Fallen (31 page)

“We don’t need these.” Amanda took the soda cans and dropped them into the trash. “Dr. Linton?”

Sara led them down the corridor toward the elevators, feeling like a lifetime had passed since she’d made the same walk this morning. A loaded gurney rolled by, EMTs shouting stats, doctors giving orders. Sara held out her arm, guiding Will back against the wall so that the patient could get past. Her hand hovered just in front of his tie. She could feel the silk material sway against her fingertips. He was wearing a suit, his normal work attire, but without the usual vest. His jacket was dark blue, the shirt a lighter shade of the same color.

The cop. Sara had forgotten the cop. “I didn’t—”

“Hold that thought,” Amanda said, as if she was afraid the walls had ears.

Sara fumed at herself as they waited for the elevator. How had she forgotten about the cop? What was wrong with her?

The doors opened. The elevator was packed. It took an interminable amount of time for the old pulleys and lifts to groan into action. They went down a floor and most of the people exited. Two young orderlies rode with them to the sub-basement. They got off and headed toward the stairwell, probably for an illicit tryst.

Amanda waited until they were well beyond earshot. “What is it?”

“There was a man when we came in from the Dumpster. I nearly ran him over. I told him to get out of the way, and he flashed a badge. It looked like a badge. I’m not sure anymore. He acted like a cop.”

“In what way?”

“He acted like he had every right to question me, and he was irritated when I didn’t answer immediately.” Sara gave her a meaningful look.

“Sounds like a cop to me,” Amanda wryly admitted. “What did he want?”

“To know whether or not the patient was going to make it. I told him maybe, even though it was obvious …” Sara let her voice trail off, willing herself to remember. “He was wearing a dark suit, charcoal. White shirt. He was very thin, almost gaunt. He reeked of cigarette smoke. I could smell it even after he left.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

She shook her head.

“White? Black?”

“White. Gray hair. He was older. He looked older.” She put her hand to her face. “His cheeks were sunken. His eyes were heavily lidded.” She remembered something else. “He was wearing a hat. A baseball hat.”

“Black?” Will asked.

“Blue,” she said. “Atlanta Braves.”

“We’ll probably get some nice images of the top of it from the security cameras,” Amanda commented. “We’ll have to share this information with the APD. They may want to see if you can work with a sketch artist.”

Sara would do whatever it took. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember earlier. I don’t know what—”

“You were in shock.” Will seemed ready to say more. He glanced at Amanda, then indicated the double doors at the other end of the hallway. He said, “I think it’s this way.”

In the morgue, Junior and Larry were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were two gurneys, each with a body, each with a white
sheet covering the dead. Sara assumed one was the man she had found outside by the Dumpster and the other was the man who had shot the first, then tried to kill her.

There was an older woman leaning against the door to the walk-in freezer. She looked up from her BlackBerry as they walked into the room. Her hospital badge was tucked into her pants pocket. No white lab coat, just a well-tailored black pantsuit. She was clearly on the administration side of the hospital. She was older, more gray than black in her hair. She pushed away from the freezer and walked over. Her posture was ramrod straight, her sizable chest out in front of her like the prow of a ship.

She didn’t stop for introductions. She pulled a small spiral-bound notebook out of her jacket pocket and read, “The shooter’s name is Franklin Warren Heeney. APD found his wallet on him. Local boy, lives in Tucker with his parents. Dropped out of Perimeter College his sophomore year. No employment records. No adult arrest history, but at thirteen, he spent six months in juvie for breaking windows. He has one child, a daughter, six years old, who lives with an aunt out in Snellville. The baby mama is in county lockup for shoplifting and a Baggie of meth they found in her purse. That’s all I could get on him.” She indicated the other body. “Marcellus Benedict Estevez. As I said on the phone, his wallet was found in the trash by the Dumpster. I assume you’ve already looked into him?” Amanda nodded, and the woman closed her notebook. “That’s all I have for now. Nothing else has come down on the wire.”

Amanda nodded again. “Thank you.”

“I bought you an hour before the body boys come. Dr. Linton, the films you ordered for Estevez are in the transport packet. I’ve gathered together some tools that might be useful. I’m sorry it can’t be more.”

