Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

A door suddenly rolled back. Bright sunlight penetrated the vehicle, making her blink owlishly, and in the next instant, she was aware of an intense wall of heat. Oh God, it was boiling outside. She shrank back, but couldn’t avoid the scorching air.

A man stood in the open doorway. His features were a black shroud haloed by the sunlight behind him. His arm came up and a cellophane package fell between the plastic bars. Then another and another.

“Do you have water?” he asked.

She tried to speak, then remembered the tape over her mouth. She did have water, but she wanted more, so she shook her head.

“You should ration your supplies more carefully,” the man scolded.

She wanted to spit at him. She shrugged instead.

“I’ll give you another jug. But that’s it. Understood?”

What did he mean by “that’s it”? That’s it before he set her free? Or that’s it before he raped her, killed her, or sold her to a bunch of sick twisted men?

Her stomach was roiling again. She closed her eyes to savagely fight it back.

Next thing she felt was a prick on the arm. A damn needle. The drugs, oh no…

Her muscles melted as if trained. She slumped against the side of the dog crate, the world already fading away. The kennel door opened. A jug of water materialized in her crate. A hand casually ripped the tape from her mouth. Her lips stung. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Eat, drink,” the man said quietly. “By nightfall, you’re going to need your strength.”

The kennel door snapped shut. The van door rolled closed. No more sunlight. No more heat.

Tina slid down to the floor of the dog crate. Her legs came up. Her body curled up protectively around her belly. Then the drugs won this battle and swept her far away.

Quantico, Virginia

3:14 P . M .

Temperature: 98 degrees

THEY HADN’T GOTTEN VERY FAR WITH THE POSTMORTEM. Kimberly wasn’t surprised. Most autopsies were scheduled for days after the recovery of the body, not hours. Either things were slow at the moment, or an NCIS investigation carried some hefty weight.

Special Agent Kaplan introduced her to the medical examiner, Dr. Corben, and then to his assistant, Gina Nitsche.

“Your first post?” Nitsche asked, wheeling in the body with quick efficiency.

Kimberly nodded.

“If you’re gonna puke, don’t ask, just leave,” Nitsche said cheerfully. “I got enough to clean up after this.” She continued talking briskly, while unzipping the body bag and folding back the plastic. “I’m called a diener. Technically speaking, Dr. Corben is the prosector. He’ll handle all the protocol and I’ll do what I’m told. Usual procedure is that the body arrives a day or two earlier and is logged in, in a separate area. We inventory clothes and possessions, take the weight, give the body an official tag with an ID number. Given time constraints, however,” Nitsche shot Kaplan a look, “this time we’re doing it all as we go. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, there’s a box of gloves on the side table. The cupboard has extra caps and gowns. Help yourself.”

Kimberly glanced toward the cupboard uncertainly, and Nitsche, as if she were reading her mind, added, “You know, ’cause sometimes they splatter.”

Kimberly went to the cupboard and found herself a cap to cover her short feathery hair and a gown to cover her clothes. She noticed that Special Agent Kaplan followed her over and also snagged a set of protective gear. He’d brought his own pair of gloves. She borrowed her pair from the ME’s supply.

Nitsche had finished unwrapping the body now. First she’d pulled back the external layer of heavy-duty plastic. Next, she’d unfolded a plain white sheet. Finally, she unpeeled the internal layer of plastic, much like a dry cleaning bag, which was what came into contact with the corpse’s skin. Nitsche folded each layer down around the base of the gurney. Then she methodically inventoried the dead girl’s clothing and jewelry, while Dr. Corben prepped the autopsy table.

“I inventoried her purse before coming in,” Nitsche said conversationally. “Poor thing had brochures from a travel agency for Hawaii. I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii. Do you think she was going with a boyfriend? Because if she was going with a boyfriend, well then, he’s available again, and God knows I need someone to take me away from here. All right. We’re ready.”

She wheeled the gurney over to the cutting table. She and Dr. Corben had obviously done this many times before. He moved to the head. She moved to the feet. On the count of three, they slid the now naked corpse from the gurney onto the metal slab. Then Nitsche wheeled the gurney away.

“Testing, testing,” Dr. Corben said into his recording equipment. Satisfied that it was working, he got down to business.

First, the ME catalogued the victim’s naked body. He described her sex, age, height, weight, and hair and eye color. He commented that she appeared in good health (other than the fact that she was dead? Kimberly thought). He also listed the presence of a tattoo, shape of a rose, approximately one inch in size, on the deceased’s upper left breast.

Victim and deceased. Dr. Corben used those words a lot. Kimberly began to think this was the heart of her problem. She never thought in terms of victim or deceased. Instead, she thought in terms such as young, pretty, blond, girl. If she was supposed to be a dispassionate, world-weary death investigator, she hadn’t achieved it yet.

Dr. Corben had moved on to perceived injuries. He described the large bruise on the girl’s-the victim’s-upper left hip, his gloved hand poking and prodding at the waxy skin. “Victim has presence of large ecchymosis, approximately four inches in diameter, on the upper left thigh. Center area is red and swollen, approximately one and a half inches around puncture site. It’s an abnormal amount of bruising for an intramuscular injection. Perhaps the result of inexperience or a large-bore needle.”

Special Agent Kaplan frowned at that and made a gesture with his hand. Dr. Corben snapped off the minirecorder in his hand. “What do you mean, a large-bore needle?” Kaplan asked.

“Different needle gauges have different thicknesses. For example, in the medical community, when we give injections we use an eighteen-gauge needle, which slides very easily into a vein. Administered correctly, it can be done with relatively little bruising. Now, this injection site has a great deal of bruising. And not just of the muscle area. This center spot where it’s red and swollen-that’s where the needle punctured the skin. The size of the aggravation leads me to believe that either it was a needle wielded with a fair amount of force, really, truly stabbed into the thigh, or it was an abnormally large needle.”

Kaplan narrowed his eyes, considering the possibilities. “Why would someone use a bigger needle?”

“Different-sized needles are used for a variety of different procedures.” Dr. Corben’s brow furrowed. “Sometimes to inject large amounts of a substance at a faster rate, you need a larger-bore needle. Or when mixing substances, you would use a larger needle. Now, here’s something interesting. The second injection site, the arm. Note the relatively small amount of aggravation we see here. Just the slightest swollen spot. That’s more like what we would typically see-consistent with a standard eighteen-gauge needle. Granted, the limited amount of bruising is also due to the fact she died shortly thereafter. But either way, this injection is clearly more skillfully done. Either it’s two different needles, or it’s two very different approaches toward intramuscular injections.”