Deviations (7 page)

Chapter 6

The three of us got out of the
chief’s gray Buick. We were parked a few feet from the yellow crime-scene tape
attached to stakes driven into the dirt, forming a circle fifty feet across. In
the middle of the circle was the white plastic tent Forensic Services had set
up yesterday afternoon when they photographed and recovered Weston’s body.

Prairie Industrial Park opened six years ago on a two-hundred
acre parcel of dirt and scrub weeds on the west side of town. Less than a
half-mile from the satellite hospital of St. Alban’s Regional Medical Center,
it already had seven buildings full of medical offices, as well as three with
high-end tech and service businesses. The roads snaking between the buildings
were shiny and black, all bordered with neat curbs and green sod and new
saplings staked to withstand the ferocious spring winds.

I looked around in a three-sixty. There weren’t
any buildings within a couple hundred yards that would have been occupied after
business hours. The nearest house from a development was even farther than
that.

I said to Ryan, “Did we get anything off a canvass?”

He shook his head no.

The crime-scene where we were standing was fifty
yards from the newest building being constructed. All we could see was the
foundation, with rebar sticking straight up around the edges like a bad punk
haircut. The construction site was bare except for three trailers and a mobile
home labeled Medway Construction sitting on the dirt. Off in the distance I saw
a bunch of other equipment, hulking yellow and orange metal, caked with dirt,
and a couple of shiny silver lunch trucks parked near another construction
site.

A uni came out of the plastic tent and walked over
to brief us.

“That new building.” I pointed to the construction
site. “What’s that gonna be?”

She looked down at a clipboard. “That’s Henley
Pharmaceuticals.”

I nodded.

The chief said to me and Ryan, “Weston’s body was
called in around 1:45
pm
by one
of the construction guys from the Henley site.”

Ryan said, “So we think the killer drove up and
parked on the dirt road we just came in on?”

“Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking now,” the chief said.
“There’s no evidence Weston was out here walking around yesterday. There were
no scheduled events or anything. And no reason she’d be out here at night.”

“So we think the killer either drove her here and
killed her or killed her someplace else and dumped her here, right?” I said.

The chief nodded.

Ryan said, “Any forensics on the road?”

The chief shook his head. “It’s just dirt,
hard-packed from two dozen guys’ pickups every day. No tire tracks, no
footprints.”

I dragged my foot back and forth. There wasn’t
even loose dirt on the surface to take a print from a shoe or boot of a guy
carrying a dead woman. “Can we look at the dump site?” I said.

The chief held up the tape as Ryan and I walked
under it.

“This is the place.” The chief pointed to the dirt
that looked just like all the other dirt on the construction site.

I shielded my eyes from the sun as he opened an
envelope and pulled out the photos.

One was Weston’s body, lying on her left side as
if she was sleeping. The hair from the right side of her head was covering her
face. The top four buttons of her blouse were opened, but the photo didn’t show
her bra or anything. It looked like her slacks were unbuttoned at the waist.
Another photo showed four buttons scattered on the dirt. A tape measure showed
they were all within about three feet of the body.

“If the buttons are on the ground here, doesn’t
that mean the guy attacked her here, ripping open her blouse?” I said.

“Probably,” the chief said, “but not necessarily.”

“How’s that?” I said.

Ryan said, “He could have killed her someplace
else, dumped her here, then ripped open her blouse.”

I looked at him. “Now why would he do that?”

“We’re meeting with the ME at one o’clock. We’ll
talk about it then.” The chief turned and headed back to the car.

* * * *

I waited at my desk till a
minute before one o’clock, hoping Ryan would come so we could go downstairs to
the ME’s office together. But he didn’t, and I walked out of the detectives’
bullpen, down the central hall, down the one flight of stairs. My heels clicked
on the tile floor as I passed the workout room, the shooting range, and the Evidence
Tech’s lab. I walked into the ME’s office.

Ryan and the chief were standing off to the side,
talking. They looked up and nodded, both looking real serious.

