Fatal Care (12 page)

Lori nodded. “I think I did for most of the organs, but it wasn’t easy. There’s so much putrefaction present after a week in the water.”

“Did you get enough lung tissue for us to look at under the microscope?”

“More than enough.”

“So now all we have to do is find the victim’s latest skull X rays.”

“I’ve got them,” Lori said. “They’re up on the view box in the big autopsy room. And I’ve got Harry Crowe ready to saw through the guy’s skull for us.”

Joanna looked over at the preserved fetuses. “Can we wait a while on that?”

“We’d better not,” Lori advised. “Harry is already pissing and moaning because he had to stay so late.”

They went out and down a long, empty corridor. From behind a closed door they heard Elvis Presley music, followed by high-pitched laughter. Then Elvis came back on.

Lori asked, “Did you find anything in the immigrant from the bottom of the pit?”

Joanna shook her head. “There was nothing new. He had a tattoo of a cross on his arm, a mouthful of metal teeth, and some deep calluses on his hands. He did heavy work, that’s for sure.” Joanna thought back to the victim’s muscular arms and wondered what he had to lift to develop them. “Did we get back the analysis on the material I scraped out of the calluses?”

“It came back this morning, but I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be.” Lori took out a stack of file cards and quickly flipped through them. Then she flipped through them a second time before finding the card she wanted. “They found some unidentifiable threads and some scattered bits of copper in the callus. Some of the copper bits were coated with a plastic-like material.”

Joanna concentrated on the findings, wondering if the threads were from gloves the man wore at work. No, she quickly decided. If he had worn gloves he wouldn’t have developed calluses. “The copper is the key here. Isolated bits of copper suggest he could have been a plumber or pipe-fitter. They use copper pipes and tubing.”

Lori squinted an eye, unconvinced. “He could have worked in a factory, making computer parts or something.”

“No, no,” Joanna corrected her. “Remember, this man had muscular arms. He did heavy labor. A plumber would fit better here.”

“But what about the pieces of copper covered with plastic?”

“That takes us down a different road,” Joanna said. “The plastic coating on the bits might represent copper wiring with insulation, and that’s something an electrician might use.”

“So he could be an electrician or a plumber.”

“Or both.”

“And they also found grease embedded in his callus,” Lori went on, turning the file card over. “You know, like some kind of lubricant.”

“Like a mechanic might use?”

Lori shrugged. “I guess.”

“So,” Joanna concluded, “he could be a plumber or an electrician or a mechanic or a jack-of-all-trades.”

“Great,” Lori groaned. “That narrows our suspect list down to about a half-million.”

They came to the swinging double doors of the main autopsy room. As they pushed their way inside, Joanna said, “Later tonight I’d like you to remove every callus that man has. I want them all analyzed thoroughly. In particular, I need to know the source of that copper. See if they can determine whether it came from wire or pipe. And I want them to define and characterize that grease. We need to know what it’s used for.”

Lori nodded as she committed the instructions to memory. But she was also thinking that again she’d missed the boat. And again her inexperience had cost her. She had failed to follow one of Joanna Blalock’s cardinal rules. Milk every clue for everything it’s worth because it may be the only clue you’ll find. Lori had accepted the analysis of the callus at face value, not looking beyond the findings and interpreting their full meaning.

“Is anything wrong?” Joanna asked.

“Just trying to get my brain to click on all cylinders.”

“You’re doing fine.”

As they approached a second set of swinging doors, Lori checked the bottom of the index card. “They also detected something interesting in the shoe box found at the crime scene.”

“You mean besides formaldehyde?”

“They found two strands of blond hair in that shoe box.”

Joanna stopped in her tracks. “From a female?”

“They couldn’t tell for certain because the hair was broken off,” Lori answered. “But the strands were really long, so they think it came from a female.”

“So somebody else had gotten into that shoe box,” Joanna deduced.

“Maybe he had a girlfriend.”

“The first thing we have to do is establish beyond any doubt that this hair came from a female,” Joanna said, her mind racing ahead. “I want you to go over the victim’s clothes with a vacuum cleaner. We need some intact strands of blond hair that can be analyzed for gender. And while you’re at it, look for anything feminine in his clothing. Things like lipstick or perfume aromas.”

