“I’m saying that someone intent on suicide would wrap the stocking around her neck and tie a full knot in front. Otherwise, she’d fall unconscious, the muscles in her neck would relax, the ligature would loosen, and she’d start breathing again. But that’s not the case here.” He flash-grinned again.
“What about accidental asphyxia?”
“Much more common with males, although the number of female victims has grown. So has the number of deaths—over a thousand each year—and the addiction rate of people unable to achieve sexual climax unless they’re strangled.”
“Remember the time when people just got laid?” Steve slipped in.
Another flash-grin. “The pathological term is asphyxiophilia,” Ottoman continued. “Because of diminished blood oxygen to the brain, sexual pleasure is apparently heightened. But what’s critical is pressure and timing. The orgasm must happen just before the person passes out or the ligature will continue to tighten.”
“Maybe she just miscalculated,” Neil suggested.
“That was my first guess since vaginal fluids suggest that she’d been sexually aroused. Also her nakedness, body position, and the intimate apparel. The headboard is high enough to provide the necessary pressure. She manually stimulates herself to achieve a climax before the pass-out point, but passes out instead. And she dies.” He grinned again.
Neil nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“But I have problems with that. First, we found no trace of vaginal fluid on her fingers. Second, the ligature pressure is inconsistent with gravity. If she had passed out against the stocking, the pressure against her throat would be about thirty pounds per square inch, and less along the sides and back of her neck. We took cell samples of the bruised tissue around the full circumference and could not find any variation in damage. Pressure was consistent all around—showing contusions from a force two to three times that. Plus her windpipe was crushed.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning she died of a sudden and powerful strangulating force applied evenly around her neck and great enough to have knocked her out in seconds.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Neil said, “Maybe she pulled it too tight and passed out.”
Ottoman made another out-of-the-blue grin. “No, because the force that produced this trauma would have embedded the stocking into her neck evenly all around. You can see in the photo there’s a gap between her neck and the knot big enough to put two fingers into—just as the lieutenant reported.” He glanced at Steve. “Gravity could not account for that.”
“What about when the neck muscles relax?” Neil asked.
Ottoman removed two photographs from the pile and laid them out on the table. “Look at the knot—a standard double overhand knot, correct? Correct. But look at the short end of the stocking—about two inches, the other end stretched out to nearly four feet and tied to the bed. Unless she had an exceptionally strong grasp, I don’t believe she could have pulled the short end against the other to have created the killing force.”
“You mean it was tied then retied,” Steve said.
“Yes, and by a righty. And according to the report, the victim was left-handed.”
Then Steve said, “You’re saying the autoerotica was staged.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. I think she was murdered and set up to look like accidental asphyxiophilia.” He made a happy-face grin.
“But there were no signs of struggle,” Neil protested. “No forced entry. And nobody heard any cries or disturbances. No reports of visitors entering her apartment.”
“Yes, and no signs she was raped,” Ottoman added. “No semen, no vaginal bruises. No sign of condom lubricants. And no unattached foreign hairs on her body. And no sign of vaginal, anal, or oral sex. And, as you can see, no ligature marks on her wrists or ankles. No fingernail marks and scratches of the assailant on the neck. No defensive wounds anywhere.”
“So she knew her assailant but didn’t have sex with him,” Steve said.
“That would be my guess.”
“What does that tell us about him?” Steve asked, wishing Ottoman would cover Terry’s face with a cloth. The grotesque disfigurement was making his brain feel soupy.
“Or her,” Neil said. “It could have been a woman.”
“If so, a very strong woman.”
The thick purple ring of broken blood vessels looked like a tattooed necklace. “Let’s assume she was strangled with two hands on the stocking,” Steve said. “After she died, one end was tied to the bed to look like an accident. Given the force and speed it took to knock her out, she had no time to resist.”
“Correct. And that’s why her hands aren’t bruised and her fingernails aren’t broken even though we’ve taken scrapings for DNA.”
“So, she knew the attacker and let him in,” Steve said, as the image came together. And Ottoman nodded him on. “With her consent they go into the bedroom and engaged in some kind of sexual activity that did not involve intercourse. And during that the assailant suddenly strangles her and sets an accidental autoerotica scenario, then covers his tracks and leaves.”
“That would be my guess,” Ottoman said.
If he was correct, Farina’s murder was premeditated, organized, and compulsive—not impulsive. In his mind he saw a faceless killer going through the place, wiping clean surfaces he might have touched, maybe even returning his own champagne glass to the cabinet, and pressing Terry’s dead fingers on the bottle to make it look as if she drank alone.
Except nobody drinks champagne alone, Steve thought. The killer had screwed up.
While Ottoman continued, Steve looked down at Terry’s face. Slitted open, her eyes, once bright blue, were now dead gray globes of jelly. If Ottoman was correct, the last thing those sad smoky eyes had taken in was the face of the person who did this to her–who came into her bedroom, took pleasure in her nakedness, then wrapped that stocking around her neck and pulled until she passed out of this life. If only those dead jellies could project their last light.
The thought quickened his pulse. And out of the black, that sensation winged its way in and nearly came to roost but turned and sliced back into the gloom.
“What would you estimate for the time of death?” Neil asked.
“Between three P.M. and three A.M.”
“Twelve hours. Is that the best you can do?”
“I’m afraid so. The AC was turned to sixty degrees, which slows down the pooling of the blood, and, thus, postmortem lividity and decomposition. The temperature of her skin when she was found was room temperature, but her liver was sixty-four degrees. It takes about eight to twelve hours for the skin to reach ambient temp, but three times longer at the center of the body, which is why we measure the liver. That means her body temp dropped a little over thirty-four degrees. The rate of algor mortis is a decrease of one point five degrees per hour…”
Steve felt as if he were being lectured by the caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “My head’s spinning. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she was dead for at least twelve hours, although it would help to know if the bed was turned on massage mode, but I doubt there’s any memory in the electronics.”
“Livor mortis begins within half an hour after death.”
“Yes. And that’s the point. If she were strangled in one position—say on her back or front—then moved to where she was found, it must have happened pretty fast since the discoloration is consistent with her position. The other unknown is why the low AC temp.”
“The temperature on Saturday was in the sixties,” Steve said.
“That’s right,” said Ottoman. “There was no reason to turn the AC all the way down.”