The coroner, who also worked as a pathologist at the county hospital, was a compact man in his fifties, with close-cropped, grizzled hair and pale blue eyes that peered at Russ over the top of his trifocals.
“Of course I needed to stay,” Russ said. “A Jane Doe that’s a possible murder? You’re lucky I didn’t sit in on the autopsy.”
Dvorak looked askance. “Mmmm. As I recall, the last time you did that you—”
“Don’t remind me. What do you know?”
“The basics. From her teeth, she’s somewhere between sixteen and twenty-four. She was hit with a heavy, blunt object at the base of her skull, crushing in part of her medulla and causing swelling and hemorrhaging in her brain. It would have rendered her unconscious, and could have led to her death eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“My guess is she died of exposure. Based on her lividity, she hadn’t been dead more than four hours before you found her. But the body temperature taken by the paramedics was very low, the sort of thing you see a day or so after death. There’s no sign of frostbite, which means she was dead before any damage to the skin could occur.”
Russ nodded. “Her killer whacked her and then dumped her. And she froze to death.”
“In the vernacular, yes.”
Russ remembered Clare’s voice, shaky with horror, asking what it would be like, watching the car drive away, leaving you alone in the cold and the dark. “Did she ever regain consciousness?”
“No.”
He wondered if Clare would think this a mercy from her God. He rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. “Anything else?”
“No other injuries. No distinguishing marks. The lab work from the state should be back by Monday afternoon, Tuesday at the latest. Then I can let you know if there were any alcohol or drugs involved.” The pathologist opened the folder he had carried from the mortuary and slid a paper across the desktop to Russ. “Here are her prints.” A set of X-rays. “Her dental profile.” A few Polaroids followed. “Pictures for identification purposes. I hope for her family’s sake you find out who she was quickly.” Russ turned the photos over in his hands, trying to lay the color and expression of life over the pale, fixed mask of death. “She had a baby recently, poor thing.”
“What?” Russ jerked his attention back to the doctor. “God damn. I was right. You sure?”
Dvorak gave him a quelling look. “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure. She’s about a week, ten days post-partum. Why?”
“Because six days ago we found an abandoned infant we’ve been trying to place ever since. And when Jane Doe turned up, I had this feeling . . . You got her blood type?”
The doctor looked at his sheet. “AB negative.”
“Hot damn. The baby is AB positive. That means she could be its mother, right?”
“Sure. It simply means the father would have to have a positive blood type.” Dr. Dvorak steepled his fingers together. “I take it this wasn’t a hospital birth?”
“Not that we can track down, no.”
“Well, then, if this girl gave birth to a baby with a different rhesus factor, and she didn’t receive an antigen shot afterwards, she’ll have Rh antibodies swimming in her blood. I can test for that.”
“Do it.” Russ stood, anxious to get to the station and put her prints into the database. “Would you give me a call when you have the results?”
The pathologist stood as well. “Of course.” They shook hands.
Russ glanced back at the report. “Damn. We really don’t have a whole hell of a lot here, do we?”
Dvorak shrugged. “She could have been killed by almost anything: a baseball bat, a small log, a tire iron, the leg off a barstool . . .” he opened his hands apologetically. “And the injury could have been done by almost any healthy adult. Sorry I can’t make it any easier for you.”
“It would be nice if you could have told me it was ‘a left-handed man under five-feet-six who pumps iron, wielding a barbell,’ but I’ll work with whatever you give me.”
“You don’t want a pathologist, you want a game of Clue. It was Miss Scarlet, in the Conservatory, with the candlestick.”
Russ scooped up the photographs, the X-rays, and the print sheet and put them into the empty folder Dvorak proffered him. The two men walked down the short hallway to the waiting room.
“You think there’s a connection between this girl having a baby and being murdered?” Dvorak patted his pockets absentmindedly, searching for the keys to unlock the door to the public area of the morgue. “Seems hard to imagine in this day and age.”
“I know. What’s the big deal about an unmarried girl having a baby these days? Not like when we were young.” Russ shook his head as the pathologist ushered him through the empty waiting room to the entrance.
“There are a lot of people willing to kill to get rid of an unwanted baby,” Dvorak said, smiling sourly. “It’s called abortion, and it’s perfectly legal.”
Russ did not want to go down that road. “What I need to know is who would be willing to kill to get rid of an unwanted mother.” Bright sunshine spilled over the buffed wooden floorboards when he opened the door. “Warmed up. Must be over forty.”
“Nice,” the pathologist agreed. “As long as you don’t count on it lasting.”
CHAPTER 6
Dvorak was right, Russ thought. As soon as the sun dropped behind the mountains, the mercury plummeted. Turning onto Church Street, he could see the time and temperature sign outside of Farmer’s and Merchant’s Savings and Loan. Twenty-one degrees, and with the air so clear it was bound to keep on dropping overnight. At least they were done with snow for awhile. Hell of a lot of snow for the beginning of December. Lousy for driving, but good for all the bed-and-breakfasts catering to skiers.
At a red light, his gaze dropped to the folder on the seat beside him. He’d spent the rest of his Saturday afternoon showing the X-rays to all three dentists in town, with no results. He didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might have been a tourist. Somebody who had come up to Millers Kill for antiquing or leaf-peeping or skiing and decided it would be the ideal place to drop her baby. If she was an out-of-towner, he might never be able to get an I.D. on her.
He drove past St. Alban’s, onto Elm, and pulled into Clare’s driveway. The connection to the church. That was the key, his best lead so far. Either the dead girl or the man who had impregnated her had some tie to St. Alban’s, and he needed the priest’s help to find out what it was. He killed the engine and sat for a moment, looking at the glow of lights through the windows, the intermittent puffs of smoke from the stone chimney. Admitted to himself that he wanted to check up on Clare, too. Not that she’d appreciate the idea. Russ got out of the car and crunched his way across her snow-covered lawn. The Dutch-Colonial house had a deep-hipped roof and a wide porch supported by four plain columns. He swept his boot back and forth as he climbed the stone steps up to the porch, clearing off a little of the snow. There must be another doorway out back by the ramshackle garage that she’d been using. Kind of a shame, because the double front door, with its small, stained-glass windows, was one fine piece of woodworking. He loved old houses.
He tried the wrought-iron door handles. They turned easily. After what she had seen, she still wasn’t locking her door. He sighed, rang the bell. From inside, he could hear a muffled lumping, then a faint “Coming!”