Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

“Lucky for you my presence here isn’t required,” Sydney said, thumbing through the autopsy report. “At least not to do my job.” She stood, handed him the binder. “I’ll need a complete copy of your report and the autopsy. As soon as I get that, I’ll head on over to the morgue and you can play with the case all you want.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then maybe your superior officer will explain the finer details of federal jurisdiction to you.”

He picked up the phone, punched in a number, and after a moment said, “Lisa, it’s Rodale. I’m sending someone up to get a copy of our marsh homicide. Give it to her.” He dropped the phone in the cradle, stood so that his tall frame towered over Sydney and his rodeo belt buckle was about her eye level. She shoved her chair back and stood, still having to look up at him as he narrowed his gaze at her and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re with the FBI that you’re better than us. I’ve got more Code Seven time under my belt than you have time out on the streets.”

Code Seven was the cop term for lunch hour, and she gave a pointed look to his large belly. “I see you do,” she said, nodding. “But don’t worry. A little diet and exercise, no one will ever know how you spend your day.” And with that, she walked out the door.

The morgue was typical county fare, pale green tiles lining the walls, the floors slick concrete, the usual stainless steel wall of refrigerated compartments for body storage. Unlike Detective Rodale, the on-duty clerk assistant to the pathologist did not have an attitude. He was in his late fifties, balding, but his blue eyes twinkled with humor when he saw the name on the report. “That guy’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” the assistant commented.

“To say the least.”

“Got our Jane Doe here,” he said, opening one of the small square doors, and sliding the body out. “I’ve never had someone come in for a drawing before, but then, I haven’t been here that long. You going to work in here?”

“Actually if she’s not in terrible shape, I might be able to work from photos.” Something she preferred to do, primarily because looking at photos was easier on the mind and the nose, and far easier than standing in the morgue, staring at the actual corpse for hours on end.

“I’ll put her out on a table for you.”

She opened her briefcase containing her camera gear, while he readied the body for viewing. She figured she’d snap some digital, and some film. But before Sydney did that, she’d need to check the body to determine if she could work from photos. If decomposition was too far along, the next step would be boiling the skull to remove all flesh, then working with a forensic anthropologist to determine what the measurements and thickness of facial flesh would be for the particular race and sex of the victim-the standard process used, for instance, when the subject is a found skull that can’t be identified through dental records.

She put on some latex gloves, then turned to the gurney that held the Jane Doe. A post-autopsied body is not a pleasant thing to look at. Long tracks of sutures attempt to hold the victim together, though never enough to keep from exposing the inner pinkish-yellow flesh that always seems to escape the stitches. In this case, the chilly weather had slowed the decomposition of the victim, and as a result, the smell was tolerable, mostly masked by the heavy antiseptic scent that permeated the morgue.

If Sydney had to guess her age just from sight, she’d put her in her late teens to late twenties, but that was a job best left for the medical examiner. Even so, her victim’s face was devoid of any wrinkles, but it was also devoid of most of her hair, including eyelashes, eyebrows and scalp. This would be the greatest challenge, trying to reconstruct the proper hairstyle, which could drastically change someone’s appearance and hinder an identification if she guessed wrong. There were just a few strands in various places on her scalp. All appeared to be straight, light brown, and as Sydney carefully held them out, measured them, jotted the information down, she was pleased.

The assistant, curious, walked up. “You can tell something by the hair?”

“Possibly the hairstyle,” she said. “Here, these three strands remaining in the front are short. Tells me she probably wore bangs.” Sydney measured the few strands left on the side of her head at the top and back, then said, “See here how it’s longer in back? Two separate lengths?” He nodded. “Indicative of a layered style.”

That done, Sydney gently probed her face, determining that the flesh was still fairly firm against the skull, that the gases from decomposition had not overly disfigured it, giving it a swollen appearance. It was a lesson she’d learned from her first drawing, thinking the floater’s face was swollen. As a result she’d narrowed the jawline. Turned out the victim had a round face. Sydney no longer guessed.

The assistant watched, clearly fascinated. “What happens if the body’s in bad shape?” he asked. “You do one of those clay things?”

“I only work sketches,” Sydney said. “The clay models have their place, but I think the sketch is easier to ID from.”

“That right?”

“You ever see a clay model?”

“On TV.”

“Remind you of anything?”

He laughed. “Yeah. A clay head. A Neanderthal clay head with a wig.”

She smiled. “Though I’ve seen some excellent examples, very few artists are skilled enough to pull off a sculpture. Sketches, in my humble opinion, tend to be more forgiving,” she said, stripping off the gloves, then taking the Polaroid camera and snapping a few shots of the woman’s face. “The eye tends to see right past the softer lines from a pencil, filling in the blanks and forgiving tiny errors.” Sydney replaced the Polaroid, took out the digital camera, took photos from all angles, having to stand on a stepladder to get her overhead shots. Next she stepped down and lowered the sheet that had covered the length of her, wanting to get a shot of the tattoo.

That’s when Sydney saw the bite mark on her left breast.

And when she realized that this had just elevated from a cold case into a priority.

Sydney had no idea if the bite wound appeared in the medical examiner’s report, since she hadn’t had a chance to read it completely. One thing she did know, however, was that it did not appear in the police report that she had viewed, and she pointed to the victim’s left breast, asking the assistant, “Do you know if this is documented in the autopsy?”

He looked over, nodded. “I’m the one who typed it up after the pathologist dictated it. Bite wound, left breast. His words exactly.”

She took out a measurement card with a color chart on one edge, laid it against the wound, and snapped several photos with the digital and then the film camera. The fact this was not mentioned in the police report was significant. Sydney wondered if it might be a simple oversight, or if Mr. Big Belt Buckle didn’t think it was important. Unfortunately, not noting it meant that it wouldn’t appear in the information normally entered into the national database, a database used to link crimes that might be connected.

Crimes like the rape and attempted murder of Tara Brown, who also happened to have reported a bite mark on her breast.

And two things occurred to Sydney in that moment. One, it seemed highly probable that they might have a serial rapist and murderer in their area. The true test would be when they had both bite marks examined by a forensic dental expert, especially if no DNA was found. Two, if the suspect was one and the same, she now had a sketch of him in her office, thanks to Tara Brown.