Matt was impressed with the ME’s thoroughness and compassion. Dr. Jones treated the remains in her care like patients.
“Time of death?” Bree asked.
Dr. Jones frowned at the body. “My best estimate based on the condition of the body is that she’s been dead at least three days but no more than five. I’m giving a time of death between noon Thursday and noon Saturday.”
“Could you determine a cause of death?” Bree asked.
“Yes.” Dr. Jones faced the body. “First of all, she did not drown. There was no froth in the mouth, nostrils, or trachea. No distension of the lungs. But more importantly, she was dead long before she went into the water.”
Bree’s posture stiffened. “How long?”
“Long enough for lividity to become fixed.” Dr. Jones pointed to a purple stain that ran the length of the corpse’s side. At the corpse’s hip, a long, thin white mark was embedded in the dark purple. “Do you see this impression?”
When the heart stopped beating, gravity caused blood to pool in the lowest parts of the body. This process, known as lividity or livor mortis, usually became fixed around six to twelve hours after death, although being submerged in cold water would have slowed the process. Sharp, pale imprints were the result of dermal pressure and usually meant the body had been lying on an object in the hours immediately after death. The body’s weight pressed down on the object and pushed the settling blood to the surrounding tissue.
Dr. Jones continued. “Normally, bodies that are submerged after death show lividity in the upper torso, head, and hands because of the position in which they tend to float.” She demonstrated, curling her body forward and dangling her hands and head.
“So, the presence of a side-lying lividity pattern is atypical,” Bree said.
“Yes. Now, it’s possible she was lodged against a boulder or caught in an eddy.” Dr. Jones waved a hand along the edge of the purple stain like Vanna White pointing out a vowel. She stopped with her fingertips a few inches away from the pale mark. “But the preciseness of the overall lividity pattern and the starkness and clarity of this mark suggests she was lying on her side on a hard surface for at least six hours after death.”
Bree’s shoulders dropped. “I think I know what made that mark. The handle of an ice scraper.”
Dr. Jones tilted her head. “The size and shape would be about right. Yes. Do you have a specific ice scraper in mind?”
“There was one in the trunk of her car. I have a photo.” Bree stepped away from the table, shifted her PPE gown, and pulled out her cell phone. She stripped off her glove and scrolled. After tapping on the screen, she showed the image to Dr. Jones and Matt.
In unison, they turned toward the body to compare the shape of the ice scraper handle to the white impression.
The ME nodded. “I’ll need to confirm with measurements, but that looks like a good match.”
Silence fell over them as they digested the implications.
After death, Holly probably had spent hours in the trunk of her own car.
Bree exhaled. “I’ll have a deputy bring the ice scraper from the impound garage.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Jones said.
“How did she die?” Matt asked.
The ME crossed to a laptop on a table. Removing her glove, she scrolled and pulled up a photo of the victim’s neck. “These scratches on the soft front of the neck aren’t like the rest of the abrasions on the body.”
Bree squinted. “They look like fingernail scratches.”
“Yes, and they’re deep,” Dr. Jones agreed.
Matt stared at the photo. The scratches ran vertically from the soft flesh just under the chin to the hollow of the throat. Recognition swept through him. “She scratched her own neck.”
“Yes.” Dr. Jones motioned toward the victim’s hands. “She has two broken nails. I took scrapings from underneath them and found some blood.”
Bree said, “It must have been deeply embedded if the river didn’t wash it away.”
The ME nodded.
Matt pictured the victim clawing at her own neck. “Something was around her neck. She was trying to pull it off. I don’t see any ligature marks.”
“Correct.” Dr. Jones moved toward the victim’s head and pointed into the neck incision. “While all that was visible on the surface of the skin was slight redness, here you can see a band of hemorrhaging and deeper bruising. The pattern of ruptured blood vessels suggests pressure was applied by something rigid, like a forearm.”
“A choke hold?” Matt asked.
“Probably.” Dr. Jones pointed out specific structures. “But this was a poorly demonstrated technique. There’s also slight damage to the windpipe and trachea. If the choke hold had been properly applied, there would be no damage to these structures.”
“So, she was not strangled?” Bree craned her neck to see.
“Correct,” Dr. Jones said. “The damage to the windpipe and trachea were not enough to compromise breathing. She died due to compression of the neck.”
Matt’s brother was a former MMA fighter, and Matt trained regularly at his gym. He was very well acquainted with choke holds. When a trained person applied a blood choke, the crook of the elbow was positioned over the windpipe so the airway wasn’t compressed. The person could breathe. Pressure was applied to the sides of the neck, cutting off the blood supply to the brain and rendering the victim unconscious in seconds. A blood choke was also called a sleeper hold for this reason.
Dr. Jones stripped off her gloves. She set them on the table next to the body. “In normal grappling, like you see in mixed martial arts on TV, either the person submits before they’re unconscious or their opponent releases the hold the instant they go limp. The blood supply returns to the brain, and the person wakes in a moment or so.”
In reality, the referee watched closely and called the fight when one of the combatants lost consciousness.
“And if the hold isn’t released?” Bree asked.
Dr. Jones gestured to the victim. “You die.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As she backed away from the table and Dr. Jones returned to her work, Bree digested the ME’s information.
Holly Thorpe hadn’t died by suicide.
So, who had killed her?
Bree walked to a nearby table covered with a white sheet. Holly’s clothes had been spread out on the sheet to catch any trace evidence that could dislodge.
Each item of clothing was tagged, but each piece would be allowed to dry in a special drying cabinet before being bagged to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold that could degrade the fabrics and DNA. Bree would receive a list of items, but she noted the blouse was silk and a designer label. The jeans and boots were more common mall brands.
Bree led the way out of the autopsy suite. She and Matt stripped off their PPE and exited the office.
Outside, she turned her face to the spring sunshine. The warmth felt clean on her face but failed to eliminate the bone-deep chill of the autopsy suite.
Bree shivered. “Holly was murdered.”
Next to her, Matt inhaled fresh air like he’d been underwater. “And her death was carefully and purposefully set up to look like a suicide, which makes it likely it was premeditated.”