“If she’d been alive, we could have saved her, and all these injuries would have healed. Obviously the vocal cords would be an interesting conundrum to repair, depending on how much time had lapsed before we got her. But medicine has come a very long way.”
“So, cause of death?”
He pointed at the missing right breast. “Besides the fact that it’s got an odd shape, do you notice anything else?”
She bent over, and he pulled back the tissue against the bone, and there was a hole, right through to the chest underneath.
“Bullet?” Then she frowned. “No, what’s that? It’s almost like a—” She thought about it, shook her head. “It’s almost like somebody took a knitting needle and poked it through her chest.”
He looked at her in surprise and then nodded. “Bull’s-eye.”
She stared at him in shock. “Somebody rammed a knitting needle between her ribs and into her heart?”
“Yes, it punctured her heart and went right through into her back.”
“Jesus,” she muttered. “And I suppose…” And she didn’t even finish the sentence because, of course, the poor woman would have been awake—not awake necessarily, but she would have been alive when this was done to her. “That sounds terrible,” she murmured.
“Yes. On top of that, we also have some burns.” He raised one of the deceased’s arms, so that Kate could see the back of the broken wrists. “These are cigarette burns. Found a couple on her cheek, a couple on her hand, a couple on her knees and—a couple on the pubis.”
She looked down to see that, indeed, some pubic hair looked like it had been burned off. “He burned off her pubic hair?” she asked in astonishment.
“Probably wanted to see if it would burn,” he noted bluntly.
“Great.” She raised her hand to her chest.
“So we have a sadist, who wanted to bring maximum pain to this poor woman.”
“That’s what it would look like, yes. But—” She stopped, hesitating.
“But what?” he barked.
“Tox screen?”
“In progress,” he replied. “And we can only hope that she was in some way drugged, but, because of her injuries, she wouldn’t have done any fighting anyway.”
Kate looked at the horribly broken wrists and nodded. “Even if she lifted her arms and tried to flail at him, she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “It does look like her wrists were bound, so she was tied up—at least part of the time. The restraints would have been placed around where the fractures were.”
“Any chance she’d have broken them, trying to get free?”
He looked at her with respect. “It’s possible, except for the fact that these are open fractures.”
“So, what happened?”
“In this case, I would suspect either a slice or a heavy object caused the fractures. The rest of her injuries were drier and less interesting. All it really reveals is that this guy held her for hours, possibly days, getting extreme pleasure in tormenting her.”
When the coroner covered up the woman again, Kate finally stepped back, disposing of her gloves and gown. She stood at the doorway, her hands in her pockets, and looked at the rows and rows of bodies stored here. “Why did you choose this one?” He ignored her for the moment, and she realized something was important here. “Dr. Smidge,” she called out, her voice slightly sharper.
At that, several other people in the same room lifted their heads and looked at her. Smidge looked up and glared.
She shook her head. “Here or your office.”
His eyebrows shot up, and his glare heightened into almost fierce proportions.
Beside her, Rodney whispered, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Cool it, kid.”
But the doctor stepped back, took off his coat and his gloves, and followed her out to his office. When they got in there, Rodney stepped up close, not wanting to be left out. Dr. Smidge looked at him; his glare enough to force Rodney to immediately back up. Smidge let her into his office, as she shut the door on Rodney.