Harold Breen ambled over, wearing a sad smile. He
put his big arms around me. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, giving me a hug. I
could feel him kind of holding back, like he’d hurt a few people and someone
told him to be careful. “Good to see you.” I could smell the liverwurst
sandwich, wrapped up in wax paper, in his left hand.

I hadn’t seen Harold since I left. He looked about
375 pounds, up from 350, which was his normal inflation rate in recent years. He
was wearing his old white lab coat, frayed around the sleeves and where the
lapels folded over. It was laundered, but there wasn’t any kind of detergent
that could remove the tie-dyed crimson and yellow that covered the front. He
had on some kind of baggy, plasticy waterproof pants, with orange Crocs on his
feet.

Even though the AC was set on Siberia, like it
always was, little drops of sweat dotted the top of his bald head. He had done
a below-average job shaving this morning, with rows of stubble visible in the
folds between his chins. Loose skin was hanging off his cheek bones a little
more than I remembered, and his gray eyes, normally sparkling like a kid’s,
looked flat and dull. All in all, he looked terrible, and I loved him
completely.

Robin, the Evidence Tech, got up from a busted old
office chair missing the back and one of the arms. She came over to me and extended
her hand. “How ya doin’, Karen?”

“Good, Robin. How are you?”

“Not bad,” she said cheerfully. “Long as they keep
giving me pubes to check for semen, I’m happy.”

“I like the new highlights.” When I last saw her, the
streaks in her blond hair were green. Now they were aquamarine, which set off
the two small turquoise stones on the horseshoe loop at the end of her left
eyebrow.

“Thank you,” she said brightly. “It complements
the freckles, don’t you think?”

“Very nice,” I said. Even though Robin and I were
from different generations and we were members of the same species only
technically, I suddenly felt, for the first time, that I was back on the job.

“Okay,” Chief Murtaugh said. He gestured to the
Medical Examiner. “You want to take us through it?”

Harold’s cheeks puffed out with effort as he made
his slow way over to the steel table. A white cloth covered the body of Dolores
Weston. I knew he’d begin by pulling back the cloth and telling us what he’d
seen during the autopsy. But when we’d gathered around the table, he turned and
faced us.

“This is case 1019007, Dolores Weston. The body is
that of a female Caucasian, aged fifty-nine, with brown hair and green eyes.
The body, which is sixty-eight inches long and weighs 123 pounds, is
unremarkable, with three scars: one an apparent appendectomy, one consistent
with a fracture to the right humerus, and the third consistent with a cartilage
reconstruction to the left knee. All three scars appear to be at least three
decades old. We took X-rays, which confirmed the fracture to the humerus and
the knee procedure.”

I glanced at Ryan to see if he knew why Harold
wasn’t lifting the cloth off the stiff. Ryan gave a small shrug.

“The body temperature was eighty-two degrees
Fahrenheit when it was brought in after being recovered yesterday afternoon at
2:43
pm
. We removed the victim’s
clothing, gathered hair and skin samples, as well as sand, dirt, and other
substances in the chest wound and under the nails. We checked for fibers and
other substances, and we performed a rape examination. For reasons that will
become obvious in a moment, we have not yet performed the autopsy.”

Harold looked over to the chief, who nodded for
him to proceed. He turned to the table and placed his hand on the cloth near
Weston’s head. He paused a moment, then carefully pulled it back.

Long time ago, in the academy, I’d gone through
some medical training, the standard three or four-day course. The usual ABC
stuff—airway, breathing, circulation—as well as how to recognize possible
spinal-cord injuries so we wouldn’t yank the poor bastards around and mess them
up worse than they already were. Harold had come in for a morning to talk with
us about autopsies, and the Evidence Tech, some dweeb before Robin, to talk about
how to gather evidence at the scene.

I’ve seen some stuff. Lots of people with faces
full of windshield glass. Guys with stumpy fingers from when the lawnmower
suddenly fixed itself. Leg bones snapped at right angles, poking out through
the skin. And burns. They’re the worst. The skin, black and crackly like an
overcooked chicken on a grill, pulling away from the pink tissue underneath.