She had done plenty. Sara looked over the four Mayo trays laid out beside the bodies. Whoever the woman was, she had some medical knowledge and was high enough up the Grady food chain to raid the supply closet without setting off alarms. “Thank you.”

The woman nodded her goodbyes, then left the room.

Will’s tone was sharp when he asked Amanda, “Let me guess, one of your old gals?”

Amanda ignored him. “Dr. Linton, if we could get started?”

Sara had to force herself to move or she would’ve just stood rooted to the floor until the building fell down around her. There was a pack of sterile gloves hanging from a cleat on the wall. She took out a pair and forced them over her sweating hands. The powder rolled into tiny balls that stuck to her palm like dough.

Without preamble, she pulled back the sheet covering the first body, revealing Marcellus Estevez, the man she had found by the Dumpster. He had two closely spaced bullet holes in his forehead. Powder burns tattooed the skin. She smelled cordite, which was impossible considering the man had been shot hours ago.

Amanda said, “Two rounds to the center of the forehead, just like our drive-by at the warehouse.”

Will’s voice was low. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m fine.” Sara forced herself to get on with it, starting with the easy stuff. “He’s approximately twenty-five years of age,” she mumbled. “Five-eight or nine. Around one hundred eighty pounds.” She pressed open his eyes, feeling herself fall into the routine of examination. “Brown. Jaundiced. His wound was septic. Necropsy will probably show infiltration into the larger organs. He was in systemic shutdown when we found him.” She rolled down the sheet so she could look at the belly again, this time with an eye toward forensic evaluation rather than treatment.

The man was nude; his clothes had been cut off when they’d brought him into the ER. Sara could clearly see the penetrating stab wound in the lower left quadrant of his abdomen. She pressed on either side of the cut to see if she could discern the path of the blade. “The small intestines were pierced. It looks like the knife went in at an upward angle. Right-handed thrust from a supine position.”

Amanda asked, “He was on top of her?”

“I would assume. We’re talking about Evelyn here, right?” Will
was still being stoic, but Amanda nodded. “The blade entered at an oblique angle to the abdominal Langer’s lines, or the natural direction of the skin. If I reorient the edges like this”—she twisted the skin into the position it had been in when the man was stabbed—“you can see the point of penetration suggests Evelyn was on her back, most likely on the floor, with her attacker on top of her. He was slightly bent at the waist. The knife went in like this.” Sara reached for a scalpel on the tray, but changed her mind and grabbed a pair of scissors instead. She illustrated the action, holding her hand down at her hip with the scissors angled upward. “It was more defensive than deliberate. Maybe they struggled and fell at the same time. The knife went in. The man rolled over while the blade was still lodged—you can see how the wound is incised significantly more at the lateral edge, indicating movement.”

“Kitchen knife?” Amanda asked.

“Statistically, it’s the most likely weapon, and the struggle took place in the kitchen, so it makes sense. They’ll have to do a comparison at the ME’s office to be sure. Did they find the weapon at the scene?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Are you sure about this? She was on her back?”

Sara could see that Amanda was not pleased with the evaluation. She wanted her friend to be a fighter, not someone who got lucky. “The majority of fatal stab wounds are in the left chest region. If you want to kill someone, you go for the heart, overhanded, straight into the chest. This was defensive.” She indicated the man’s sliced palm. “But Evelyn didn’t go easily. At some point, she must’ve come at him directly, because he grabbed the blade of the knife.”

Amanda seemed only slightly placated by this information. “Is there anything in his stomach?”

Sara reached under the gurney and pulled out the transportation packet destined for the Fulton County medical examiner. Krakauer had filled in most of the information while Sara was being interviewed by the police. The form was standard. The ME performing
the autopsy needed to know drugs on board, procedures followed, which marks came from the hospital and which had more nefarious origins. Sara found a thermal reproduction of the X-rays on the last page.

She said, “The belly looks clear of any foreign objects. They’ll know for sure when they cut him open, but I’m assuming that the amount of heroin we’re talking about, something worth dying for, would be easy to spot.”

