David Baldacci: Hour Game

Michelle and King looked at each other. King answered for them. "Strong enough."

Sylvia turned to Williams. "Todd, do you have any objection to their seeing the bodies? Of course I also want you or at least one of your men to attend as well. It might appear strange to a jury that somebody from the police force hadn't viewed the bodies at least post -autopsy."

Williams looked angry but then seemed to wage an inner debate with himself. Finally, he shrugged. "Hell, let's go."

THE AUTOPSY ROOM WAS MUCH like Sylvia's office minus all warmth and feminine touches. Everything was stainless steel and neatly arranged. Two personal workstations with built-in desks were situated on one side of the room, and two stainless-steel examination tables with drainage holes, water tubs with hoses, a small dissection table, organ scale and trays of surgical instruments were situated on the other. The four had stopped at the locker room and donned scrubs, gloves and masks before entering. They looked like extras in a low-budget bioterrorism flick.

Michelle whispered to King as Sylvia walked ahead to speak with Kyle.

"I can see why you two dated. You both have the super mutant neatness gene. Don't worry; I hear they're working on a cure."

"Don't get your hopes up," King whispered back through his mask. "I'm never going over to the dark side."

"I'll show you Jane Doe first," said Sylvia, coming back to them.

A large stainless-steel door opened, and as Kyle emerged pushing a gurney with a sheet covering the dead woman, threads of chilly air escaped from the refrigerated room.

Michelle started shivering uncontrollably.

"You okay?" King asked.

"Of course I am," she shot back through chattering teeth. "You?"

"I was a premed student briefly before I went into law. And I worked at the morgue in Richmond over a summer. I've seen lots of bodies."

"Premed?"

"I thought it would help me pick up girls. I know, I know, but I was young and stupid."

Kyle left. Before Sylvia pulled back the sheet, she looked at Williams, and her expression was now more kindly. "Chief, just do what I told you the first time, and you'll be fine. You've already seen the worst of it. No more surprises, I promise."

He nodded, hitched up his pants and appeared to be holding his breath and praying for a natural disaster so he could get the hell out of there.

She pulled back the sheet and they all looked down.

The Y-incision running from chest to pubis made the body appear to have been unzipped. Jane Doe's organs had been removed, weighed and analyzed, and then the block of organs, muscle and tissue had been unceremoniously bagged and dumped back in the body cavity. The incision that had opened the skull was not readily apparent from their viewing angle, though the face drooped, like a doll whose supporting stitches had given way.

"The intermastoid incision is always an eye-opener," commented King dryly.

"I'm impressed, Sean," said Sylvia, staring at him.

Williams looked like he wanted to strangle King if he could only find the strength.

The smell of the body was very intense in the small room. Michelle started to cover her mouth and nose even though they were masked. Sylvia quickly stopped her.

"This room is very dirty, Michelle; germs everywhere, so don't touch your face with your hands. And trying to stop the smell that way only makes it worse. With malodors like this your senses will go dead in about two minutes. Just keep breathing." She glanced at Williams, who, to his credit, was taking large, rapid breaths and had one hand pushed against his belly as though trying to keep the contents in there right where they were. "At the crime scene your deputies kept running away to get fresh air and then coming back. The only thing they were doing was giving their sense of smell an opportunity to return."

"I know," said Williams between wheezes. "Puked all over their damn uniforms. We blew our whole laundry budget for the month." The police chief turned slightly green yet bravely stood his ground.

Michelle felt herself taking quick, jerky breaths. As Sylvia had said, her sense of smell was beginning to vanish. She looked down at the body once more.

"I don't see any obvious wounds. Was it strangulation?" she asked.

Sylvia shook her head. "I checked that first. I used a laser on the neck to look for ligature marks after none appeared evident under normal light. I thought there might be some hemorrhage into the muscles of the neck, but I didn't find any. And the hyoid bone and the thyroid and cricoid cartilages weren't fractured. They sometimes are in strangulation cases." She looked down at Jane Doe. "We did the sexual assault workup. It came back negative. Whoever killed her didn't rape or sexually violate her. Because of the usual order of an autopsy, I didn't discover the cause of death until near the end; up to that point it was a puzzler." She glanced sharply at Williams. "Todd, you'd already left by then."

Williams stared helplessly back at her. "Damn it, Doc, I'm trying here, okay? Cut me some slack."

"Don't keep us in suspense, Sylvia. How did she die?" exclaimed King. "And in stupid-people language if you can manage it."

Sylvia picked up a long metal rod and levered open Jane Doe's mouth.

"A twenty-two-caliber revolver was placed in her mouth and fired. The angle of the shot was about seventy-five degrees. The slug ended up lodged in her midbrain. I noticed some strange residue on her teeth. It wasn't from the discharge of the gun; that would have been a dead giveaway. The killer must've swabbed the teeth and mouth with a cleaning fluid to eliminate the evidence. The wound inside her mouth was sealed from the hot gases emitted when the gun was fired, basically cauterizing it. However, the X-rays showed the bullet. We always take X-rays before making any incision, but we had problems getting the film processed, so I started the post. Once I opened her up, the wound track and slug revealed themselves. When we got the X-ray result, the bullet in the brain was there on the film."

"Isn't a gun in the mouth a typical method of suicide?" said Michelle.

"Not for women," replied Sylvia. "It's classic Mars versus Venus, testosterone versus estrogen. Men kill themselves with guns or by hanging. Women favor poison or drug overdoses, slitting their wrists or putting a plastic bag over their heads. Besides, there was no trace of gunpowder residue on her hands."

King mused, "The person would have to know that the cause of death would be revealed eventually even if he tried to hide it."

"Another interesting point," said Sylvia. "The woman was not killed in the woods. She was killed elsewhere, inside some structure, and her body was later transported to the woods. Most likely in a car, and her body was wrapped in plastic. "

"How can you be so sure?" King wanted to know.

"As you know, rigor mortis is a plain vanilla chemical process occurring upon death. It starts in the small muscles of the jaw and neck and bleeds downward to the larger muscle groups, the trunk and the extremities and is usually complete within six to twelve hours. I say usually because there are various exceptions to that rule. Body types and environmental conditions can impact the timing. An obese person may not experience rigor at death, and while cold inhibits rigor's onset, heat accelerates it. The rigidity remains anywhere from thirty hours to three days and then disappears in the same order it appeared."

"Okay, what does that tell us?" asked Michelle.

"A lot. Jane Doe was a young woman, well developed and nourished but not overweight. Rigor on her would have fallen within the normal parameters absent extraordinary environmental forces. The ambient temperatures the night before she was found had dipped into the high forties, which would have inhibited somewhat the rigor's progression. Well, rigor on Jane Doe was fully resolved and her body flaccid when I examined her at the crime scene. That means she had been dead for three days at most by that time, or at the very least thirty hours. Given the resolution of rigor despite the chilly weather, I'd lean more toward her being dead three days when she was found."