I hesitated, but Adele remained silent. ‘I can’t imagine forcing someone into a home refrigerator while they were still able to fight back. The unit has to be commercial. Maybe a restaurant.’

Adele sighed into the phone. ‘She’s placed in a refrigerator long enough to alter her blood chemistry, then bludgeoned. It doesn’t make sense. If you wanted to kill her, why not leave her where she was?’