Will cleared his throat. He seemed reluctant as he asked, “Would Evelyn have a lot of blood on her from stabbing this guy?”

“It’s not likely. Most of the bleeding happened inside the belly, even after the knife was pulled out. There’s the defensive wound on his hand, but the ulnar and radial arteries are intact and none of the digital arteries were compromised. If the cut on his hand was deeper or if one of the fingers was sliced open or off, you could expect a significant amount of blood loss. But that’s not the case with Estevez, so I’m guessing Evelyn would’ve had a minimal amount of blood on her clothes.”

Will said, “There was a lot of blood on the floor. You could see footprints back and forth across the tiles.”

“How big was the space?”

“Kitchen sized,” he said. “Bigger than yours, but not by much, and enclosed. The house is older, ranch-style.”

Sara thought about it. “I’d have to see the crime scene photos, but I’m fairly certain that if there was enough blood on the floor to show a struggle, that blood didn’t come from Estevez’s hand or belly. At least not all of it.”

“Could Estevez just get up on his own and walk off after sustaining his injuries?”

“Not without help. Any type of damage to the abdominal wall makes it difficult to breathe, let alone move.” Sara put her hand to her stomach. “Think about how many muscles have to fire just to sit up.”

Amanda asked Will, “What are you getting at?”

“I’m just wondering who struggled with Evelyn if this guy couldn’t get up after being stabbed and there wasn’t a lot of blood from his wound.”

Sara followed his logic. “You think Evelyn was injured.”

“Maybe. They did blood typing on scene, but they didn’t look at all of it, and DNA won’t be back for another few days.” He shrugged. “If Evelyn was hurt, and Estevez didn’t bleed much, that could explain the extra blood.”

“I’m sure if she’s injured it’s nothing serious.” Amanda waved away Will’s theory as if swatting a fly. Any logical person would’ve already accepted the very real possibility that Evelyn Mitchell’s chances of survival were very slim considering how much time had elapsed. Amanda seemed to be holding on to the opposite theory.

Sara wasn’t going to be the one to tell her otherwise.

There was a large magnifying glass on one of the trays. Sara pulled down the overhead light and went back to the examination, checking the dead man head to toe for trace evidence, needle marks, anything unusual that might lead them to a clue. When it was time to roll him over, Will put on a pair of surgical gloves and helped flip the body.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Amanda said with her usual flair for under statement.

Estevez had a large tattoo of an angel on his back. The image covered the width of his shoulders and reached the bottom of his sacrum, and was so intricate that it more closely resembled a carving. “Gabriel,” Sara said. “The archangel.”

Will asked, “How do you know that?”

She pointed to the horn in the angel’s mouth. “There’s no biblical foundation, but some religions believe that Judgment Day comes when Gabriel blows his horn.” Sara knew that Will had never been to church. “It’s the sort of thing they teach kids in Sunday school. And it tracks with his name—Marcellus Benedict. I believe those are the names of two different popes.”

Amanda asked, “How recently would you say this tattoo was worked on?”

The skin at the small of his back was still irritated from the needle. “A week, maybe five days?” She leaned in closer to look at the scrollwork. “This was done in stages. Whoever did this took a long time. Probably months. It’s not the kind of thing you’d forget, and I imagine it’d be very expensive.”

Will held the dead man’s hand in his. “Did you see this under the fingernails?”

“I saw they’re dirty,” she admitted. “That’s fairly typical for a man this age. I can’t do any scrapings. The ME’s office would have a fit and anything I found would be inadmissible because we haven’t established the chain of evidence.”

Will put his nose close to the man’s fingers. “It smells like oil to me.”

Sara smelled for herself. “I can’t tell. The police told me that they checked the outside security cameras. They’re not static. They sweep back and forth across the back lot, which the bad guys obviously knew because they managed not to get caught leaving the body. The time stamp says that Estevez was by the Dumpster at least twelve hours. The smell could be anything.” She rolled over the hand to show Will. “This is more interesting. Estevez obviously worked with his hands. There’s a hardening of the skin on the ball of the thumb and here on the side of the index finger. He held some kind of tool for long periods of time. It would’ve had some weight to it and moved around a bit.”