I move down to her bare feet, shining the UV light on them and more of the same residue lights up like fairy dust. Bloodred, emerald green, and a deep bluish purple. The color combination seems to indicate a single source, a fine material comprised of three substances that fluoresce in the short wavelength of ultraviolet light. I collect more of it with adhesive stubs that sparkle electrically as I place them inside evidence bags.
“Another thought is some funky makeup she might have had on?” Andy Hunter suggests. “These girls wear a lot of glittery stuff these days.”
“All over her and the cloth?” I reply skeptically as I pull on fresh gloves to make sure I’m not the one transferring the residue to other areas of the body. “I’m going to speculate that her body was someplace where this residue is indigenous and it got transferred to her and the cloth she’s wrapped in.”
I lift her rigorous lower legs, noting that the cloth is relatively clean underneath.
“Some kind of dirt that sparkles in UV,” Machado considers.
“I don’t think it’s dirt. A fine residue that consistently fluoresces the same way strikes me as manufactured, something commercially used,” I reply. “We’ll try the scanning electron microscope for a first-round screening. Hopefully, Ernie’s in today.”
The bottoms of her bare feet are clean, just light spatters of mud that splashed up from the earlier heavy rain. The glittery residue is everywhere, from head to toe, as if she’s been airbrushed with something that lights up in the ultraviolet range of invisible radiation. Using a hand lens and forceps, I begin collecting bluish fibers from under her nails, knocking them loose inside a small plastic evidence bag.
“She wasn’t dragged out here unless there was something under her.” I turn her on her side.
“Maybe she was carried,” Andy Hunter says. “Maybe by someone strong or more than one person.”
Her back is a deep red with areas of blanching where her shoulder blades rested against a firm surface as her uncirculating blood settled. Livor mortis is fixed. She was on her back for hours after death, possibly on a floor inside someplace warm, in the position she’s in now as she got stiff, but she didn’t die looking like this. She was posed postmortem, her legs straight and together, her arms arranged the way they are until she was as rigid as hard rubber.
Camera flashes strobe as Machado takes multiple photographs while Marino assists with a six-inch plastic ruler for a scale and labeling. On the other side of the fence nearest Vassar Street, the curious are gathering, cell-phone cameras small sparks of light. Several uniformed officers hover nearby.
“Maybe you should head over and help out your buddies,” Marino says to Hunter, and I know why.
Marino’s had enough of Andy Hunter’s extreme good looks and his habit of staring at me and hovering too close.
“Let’s make sure we know who’s looking and taking pictures.” Marino says it like an order.
Hunter checks his anger and smiles. “Sure. But I don’t work for your department. Not last I checked. In fact, you barely work for yours, last I checked. Hope you’re enjoying the new job.”
He sets out through the mud, heading for the path of least resistance through the parking lot. I remove the thermometers and check them.
“Her body temp is fifty-eight degrees; the ambient temp is fifty-one. She’s been dead eight hours, possibly longer,” I calculate. “Much of that time she was someplace much warmer than it is out here or her rigor and livor wouldn’t be this advanced. They would have formed slowly because of the cool temperature and cold rain. The conditions out here are close to refrigeration and that would have slowed everything down considerably.”
“Meaning she died several hours after she disappeared from the bar,” Machado says. “She went somewhere with someone, maybe knew the person and ended up dead.”
“I can’t tell you whether she went with someone willingly or unwillingly,” I remark. “Not at this point.”
“But she’s got no defense injuries.” Machado repeats what I said earlier. “So it doesn’t look like she struggled with whoever it was, right?”
“There are no obvious injuries but I’ve not thoroughly examined her in a good light,” I reply. “She may have internal injuries. We’ll see what shows up when she’s scanned.”
I change gloves again, stuffing used ones in my coat pocket.
12
My purple-gloved fingers gently push open the dead woman’s eyelids and the conjunctiva is florid with pinpoint hemorrhages. The whites of her eyes are almost solid red.
“She’s not an accidental death.” I shine the UV light in her eyes and the same residue sparkles neon bright.
Bloodred, emerald green, bluish purple.
“Whatever this is she’s got it everywhere,” I comment. “She’s a possible smothering, although petechial hemorrhages aren’t always associated with that. I don’t see any marks or contusions of the neck that would indicate strangulation. But something happened to cause vascular rupture.”
“What could do that besides strangulation?” Marino squats by her head to see what I’m talking about.
“An increase of intrathoracic pressure causing the Valsalva effect.” I take off my gloves, my pockets full of used ones now. “In other words, she had a significant rise in blood pressure that resulted in minute hemorrhages.”
“And that would happen why?” Machado wants to know.
“Struggling, panicking, possibly while being smothered could be the reason. Maybe something else that caused cardiac compromise. I can’t be certain at this point but preliminarily she’s a homicide and we should work her as one. Let’s get her into the van and I’ll meet you at the office.” I say this to Rusty and Harold as I stand up. “Leave the cloth draped over her exactly as is and wrap her in sheets that hold her body in the position it’s in now.”
“How’s Anne going to scan her with the arm out like that?”
“I don’t know if the bore’s wide enough.”
“She’ll fit,” I reply. “I don’t want her rigor broken.”
I go on to explain that I want the outstretched arm with its cocked wrist wrapped separately and secured with tape. Another sheet goes around the rest of her body except for her head. From the neck up I want her protected with a large paper evidence bag and I want smaller bags protecting her hands and feet. She will go into the CT scanner fully wrapped.
“Place the spine board on a clean sheet to protect it from mud. I want her transported exactly as I describe.” I make myself clear because the way her body was posed is evidence that I want preserved.
Evidence that might be like three other cases, and I can’t say a word to Marino or Machado, and I’m feeling a sense of urgency that is building. I won’t think of getting Benton into trouble for doing what was best, what was right. He wanted my help for the very reason I now fear. The Bureau has mandated an information blackout on the D.C. cases and it’s possible the killer isn’t in that area anymore. He might be killing someplace else and those police departments won’t recognize the pattern. He might be here in Cambridge, where his early victim Klara Hembree was from, and Benton doesn’t know that part yet and I have to find a way to tell him.
“She goes directly to large-scale x-ray.” I continue to say what I want done. “I’ll make sure Anne is waiting for her. And we have all this photographed in situ, right?”
Machado assures me that he does as he stares across the field in the direction of Andy Hunter, who has joined other officers on the sidewalk outside the fence where the crowd is growing. Barbara Fairbanks is in front of Simmons Hall interviewing whoever will talk to her, and I detect something I can’t quite hear.