“This blonde has got to be involved here, doesn’t she?”

“Right up to her teeth.”

They pushed on into the main autopsy room. It was deserted except for Harry Crowe, who was standing beside a bloated corpse. He was impatiently tapping his foot.

“Why the hell do I have to wait to open up this guy’s skull?” Harry blurted out. “I could have him opened one-two-three. But no! I must wait for you to show me how to do it.”

“This is a special case,” Joanna said placatingly.

Harry spat something off his tongue. “A corpse is a corpse.”

“But this one has a skull fracture that I don’t want you to saw through.”

Joanna moved over to the X-ray view box on the wall and carefully studied the multiple views of the skull. The skull fracture was now clearly evident. It was located high up on the posterior aspect of the parietal bone near the crown of the head. Using a ruler, Joanna measured the distance between the fracture and the edge of the mastoid bone. Twelve centimeters. She went over to the corpse and again measured the distance before marking the area of the fracture with a green dye. Well beneath the green spot, she painted on purple dye.

She turned to Harry. “You saw through at the level of the purple dye.”

Harry studied the area he was going to incise. “It’s too low.”

“Do what I tell you.”

“Yeah. Right,” Harry sneered at her. “And you can be the one to put his face back together afterward.”

“Do exactly as I’ve instructed you,” Joanna said slowly and deliberately, trying to control her temper.

Harry Crowe cursed under his breath and reached for the electric saw. Once again he studied the area he’d have to saw through. Too low, he thought, too low. The man’s face would end up even more disfigured when the top of his skull was replaced and the scalp pulled back over it. But who the hell cared? The guy already looked like a blowfish from spending a week at the bottom of the sea.

Harry tested the edge of the power saw with his thumb, making Joanna wait longer, knowing it would irritate her even more. Finally he switched on the saw. It made a loud, high-pitched noise. He smiled to himself, pleased with her irritation.

“This guy’s skull is tough,” Harry said, and feigned pushing down harder on the saw. “It’s like steel.”

No, it’s not, Joanna wanted to say. If anything, the bone would be softer because salt water leeched out calcium. Harry was just prolonging the process to make her wait longer.

Joanna leaned against the wall and briefly studied Harry’s features. He was a short, stocky man, totally bald, with thin lips and very dark eyes that looked like BBs. In his case, Joanna thought, appearances weren’t deceiving. He looked every bit as mean as he really was.

The screeching noise of the saw abruptly stopped. Harry worked his fingers between the cut edges of the skull and pulled. The top of the skull came off with a loud pop.

“There,” he announced. “You can put his head back together when you’re done. I’m out of here.”

Lori watched Harry go through the swinging doors, and then she gave him the finger. “What an asshole! I don’t understand how you can put up with him.”

“He’s an asshole, all right,” Joanna agreed. “But he’s a very competent asshole.”

Joanna reached down for the detached upper portion of the skull. “Now let’s see if we can piece together the death of Mr. Edmond Rabb.”

Lori snapped on a pair of gloves and focused her mind away from Harry Crowe and onto Edmond Rabb. She glanced down at the corpse, thinking that ten days ago Rabb was living the life everybody dreamed of. He had been a venture capitalist worth untold millions who enjoyed the best of everything. Now he was a lump of putrid flesh. She saw Joanna examining the detached piece of skull with a magnifying glass and asked, “Do you see anything?”

Joanna slowly nodded. “A through-and-through fracture of the parietal bone. And there’s blood around the site, which means the fracture occurred while he was still alive.”

Lori moved in for a closer look. “But that fracture didn’t cause his death. Drowning did. Remember, his lungs were filled with froth and mucus, which is characteristic of saltwater submersion.”

“I know,” Joanna said. “What I’m trying to decipher now is how he got into the salt water to begin with.”

