There is nothing lewd or even sexual about the way she’s displayed. Her legs are together, her breasts and genitals covered by the cloth carefully arranged around her from her upper chest to her lower legs. Her throat is milky smooth with no ligature mark or bruise, just a dusky redness at the back of her neck from livor mortis, the settling of blood when her heart stopped and her circulation quit. I see no injuries to her ankles or wrists. Superficially, there’s no sign she struggled with anyone. At a glance there’s nothing to tell me she so much as resisted her own death and I find that profoundly abnormal and odd.
I get down closer to look and I smell the earth and the rain. Decomposition isn’t apparent yet but will escalate when she’s transported to my office where the temperatures are considerably warmer. I detect perfume, a fruity floral fragrance with a hint of sandalwood and vanilla, more noticeable when I’m near her face and long brown hair. The ivory cloth looks like a woven synthetic and is remarkably clean. I touch a hemmed edge of fabric that has been arranged over the body in a manner that is thoughtful and deliberate, wrapped straight across her upper chest and under her arms like a bath towel.
“It’s not a bedsheet,” I decide. “A synthetic blend that’s moderately stretchy, and it’s been doubled over so it’s quite long but not all that wide.”
“Like a curtain?” Machado asks, baffled.
“I don’t think so. There’s no lining or pocket for a rod and I see no evidence that rings or hooks were ever sewn on.” I check the cloth without rearranging it. “It’s smooth on one side and textured on the other, similar to how tights are woven, like a low-stretch tricot.”
“I don’t know what that is,” he says.
“A tricot material is used in gloves, leggings, very lightweight sweaters, for example.”
I study the position of the body and the way the cloth is draped, modestly covering her from her clavicle to several inches above her ankles.
“Evocative of ancient Rome or Jerusalem or a health spa,” I suggest as Benton’s Washington, D.C., cases nag at me. “At least that’s what comes to mind.”
“Well, that’s why these psychos pose their victims.” Marino has wandered back and squats close by, his feet almost slipping out from under him. “They do it to make us think something.”
“It’s been my experience that what they do isn’t about us. It’s about them.” I want to tell him about the Washington cases and the way those bodies were draped but I don’t dare. “It’s about their own fantasies, their own emotions at the time.”
“The cloth reminds me of a shroud,” Harold says and he would know about such things. “They’re becoming popular in burials, particularly handmade shrouds that are wrapped around the body like a winding cloth. The last year or so I was in the funeral business we had a couple of what they call green burials. All natural and biodegradable.”
“This isn’t a natural fabric and it wouldn’t be biodegradable.” I sit back on my heels, surveying the body, looking carefully in detail before I touch her.
Pale fibers, possibly from the cloth, adhere to areas of exposed wan, wet flesh. I note that her short unpolished nails are intact and there are fibers under them, bluish ones, and I wonder what they’re from. Something she may have been wrapped in while she was still alive, I consider. People no longer moving generally don’t get fibers and other trace evidence under their nails all the way up to the quick. I retrieve a hand lens and small ultraviolet light from my field case.
“Is there some funeral business around here that sells cloths like this?” Machado is taking more photographs.
“Biodegradable items like urns, yes.” Harold cranes his neck, checking on the position of the TV crew as he and Rusty hold up the sheet, blocking the view. “I’m not sure about where you’d get handmade shrouds around here. The few I saw came from out west somewhere. Maybe Oregon. You can buy them on the Internet.”
“A synthetic blend wouldn’t be biodegradable,” I repeat. “We don’t know what this is.”
I switch on the UV light and the lens glows purple as it radiates black light that’s not visible. A preliminary scan of the body will alert me if there’s trace evidence, including biological fluids such as semen. I want to make sure I collect anything that could get dislodged or lost during transport to the CFC, and I direct the light over the body and fluorescing electric colors wink brilliantly. Bloodred, emerald green, and a deep bluish purple.
“What the hell?” Andy Hunter bends closer to get a better look. Some kind of glitter, maybe Christmas glitter?”
“It’s much finer than that and I doubt glitter would fluoresce like this in UV.” I move the light and every place it touches reacts in the same three brilliant colors. “Like a very fine fluorescent powder that’s all over the cloth and the body, a high concentration around her nose and lips, on her teeth and inside her nostrils.” I direct the light as I talk.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Machado moves next to me, his boots sinking in red mud.
“No, not exactly, but whatever it is it’s stubborn enough to survive the rain. Either that or there was a lot more of it before she was left out here.” I paint the light over the mud around her.
Sparkles light up here and there, the same three vivid colors, and I reach for a package of swabs.
“I’ll collect some of it now for analysis.” I do it as I talk. “Then I’ll take her temp and we’ll get her to the morgue.”
I seal the swabs inside evidence containers that I label with a Sharpie and I touch the dead woman’s left outstretched arm with its dramatically bent wrist. She’s cold and stiff, in full rigor mortis.
I loosen the cloth around her neck and open it. She has nothing on but panties that are several sizes too big. The hi-cut brief is peach with a lace trim around the waistband and I check the label in back, an expensive brand of lingerie called Hanro, M for medium, which would fit someone who generally wears size eight to ten. I note that the crotch is stained pale yellow and I’m uncomfortably reminded of what Benton said.
The three murdered women in his Washington, D.C., case were wearing each other’s panties or those of someone unidentified. The panties were stained with urine. He surmises they lost control of their bladders while they were being suffocated, and there were fibers, blue and white Lycra ones that may have come from upholstery or possibly from athletic clothing the killer had on.
With the scalpel I make a small incision in her upper-right abdomen. Oozing blood is an unnaturally dull red because it’s no longer oxygenated. The blood of the dead. Cold and dark like stagnant water.
I insert a long thermometer into the liver and place a second thermometer on top of my field case to record the ambient temperature.
“She’s been dead for a while,” I say. “At least six hours but I’m betting longer, depending on the conditions.”
“Maybe since early last night when she disappeared?” Machado watches me intently, a spooked look in his eyes.
No doubt he’s never seen a case like this. I haven’t either, not quite. But I’ve seen photographs that I can’t share with him or Marino. Benton will have to do that.
“If she were abducted around six p.m., then that’s almost twelve hours ago,” I add.
Palpating her scalp, I feel for fractures or other injuries and don’t note any.
“I seriously doubt she’s been dead that long. She was alive somewhere for a while,” I explain.
“Like maybe she was held hostage?” Machado asks.
“I don’t know.” I check again for lesions, lifting her rigid arms and hands, examining them carefully front and back. “So far I’m not seeing any evidence that she was tied up or struggled.” Her flesh feels cold through my gloves, almost refrigerated cold but warmer than the air. “I don’t see any defense or scrimmage injuries.”