"He knew her," Anderson's voice was behind me. "It had to be someone she knew. Otherwise he probably would have just shot her and taken the money and run:'
Marino was still down beside me, elbows resting on his big knees, flashlight dangling from one hand. He looked up at Anderson as if she had the intelligence of a banana.
"I didn't know you was a profiler, too;" he said. "You take some classes or something?"
"Marino, if you can shine it right there," I said. "It's hard to see:' - The light illuminated a blood pattern on the body that I hadn't noticed at first because I was too preoccupied with injuries. Virtually every inch of exposed flesh was smeared with bloody swirls and strokes, as if she had been fingerpainted. The blood was drying and beginning to crack. And there were hairs, the same long, pale hairs stuck to her blood.I pointed this out to Marino. He bent closer.
"Quiet," I warned him as I felt his reaction and knew what I was showing him.
"Here comes the boss," Eggleston announced as he stepped carefully through the doorway.
The room was crowded and airless. It looked as if a thrashing storm had rained blood upon it.
"We're going to string all this," Ham said to me.
"Recovered a cartridge case," Eggleston happily passed on to Marino.
"If you want a break; Marino, I'll hold the flashlight for her." Ham was trying to make up for his unpardonable sin.
"I think it's fairly obvious she was lying right here, immobile, when he beat her," I said, because I didn't think stringing was necessary in this case.
"Stringing will tell us for sure," he promised.
It was an old French technique in which one end of a string was taped at a bloodstain, and the other at the geometrically computed origin of the blood. This was done multiple times, resulting in a three-dimensional string model that showed how many blows were struck and where the victim was when they were.
"There's too many people in here," I loudly said.
Sweat was rolling down Marino's face. I could feel his body heat and smell his breath as he worked close to me.
"Get this to Interpol right away," I told him in a voice no one else could hear.
"No kidding."
"Speer three-eighty. Ever heard of it?" Eggleston said to Marino.
"Yeah. High-performance shit. Gold Dot," Marino replied. "That don't fit, at all."
I got out my chemical thermometer and set it on top of a box of paper plates to get the ambient temperature.
"I can already tell you what it is, Doc," Ham said. "Seventy-five-point-nine back here. It's warm."
Marino was moving the flashlight as my hands and eyes moved over the body.
"Normal people don't get Speer ammo," he was saying. "You're talking ten, eleven bucks for б box of twenty. Not to mention, your gun can't be a piece of shit or the damn thing will blow apart in your hand."
"The gun probably came off the street, then." Anderson was suddenly next to me. "Drugs."
"Case solved;" Marino replied. "Gee, thanks, Anderson. Hey, guys, we can all go home."
I could smell the sweet, cloying odor of Kim Luong's blood as it coagulated, the serum separating from the hemoglobin, cells breaking down. I withdrew the chemical thermometer Ham had inserted inside her. Her core temperature was 88.6 degrees. I looked up. There were three people in this room, not including Marino and me. My anger and frustration continued to build.
"We found her pocketbook and coat," Anderson went on. "Sixteen dollars in her billfold, so it doesn't look like he went in there. And oh, there was a paper bag nearby with a plastic container and fork. Looks like she brought dinner with her and warmed it up in the microwave."
"How do you know she warmed it up?"Marino asked.
Anderson was caught.
"Putting two and two together don't always make twenty-two," he added.
Livor mortis was in its early stages. Her jaw was set, and the small muscles of her neck and hands were, too.
"She's too stiff for only being dead a couple hours," I said.
"What causes it anyway?" Eggleston asked.
"Me, too. I've always wondered that."
"I had one in Bon Air one time..:' "What were you doing in Bon Air?" asked the officer taking photographs.
"It's a long story. But this guy has a heart attack during sex. The girlfriend just thinks he's gone to sleep, right? Wakes up the next morning and he's deader than dirt. She doesn't want it to look like he died in bed so she tries to put him in a chair. He was leaning' against it like an ironing board."
"I'm serious, Doc. What causes it?" Ham asked.
"I've always been curious about that, too." Diane Bray's voice came from the doorway.
She was standing there, her eyes fastened to me like steel rivets.
"When you die, your body quits, making adenosine triphosphate. That's why you get stiff," I said, not giving her a glance. "Marino, can you hold her like this so I can get a picture?"
He moved closer to me, and his big gloved hands- slid under her left side as I got my camera. I took a photograph of an injury below her left armpit, on the fleshy side of her left breast, as I calculated body temperature versus ambient temperature, and how advanced both livor mortis and rigor mortis were. I could hear footsteps and murmurs and someone coughing. I was sweating behind my surgical mask.
"I need some room," I said.
Nobody moved.
I looked up at Bray and stopped what I was doing.
"I need room," I sharply said to her. "Get these people out of here."
She jerked her head at everyone but me. Cops dropped surgical gloves in a red biological hazard bag as they went out the door.
"You too," Bray ordered Anderson.
Marino acted as if Bray didn't exist. Bray never took her eyes off me.
"I don't ever want to walk in on a scene like this again;' I said to her as I worked. "Your officers, your techs, nobody-and I mean nobody-touches the body or disturbs it in any way before I get there or one of my medical examiners does."
I looked up at her.
"Are we clear on that?" I said She seemed to give what I was saying thoughtful consideration. I loaded film in my thirty-five-millimeter camera. My eyes were getting tired because the light was bad, and I took the flashlight from Marino. I shined it obliquely on the area near the left breast, and then on another area on the right shoulder. Bray stepped in closer, brushing against me to see what I was looking at, and it was odd and startling to smell her perfume mingling with the odor of decomposing blood.
"The crime scene belongs to us, Kay," she said. "I understand you haven't had to work things that way in the past-probably not the entire time you've been here or maybe anywhere. That's what I was talking about when I mentioned:.."
"That's a bunch of bullshit!" Marino hurled rude words in her face.
"Captain, you stay out of this," Bray fired back at him.
"You're the one who needs to stay out of it," he raised his voice.
"Deputy Chief Bray," I said, "the law of Virginia states that the medical examiner shall take charge of the body. The body is my jurisdiction:'
I finished my photographs and met her cold, pale eyes.
"The body is not to be touched, altered or in any way interfered with. Am I clear?" I said again.
I pulled off my gloves and angrily threw them into the red bag.
"You have just cut this lady's heart out evidentially, Deputy Chief Bray."
I closed my scene case and latched it.
"You and the prosecutor are gonna get along real good on this one;" Marino added furiously as he pulled off his gloves, too. "This kind of case is what's called a free lunch:'
He poked a thick finger at the dead woman as if it were Bray who had slaughtered her.
"You just let him get away with it!" he yelled at her. "You and your little power games and big tits! Who'd you fuck to get where you are?"
Bray's face went livid.