Lori shrugged. “He accidentally fell off his yacht.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Lori stared at the skull, wondering if Joanna had uncovered some subtle clue that everybody else had missed. But what? Everything pointed to an accidental death. She decided to summarize aloud what she knew about the case. Maybe the clue would pop out. “According to eyewitnesses, he was last seen standing at the rear of his yacht. He was leaning against the railing with a drink in his hand. The sea was calm that night. Approximately ten minutes later he couldn’t be found. The assumption was he accidentally fell overboard.

“Why no screams or yells for help?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe he hit his head on the railing as he fell overboard. That would explain the fracture and the absence of any yells for help.” Lori nodded to herself. “That would fit.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Joanna said at once.

“Why not?”

“The position of the skull fracture.”

Lori wrinkled her brow, concentrating on the clue. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“When he struck his head, do you think he was falling forward or backward?”

“I’d guess backward, because that’s more likely to cause a head injury.”

“If that were the case, he would have hit the back of his head and the fracture would have involved the occipital bone—which it didn’t,” Joanna explained. “And had he fallen forward and struck his head, the fracture would have been in the frontal or temporal area—which it wasn’t.” Joanna held up the detached piece of skull and pointed to the green dye. “The fracture site was very near the crown.”

“How do you think it got there?”

“I think somebody whacked him,” Joanna said matter-of-factly. “As a rule of thumb, homicidal skull fractures are almost always located at or near the crown. Victims are usually hit on top of the head, you see. Accidental fractures are located elsewhere.”

“That may all be true,” Lori agreed reluctantly. “But I think it’s going to be impossible to prove that this guy didn’t die accidentally.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Joanna said, and placed the segment of skull down. “I want you to make sections of the fracture site and the tissue around it. Then have them examined under routine and electron microscopy.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that shouldn’t be there.”

Joanna lifted Edmond Rabb’s brain and pulled back the dura mater, exposing a pool of blood in the parietal area. “Jesus! He really got whacked good.”

Lori stood on tiptoes and looked over Joanna’s shoulder. “A big-ass subdural hematoma.”

“Right beneath the fracture site.”

“So our man gets conked on the head, which fractures his skull and causes the subdural vessels to rupture,” Lori summarized. “Then he’s pushed over the side and drowns—and we can’t prove a damn thing. In a court of law, his death would still be considered an accidental drowning. Right?”

“I guess,” Joanna said wearily, and handed Lori the corpse’s brain. “Would you mind weighing the brain and sectioning it for me?”

“Not at all.”

Lori expertly sliced the cerebral hemispheres apart and examined their glistening convoluted folds. “A multimillionaire’s brain looks the same as everybody else’s, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Joanna said absently, still thinking about the traumatized area on the skull. Rabb was a tall man at six feet two and was struck near the crown of the head. The killer would have to be at least Rabb’s height to land that blow. Unless Rabb was leaning over the railing at the time of the attack. Then anyone five feet or taller could have done it. Joanna wondered what type of weapon was used. She heard Lori asking a question. “What was that?”

“Why would somebody want to kill this guy?” Lori asked again, rapidly sectioning the brain.

For money, love, or power, Joanna thought at once. According to Jake Sinclair, those motives accounted for virtually every murder ever committed. And when it came to millionaires, the motive had to be money. “For his millions,” Joanna said aloud.

“That would be my guess, too.”

Joanna leaned against the wall, so tired she could barely stand. The wall clock said 9:20. The drowning victim would have to be her last case of the day. Her fatigue was growing by the minute, and soon she wouldn’t be able to think at all. But her workload was still so stacked up she’d have to work through the weekend just to make a dent in it. The fetuses in the bottles hadn’t even been looked at, and pressure for answers was coming from all sides. The police, the news media, church groups. And everybody wanted answers now.

“Done,” Lori announced.

Joanna pushed herself away from the wall. “Let’s go take a peek at those fetuses.”

Lori glanced at the wall clock and gave Joanna an odd look. “You want to start on them now?”

“I only want to take a quick look,” Joanna said. “I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow morning, and I can’t just tell them that those fetuses are still in their bottles sitting on a shelf.”

“I’ve never done an autopsy on a tiny fetus,” Lori admitted. “How do you do it?”