Terri Brand’s body was already laid out naked on the steel table, but Bresco was just setting up his tools when Mac entered. The medical examiner waved him over to the containers of masks and gowns by the door. Mac covered up and adjusted a paper mask over his face. Breathing through the mask in the already heavy atmosphere of the room was annoying, but regulations were strictly enforced in these days of SARS and H1N1 and who knew what other lethal germs.
Mac moved to a good vantage point near the coroner. Bresco turned on his recorder, switched on the table lights, and bent over the body. He hesitated a second, then turned to glance at Mac. “This looks familiar.”
“You tell me.”
Bresco nodded and went back to his work. “The body is a Caucasian woman in her mid-twenties, of slightly underweight body condition…” he began.
Mac listened as Bresco went through his exam. Terri had been manually strangled, by a person whose hands were of average size for a man. Both hands were used. The hyoid bone was fractured and the larynx crushed, suggesting a significant amount of hand strength. There was evidence of sexual activity. Bresco collected samples.
“Do you think she was raped?” Mac asked.
“Nothing points that way,” Bresco reported. “There’s no tearing or bruising present. Can’t rule it out, but there’s a good chance the sex was consensual. Or possibly she was drugged, or convinced to hold still and not fight, perhaps threatened with a weapon.”
He pointed out bruising on the woman’s arms. “That was ante-mortem, but not by much. There’s no skin under the nails, no sign she clawed at her attacker. It’s just a guess, but I’m speculating he kneeled on her arms while he strangled her, to pin her down.”
Mac shook his head to get rid of the picture that created. Bresco finished his external exam and began to cut. Mac made himself watch and listen.
“The stab wound is unusual,” Bresco said eventually, when he reached the woman’s chest. “The blow was definitely after death, probably by about three to five minutes. The heart had stopped, but there was still some liquid blood released into the chest. The victim was stabbed once, cleanly, with no redirection or movement of the weapon. The blade is triangular, about one centimeter each side at the base, tapering to a point that is not very sharp. More like a spike than a knife, but there’s the imprint of a narrow hilt on the skin at the point of entry. Total length, about thirteen centimeters, or five inches. It was long enough to penetrate the left atrium of the heart. The blow would have been fatal, if the victim had not already been dead.”
“I don’t know if you remember…” Mac began.
“I did the autopsy on Kowalski,” Bresco interrupted. “I remember it very well. You’ll get your DNA on the semen here too, and if it doesn’t match, that will mean the guy she had sex with wasn’t the killer, because everything else matches. Same unusual blade, same blow, the strangulation, same hand position. Kowalski didn’t have the bruises on the arms, but her blood-alcohol level was so high, I speculated she was unconscious when she was killed. I’d swear in court this was the same guy. I’ll tell you something else. I think you should look really hard for similar priors, because I don’t think you’d get a match this perfect without practice. Maybe this guy has been stabbing his knife into cadavers, but I’m betting Kowalski wasn’t the first time he’d done this.”
Damn it. Mac didn’t say it aloud, didn’t need to. Bresco turned back to his work.
Chapter 3
Tony straightened up from bending over a table in the teen center for LGBTQ youth and stretched out his back. The boy he was tutoring took the opportunity to push his book away and yawn loudly.
“Am I boring you, Justin?” Tony asked.
“No, Mr. Hart,” the boy asserted, eyes wide and innocent. “I’m just a little tired. And this Animal Farm book is whacked, you know. I mean, talking pigs! What’s with this guy?”
Tony thought about trying to defend the genius of George Orwell, and gave it up as a lost cause. “Whacked or not, it’s on your summer-school reading list,” he said tartly. “So you can read it with my help or without. It’s all the same to me.”
“No, I need the help,” Justin insisted. “I just didn’t get much sleep last night. I’ll listen better.”
Tony eyed the boy sideways. He did look tired, with purple circles under his eyes. Orwell could wait. He was here for mentoring as much as tutoring, after all. “Why the sleep deprivation, Justin?” Probably just too much video gaming, but…
Justin gave him a minimal shrug and looked away.
Okay, so maybe not gaming. Tony knew he couldn’t push these kids, but if he made himself available, they would sometimes talk.
“Our little boy got himself tossed out of the house,” Carter drawled from across the room. “Guess he’s not sleeping so good.”
Tony could feel the attention of the other boys on him, waiting for his response.
“That true?” he asked Justin mildly. Another one-shouldered twitch did not deny it. “Where are you staying then?”
“Around. With friends.”
“What do you want me to do? I can try to talk to your folks.”
“No,” Justin said quickly. “Don’t.”
“You’re under eighteen,” Tony pointed out. “They can’t just kick you out and wash their hands of you. They have obligations.”
“They’ll let me back eventually. They did before. My mom’ll work on my dad and he’ll figure something out, like maybe he’ll let me back if I ditch the nail polish.” The boy eyed the chipped black of his fingernails. “Then I’ll be okay for a while.”
“He kicked you out for your nail polish?”
“Nah, he came home early and caught me on the house phone with my boyfriend.” Justin shook his head. “It was his own fault. If he hadn’t taken away my cell phone, I wouldn’t have been saying those things on his precious line that he pays for in his name.”
Tony nodded. “Are you safe right now? Wherever you’re staying?”
“Yeah. Just, my friend’s away for the weekend, and the guy I went to hang with couldn’t let me stay the night, so I hung out at a Wal-Mart. But I had to keep moving around, ’cause they watch you on the cameras and kick you out if it doesn’t look like you’re shopping, so I couldn’t sleep.”
“A Wal-Mart?” Tony repeated.
“Yeah. Twenty-four-hour air-conditioned comfort.” Justin grinned. “Complete with a MacDonald’s.” As he turned to glance at the other boys, the sleeve of his shirt rode up to reveal a purpling bruise below his elbow. Tony put a hand on the boy’s wrist and took a closer look.
“Did your dad do that?” Damn, he was going to have to report this situation, even if it damaged their trust in him.
“No.” Justin jerked his arm free. “Don’t worry. It’s cool. That was just my brother. He was frustrated and he got a little rough, but he didn’t mean it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh, yeah.” Justin laughed humorlessly. “It’s pretty stupid, you know. My dad tells my brother to teach me to wrestle, ’cause he’s on the team. Like it’ll make me less of a fag, y’know. He’s clueless. There’s more gay guys on the wrestling team than any other sport in high school. Hell, my boyfriend used to wrestle. My brother hates being put in between like that. But he didn’t mean to hurt me. He’s a good guy. He’s the one who knows where I am, for when my dad cools down.”