Alane Ferguson - The Circle of Blood

“Does that mean we start with the head first?”

“Can’t. She’d bleed out into the body cavity if we did that. We always go in an order. Chest first, head last.”

Patrick, Sheriff Jacobs, and Deputy Crowley emerged from Dr. Moore’s office, the latter’s heavy boots clumping as they approached the body. Cameryn could see a pea-sized bit of pizza sauce stuck to the sheriff’s chin. He seemed to be aware of her looking at his mouth, because he wiped it with a crumpled napkin before tossing it into a garbage can. “Evening, Doc,” Jacobs said. “Sorry we took a minute in there. We were trying to get a lead on this girl here through missing persons, but we came up empty. Lots of girls are missing, but none of ’em with that long of hair.”

“So no one’s looking for our Baby Doe,” murmured Moore. He had switched his glasses; this pair magnified his eyes so they appeared to glow, catlike. Patrick and Justin helped Ben move the body, still enfolded in a sheet, from the gurney to the steel autopsy table.

“On the count of three,” said Ben, and Cameryn could hear the men grunt as they pulled Mariah onto the perforated metal.

“I’m all set to unwrap her,” Ben announced. “You all ready?”

As Justin stepped closer to Cameryn, she could feel the warmth of his body radiating toward her, which helped calm the chill. If she were going to come clean, now was the time. Just say it. Tell them what you know. But her lips pressed together on their own, forbidding her to speak.

“Ready,” Patrick replied with a brisk nod.

“All right,” said Moore. “Let’s open her up.”

“HERE WE GO,” said Ben, gently unwrapping the sheet.

The cold, heavy feeling spread through Cameryn as she looked down at Mariah’s pale face and the bullet hole in the side of her head. Beneath the bright autopsy lights, she noticed the thickness of Mariah’s lashes and the curve of her cheekbones, the waxiness of her skin, the ragged edges of her hair. It was easier when she’d seen her as the enemy. Lying there, Mariah looked more like a victim.

While Patrick checked the body bag, which came up clean, Justin handed Cameryn a digital camera. Pictures got snapped once again, encompassing the ABFO scale that Ben moved from Mariah’s head to her elbow to her knee to her foot. Each hand had been placed in a paper bag secured with a rubber band.

“This child is young,” Ben breathed, leaning close and examining her face.

Cameryn said, “Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

“There’s hearing, and there’s seeing,” answered Ben. “I never get used to the kids. Um-mm-mm. I wonder who she is?”

“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” added the sheriff, shifting awkwardly in his boots. “You know, I got kids of my own. That girl had her whole life ahead of her, and she did this.”

“Perhaps,” said Dr. Moore.

Her father gave Cameryn a look but said nothing.

Cameryn knew the drill. There was a rote momentum in autopsies that never varied. She tried to get lost in the checklist, attempted to ignore the undigested secret that sat in her stomach like a stone. When she finished taking pictures, her father asked her to chronicle the inside of the backpack, which she was only too glad to do. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she unzipped the dark blue pack.

What if Justin missed a pocket with Hannah’s wallet inside it? What will I do then? Hide it? Confess?

She needn’t have worried. After she opened every zipper and searched each pocket, the backpack revealed only a plastic comb, a ChapStick lip balm (coconut flavored), a small package of Kleenex tissues, and the pair of silver scissors with the etched handles. Each went into a separate evidence bag, which her father took from her, signing and sealing them mechanically. “We’ll take possession of the backpack itself when you’re done,” Justin told her, handing her a grocery-sized paper bag. It was strange, she thought, that the backpack had been so empty. She was just about to bag the backpack itself when something caught her eye. Something was written on the nylon interior. Block letters, printed in ink along the zipper line.

“Dad, do you see this?” she asked, excited. “Right there-it’s hard to read because the black ink barely shows. It says ‘GILBERT.’ Look,” she said, pointing.

Eyes slanting, her father peered at the square letters. “That would have been easy to miss. I think you found us a real clue there.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Maybe. Unless she stole the backpack from someone.”

Her father looked at her quizzically. “Why would you say that? This girl doesn’t look like a thief.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered too quickly, nodding. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“At least that gives us a place to start. We’ll put that name in the database and see what we get. Well done.”

Gilbert. Mariah Gilbert. Now Cameryn had a name to go with the person she’d chased through the street, the girl who had only moments later put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Having the surname made it harder, not easier. It made Mariah seem more real.

“Hey, where’s her braid?” Cameryn asked suddenly. “It was in here, too,”

It was Justin who answered. Standing next to the sheriff, wearing street clothes, he told her, “In the paper bag on the counter. Your pop signed off on it.”

“There was a braid in her backpack?” Dr. Moore interjected, clucking his tongue. “So she cut off her hair and put it in her backpack? Very, very odd.”

Patrick said, “The haircutting dovetails with the suicide. ”

“If that is what we’re dealing with. You Mahoneys seem to want to jump the gun, pardon my pun.” Dr. Moore laughed softly at his own joke. “The word autopsy means ‘seeing with one’s own eyes.’ Shall we wait to discover what the body reveals before rendering a diagnosis? Let’s roll her. Ben-if you will.”

Dr. Moore and Ben flipped Mariah onto her belly, which was a signal to Cameryn to take another round of pictures. There was mud along the cuff of Mariah’s jeans, and a tiny rip in the shoulder seam of the parka. Cameryn took more overall shots, and then they flipped Mariah once again so that she was supine. Ben, as gentle as a parent, pulled the hair back from Mariah’s face.

“Let’s get the bags off her hands,” Dr. Moore said. “I’ll wipe them for gunshot residue. Unfortunately, a.22 never leaves much of it.” With a small porcelain pad, Dr. Moore dabbed the palm and fingers of each hand and dropped the pad into a gunshot-residue envelope, which he then sealed and signed. Next he clipped Mariah’s nails and folded the crescent pieces into a tissue, shaking his head as he did so. “The girl’s a nail-biter like you, Miss Mahoney. It makes my job harder since there’s not as much to work with. All right, people, hair samples are next.”

Evidence was gathered piece by piece. With a black plastic comb, Dr. Moore gently raked through Mariah’s hair, placing the hairs, plus the comb itself, into a tissue. Once again these were slipped inside a coin envelope. This time, though, Moore handed the envelope to Cameryn.

“Seal and sign,” he ordered.

As Cameryn busied herself writing down the date and the name “Jane Doe,” Ben held on to Mariah’s head. Bending so close that his back resembled a question mark, Dr. Moore plucked more golden-red hairs with forceps, from the front, back, and finally the nape of Mariah’s neck. “You say this girl is a stranger to your town?” he asked as he worked.

“Yeah, we’ve never seen her,” answered Jacobs. “It’s our Christmas festival, so there were a lot of strangers in town.”

Dr. Moore plucked eyebrow hairs from Mariah’s left eyebrow. “That’ll make it harder to figure things out,” he said, folding the hairs into tissue.