“Eighty-point-six.” I pick up the thermometer from the counter. “It’s a seventy-one degrees in here. She’s been dead at least three hours, probably closer to four.”
“What do you mean it’s not her fleece?” Marino frowns.
“I think she was dressed in it after she was dead. It has what appears to be the same residue that fluoresces in UV. It’s all over the fleece, and the blood pattern on it is inconsistent with her injuries and the way she would have bled out.”
I unbutton the fleece all the way and turn her partially on her side, her body leaning heavily against my Tyvek-covered thigh. Livor has begun to form on her back but is far from set. When I press my finger into her flesh it easily blanches, the same way it does when someone is alive. I notice her well-defined muscularity. And when I rest her on her back again I unbutton her pants and unzip the fly. Underneath are women’s black panties. And then I touch her face with my finger and makeup is transferred to my glove. I ask Marino to open one of the kits I brought with me.
“There should be some towelettes in there,” I say to him, and he hands me one.
I wipe her cheeks and upper lip and the stubble wouldn’t have been noticeable because her face is close shaven and covered with layers of foundation and powder. Her chest and lower abdomen have been waxed, I suspect, and when I pull down her panties the answer is there.
“You got to be shitting me.” Marino stares.
“A male taking female hormones and the killer dressed him in his own bloody fleece.”
“What the hell?”
“Switching clothes because he needed to disguise himself as best he could in case he was seen somewhere. The suspect running through the park at around eleven…,” I begin to remind him. “And you wouldn’t do that if you came here intending to murder people. He came here for another reason and something went terribly wrong and now he’s got to escape.”
“Shit. The black hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it, which is what Rooney said Haley Swanson had on this morning when he talked to him in the projects. Shit!” Marino exclaims in astonishment. “He kills Swanson and then puts his damn hoodie on? It would have been bloody as hell. What kind of fucking lunatic would do something like that?”
“Locate a photograph of Haley Swanson as quickly as you possibly can,” I tell him as the storm door in the entryway opens. “We need to see if that’s who this is.”
“Hell yeah, that’s who it is,” Marino says and he’s already stepping away to make a call, probably to Machado.
Benton is walking across the room, heading toward me, as I hear the distant noise of another vehicle or maybe more than one along the driveway.
“They’re here,” he says simply.
“Do they know you are?” I ask as he reaches us and looks at the body and the blood.
“They’re about to,” Benton says.
37
It’s after six p.m. and as dark as a moonless night when I begin packing up.
I’ve done what can be done, which is very little in the final scheme of things when I examine ruined biology, when I smell its foulness and touch what feels unnatural after life has given up. I know what killed the people at Double S and am faced with a much bigger problem that can’t be resolved by CT scans or autopsies. The victims have said what they need to say and now I’m after their killer and the FBI official protecting him.
I take off my coveralls, booties, and gloves and stuff them into a bright red biohazard trash bag on the floor inside the entranceway where Benton waits with a stony resolve about what we intend to do. It’s important I look for the type of weapon that was used and I don’t believe the killer found it in the office kitchen or inside this building and I seriously doubt he brought it with him when he showed up at Double S and murdered three people this morning.
The bodies and any evidence relating to them are my jurisdiction and that certainly includes any weapon used. This is my argument but it’s far from the whole truth about why I refuse to leave the scene even as I’m about to give the appearance that I have. While I’m exerting my authority as a chief medical examiner, what I’m feeling like is an intruder or a spy as I plot, plan, and sneak around. Granby and his agents would never allow me inside Dominic Lombardi’s house, not in a million years no matter what I argue, but that’s where I’m headed.
Benton is going to take me and in the process blatantly counter a direct order because he’s not motivated by politics or personal advancement or dishonesty. It’s never about anything like that with him and he’s incensed by the situation he finds himself in, which isn’t entirely new but so much worse it’s shocking. Respecting me professionally and doing what I’ve asked would get him fired if he still had a job he could be fired from. Granby stripped him of his power and dignity and he did it in front of everyone. No crystal balls are needed here, Granby had the nerve to say. Have a drink or two or three and he told us to have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. By the time that happens Granby will be ruined. I will make sure of it.
I will see whatever there is to see before it has been tampered with. I’ll take photographs to preserve the truth before Granby can continue to distort and manipulate it in whatever fashion suits his pathological ambition and need to cover up lies he’s told and whatever crimes he’s committed. He’s not going to get away with it. We won’t let him and it’s all in the execution. We can’t do anything we would have to misrepresent later, Benton and I strategized as we stood outside a little while ago, our voices quiet beneath the diesel rumble of my boxy white office truck parked in front, the tailgate open and a hydraulic ramp lowered.
We agreed that if we get caught in even one deception or are accused of fabricating anything at all it would discredit everything else. So we’ll document our every move and protect what we can in a way we can prove, and Benton won’t need to verbalize a single detail he shouldn’t share with his lover, his wife. I was here because I had a right to be. I’ll be asked in court about the weapon and I’m expected to have an answer. And as for the confidential information that Lucy is sending wirelessly to Benton, it’s too damn bad if I happen to see it for myself as text messages land on his phone.
He doesn’t need to tell me classified details about the Russian or Israeli mafia or money laundering or other massive crimes that possibly include murder for hire. I can’t help what I overhear or see with my own eyes that might explain why Granby continues to shield a spectacle murderer who has rapidly spun out of control. And I can almost conjure him up, his pale skin and dark hair, compactly built and wearing size-eight running gloves that look like rubber bare feet. By now there can be no doubt it was the killer behind my wall this morning and I envision him in the rainy dark in a kelly green button-up fleece and bareheaded, oblivious to the wet and cold.
I imagine his wide eyes and dilated pupils, his limbic system roaring like an inferno as he witnessed my bedroom light blink on at a few minutes past four a.m. Then the light in my bathroom was next, and after that the stained glass was illuminated over the landings on the stairs as he witnessed my response to the evil thing he’d done.
I can imagine the intensity of his excitement as he watched me emerge from the back door and heard me talking to my skittish old dog, the lady doctor getting ready to respond to a murder scene choreographed by a profoundly disturbed human being who fancies himself more powerful and professional than any of us. I see him as a crazed cruel monster and maybe it’s true that he went into overdrive after the massacre in Connecticut. Maybe he got curious about me. And then I wonder how he felt when I opened my door and yelled at him like a nagging next-door neighbor.