I’ve seen Harold lift the cloth maybe twenty
times. I can tell if it was a steak knife, a serrated fishing knife, or a
screwdriver. Once I even called it as a Phillips head. I’ve seen enough gunshot
wounds to know whether the bullet was coming or going, and I’m pretty good at
guessing the distance from the shooter, just by looking at the edge of the
entry wound. What I’m saying is, I’ve seen some ugly shit. But Dolores Weston’s
body was right up there.

I was standing on the right side of the autopsy
table, up near her head. I expected her skin would be gray, so that didn’t
freak me out. But I wasn’t expecting what had happened to her head. Or, to be
more precise, what used to be her head. The left side was all caved in, like
she’d gotten it caught in some kind of industrial vice—but only the left side.
The skin was pulped up pretty good, with busted pieces of skull, most no bigger
than a fingernail, pushing out. There was some pale gray goo oozing out of the
skull. That would be brain. The whole mess was held together by bloody ropes of
hair.

But the real freakshow was her left eye. The
eyeball was popped out, dangling an inch or so down toward the head wound. The
ball, pus-yellow with a pebbly texture, was attached by a bunch of red and
yellow veins and connecting cords. Blood was pooled near the bottom of the
eyeball. I’m usually pretty good at holding it together when looking at bodies,
but I could feel my stomach churning around, and I heaved up some acid, which
stung the back of my throat.

My gaze was drawn to Weston’s chest, which was all
carved up, like the guy took a rock or something and started writing on her. I
couldn’t quite make it out, what with all the torn-up skin. But it was
definitely some sort of message.

Harold Breen said, “As you can see, the decedent
has suffered a massive head trauma. The skull sustained a fracture, probably
from a blunt instrument. The trauma blew out her eardrum. You can see the
remnants of the blood flow out of her ear.” He gently lifted some matted hair
with the tip of a pencil.

“The force of the trauma also deformed the eye
cavity on the left side, exerting pressure on the eyeball, causing what is
called globe subluxation: the force of the blow pushed the eyeball out of its
socket. You’ll notice, also, the mydriasis, the excessively dilated pupil,
which was probably caused by the trauma, which could have damaged the iris
sphincter, the muscle that controls the opening and closing of the pupil.

“You’ll note, too, the blood at the bottom of the
eyeball. This is a hyphema, which means that the blood has pooled in the
anterior chamber of the eyeball. Although hyphemas can occur spontaneously,
this one is likely a traumatic hyphema. The murderer might have popped her in
the eye separate from the skull trauma.”

Harold Breen took a deep breath. “Looking down at
the torso, you see a series of contusions on the chest. I’ll let Robin speak to
them in a moment. Although the contusions are approximately one-half to one
centimeter in depth, there was relatively little bleeding. This suggests that
they might have occurred postmortem.” He took another breath. “Robin, do you
want to address the torso?”

“When the body was recovered,” she said, her voice
soft, “she was wearing a cream-colored silk blouse. It appears to have been
torn away, forcibly, popping off the top four buttons. Officers recovered the
buttons about three feet away from the body. You’ll notice some bruising here
and here,” Robin said, pointing to Weston’s shoulders, “which might be from her
bra straps. The guy tore her bra away, ripping it between the two cups,
presumably so he could carve up her chest.

“At the time of death, the victim lost bladder and
bowel control. After cleaning her up, we performed a rape examination. There
was evidence of recent sexual activity, with some tearing of the vaginal wall,
consistent with rape. I started typing the DNA, which should take about
thirty-six hours.”

Chief Murtaugh spoke. “Dr. Breen, I know you
haven’t done the autopsy yet, so you can’t give us any definitive conclusions,
but can you give us your best guess?”

Harold sighed. “With all the usual caveats about
how I might find something surprising when I open her up, I’m sure anybody in
the room here could call this one. The cause of death was likely a blunt
instrument, something like a brick or a big rock. From the extent of the
shattering of the skull, I’d say it was at least five pounds, possibly up to fifteen.
The only reason I’m giving it that upper limit is that if it were any heavier
than that, the guy probably couldn’t have swung it hard enough to do this much
damage.