Just then the vehicle pulled up. She looked up to see Dr. Smidge.
He got out, glared at her, and said, “I told you to stop bringing me work.”
“Well, I was trying to stop bringing you children,” she said, “but I’m not able to stop the flow of work. That’s beyond anybody.”
He gave a sad smile and nodded. He looked down at the victim. “Interesting.” And then he crouched beside him, pulled back his eyelids.
Kate asked, “Petechial hemorrhage?”
“Absolutely. Finger marks all around the neck too. Looks like two hands.”
“That’s not easy,” she said. “Takes a bit of strength to manually strangle someone.”
“No, it isn’t easy. Using something—like a wire, a scarf, anything—would be easier.”
“He is a big guy,” she said. “What is he? Six-one, maybe six-two?”
“Possibly, I’ll know more when I get him on the table.” He stood, sighed. “Interesting time of night for it.”
“Yeah, as in, what was he doing out here? Time of death?”
“Probably not more than a couple hours,” he said looking around. “Which means, at first estimate, knowing you can’t quote me on this, I’ll say since two o’clock.”
“Restaurants and pubs?” she asked, turning to Rodney. “This area, this day of the week, when do they close?”
“At one-thirty a.m.,” he said, “but there are a couple coffee shops that stay open late around the place.”
She nodded. “Good enough. We’ll start knocking on doors and see if anybody saw this.”
“Cameras? We need to check the street cams,” Rodney said, as he stopped to look around.
“Yeah,” she said. “This is an alleyway though, so I’m not sure there will be any coverage.”
“Not far from here is a good restaurant,” the coroner said. “It’s open all night long.”
“That’s good to know. I’ll check it out.”
“It looks like he’s still got particles of fries and hamburger in his mouth,” he said, “and I can smell it on him.”
“I’ll head back to the street and take a look then,” she said. “ID?”
“I’ll check that for you.” He pulled out the wallet from the back pocket of the dead body and handed it to Rodney.
“Ken Roscoe,” Rodney said, and he gave her the driver’s license. She quickly wrote down the number and handed the DL back. “Let me see the rest of that wallet.”
Rodney laid the contents on the victim’s belly, so she could photograph it.
“Cash totaling fifteen eighty-two, one credit card—but it’s expired, at least in his real name—and that’s about it.” She looked up at Rodney. “Like I said, he was down on his luck.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Message received.”
“Doc, does he have his own teeth?”
The doc checked, his finger inside the victim’s mouth and nodded. “Appears to be.”
“And they are in good shape, aren’t they?”
“They are,” he said. “What are you getting at?”