The pages were, indeed, full of cramped inky handwriting. I saw a diagram of a generalized female body, upon which were marked the specific injuries Clara had suffered. The strangulation was indicated by an ugly slash mark in red ink.
Subject: caucasian female, 28 years old.
Cause of death: anoxic encephalopathy as a result of strangulation.
No evidence of defensive wounds.
Abrasions on throat in pattern of horizontal circumscription indicate the use of a ligature. Internal damage to tissues of neck indicates moderate to strong level of force applied to ligature. Hyoid bone fractured.
Superficially incised curvilinear abrasions also present on throat, likely from victim’s own fingernails while trying to remove ligature.
Extensive petechia visible above strangulation point, as well as conjunctiva of the eyes.
“Does it all make sense so far?” Jack asked gently.
“I—I think so,” I said, my voice shaking slightly. “Curvilinear abrasions . . . they’re saying that my sister clawed at her throat, trying to get the cord off.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “That’s right.”
I took a deep breath. My stomach was heaving. Clara had been terrified of suffocating. That’s what she used to say, when she had an asthma attack: I’m choking, I’m choking. She would curl up in a ball and clutch her throat and gasp and gasp for air. To think that she died that way, desperately trying to breathe . . . I would have preferred almost anything else.
I was about to turn the page, but Jack put his hand over mine to stop me.
“Wait,” he said. “There’s something else . . . I read the report last night, when I got home. Did you know that Clara was pregnant?”
“Preg—she was pregnant?”
Shaking off his hand, I turned the page, scanning down.
At time of death, subject was pregnant. Examination of fetus indicates approximate 12-16 weeks duration. Fetus left in place. Child was female.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me before I buried them?” I demanded, furious.
“I don’t know if the sheriff had the coroner’s report yet,” Jack said. “And if he did . . . when the victim is unmarried, we often don’t tell the family. It just makes things worse for everyone.”
“You had no right,” I hissed.
My brain was in an uproar.
Clara had been pregnant.
That meant she had a boyfriend after all. If she lived, she would have had a daughter. I would have been an aunt.
At three or four months along, Clara surely knew about the baby. Why hadn’t she told me? Was she embarrassed? She should have known that I would never have judged her.
“I’m sorry,” Jack was saying. “I know it’s a terrible thing to find out.”
“That she was pregnant?” I snapped.
“No,” Jack said, holding up his hands to ward off my fury. “I meant it’s terrible that the baby died too.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my clenched-up stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to be so touchy.”
“I understand,” Jack said with a sympathetic look. “It’s your sister.”
I dropped my eyes to read the remainder of the report.
Gastric contents unable to be examined. Subject may not have eaten that day, or may have vomited previously.
Animal hair found on subject’s shoe. Could be canine.
Trace amounts of soot found in subject’s hair and on her right arm.
Liver temperature taken at 4:28 pm, March 2nd. Time of death estimated between 11:00 am—1:00 pm, March 2nd.
“Why such a wide range of time?” I asked, pointing it out to Jack.
“It’s just an estimate,” he said. “Ruby found the body—found Clara I mean—at about 12:40. It took the paramedics another twenty minutes to get there—they were out on another call. But I would guess she was killed close to 12:30, because people had been in and out of that hallway frequently, and Ruby said she was still warm when she touched her, as warm as you or I. She thought Clara might still be alive until Lucille Verranski checked for a pulse.”
“Lucille . . .”
“Clara’s makeup artist.”
“Oh. But nobody saw or heard anything.”
“No one’s admitted to it so far,” Jack said. “Granted, we could only interview the crew that afternoon. Heller was putting pressure on Sheriff Biscailuz to get the cops out of the studio. We roped everything off. It shut down a bunch of other sets that were filming, not just Arabian Nights. Anyway, now that I’m on lead, I want to go back and pin down exactly who was there and what they were doing when Clara was killed.”
“So you’re officially assigned?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but don’t get too excited—it’s just me, and then Sergeant Palmer part-time. And Palmer’s an idiot.”
Sergeant Palmer was the one who called me in Chicago. He definitely hadn’t made the best impression on me, bumbling through his explanation of what had happened to my sister.
“I’m starting work today,” I said. “On set. What do you think I should keep an eye out for?”
“Dynamics,” Jack said. “Who seems shifty, who seems uncomfortable around you. Who’s whispering together, who’s avoiding you. But don’t be too obvious about it. Better if nobody knows that you’re looking. Act like you’re just there to finish your sister’s movie.”
I nodded. I’d been thinking the same thing. I had already told my real purpose to Lillie LaShay, but Lillie wasn’t working on Arabian Nights, so hopefully it would stay between us.
“Well,” I said, “I’d better go. I don’t want to be late. Thank you for bringing this, Sergeant Woods.”
I handed the autopsy folder back to him.
“No problem,” he said. “Keep in touch, and I’ll do the same.”
I arrived at the Paramount Pictures studio lot at 8:25 am. Ruby was already waiting for me by the security guard’s booth. Today the guard was reading Of Mice and Men and eating a sandwich.
Ruby was wearing wide-leg wool pants with braces, which I supposed was her usual attire for work—more practical than a skirt. She had her straw-colored hair pulled into two childish plaits, and she wore her round-rimmed spectacles as usual.
“What will we be doing today?” I asked her nervously.
“No filming until tomorrow,” Ruby said. “Today we’re just going to get you ready.”
“You mean, rehearse lines or something?” I said.
“Not exactly,” Ruby said.
We walked past a couple of productions in progress: one set in an artificial kitchen, where all the food looked impossibly glossy and bright, and another made to look like an art studio, complete with canvases in the slightly distorted Expressionist style I had seen in galleries in Chicago.
It was incredible how these sets looked like a normal room, but completely open on one side to allow for the movement of the crew and the cameras. It was like a dollhouse, but life-sized.
Each shoot had its own distinct crew working rapidly and efficiently together. Ruby explained that most of the time, the crew stayed together through multiple productions. They might swap a member here or there, but when a crew was working well together, they tried to maintain consistency as much as possible.