3
Dr. Supatra also was odd, but that worked fine for her. All medical examiners are weird, it’s expected of them. Death is a forbidden country for most people, especially in a superstitious culture such as ours. Supatra, under five foot, slight, long-faced with the intensity of a witch, fitted her profession so well that cops who worked with her saw in her a kind of archetype, as if all pathologists must be cut from the same pattern. She scowled then checked my face with those intense black eyes. There was no point trying to hide.
“You’re sleeping? You look exhausted. Are you taking those pills I gave you? Don’t take too many, you can’t escape nightmares forever. Coming to terms is the only escape.”
“I know, it’s in the Pali Canon.” I let a beat pass. “You saw the news?”
“What news?”
“Those two families who drowned.”
“The ones on that boat? What about them?”
“The young man drowned his mother. I saw him. The other drowned his wife, mother of his kids.”
She gave me a sharp look. “That wasn’t reported.”
“No.”
I told her what I had witnessed the day before. She listened carefully, absorbing each word and savoring it. Then she shook her head. “This is the tipping point, societies fall so far, then they fall apart. This is known. It’s in the literature. Be thankful you’re no longer young. Why are you here, anyway?”
“I need to see the body again.”
“Which bits? I’ve put the head and torso in separate drawers. You know what I think.”
“You think an extraterrestrial did it.”
“What else has that kind of strength? What else gets into that kind of frenzy? Humans can’t pull heads off the bodies of other humans, it’s impossible, too many sinews, muscles, bones. Maybe you could find an iron pumper who could do such a thing, but it would have been even uglier-the perp here was so strong he pulled the head off almost surgically. It’s a terrible thing to say, but this beheading with bare hands was almost elegant-along with the handwriting.”
“We don’t have extraterrestrials in Thailand. They always prefer the West-name one extraterrestrial who has landed in Asia instead of America or Europe?”
“Siberia,” she said without hesitation. “Some landed in Siberia in a spaceship that burned up a whole acre of steppe. There’s a clip on YouTube.”
“Siberia is thousands of miles north of here.”
“So it was a demon beheaded the girl. That’s why you have to investigate. How far have you got?”
“Unclear,” I admitted. “I suspect but dare not arrest. I need something nobody can argue with. What happened with that one blond hair they found, about an inch long you said?”
“Still testing. All they know is it’s not human. It’s the strongest damn hair they’ve ever seen-can’t pull it apart. They’ve sent it to some fancy forensic lab in the U.S.”
I followed her to the great wall of steel drawers and stood by while she opened one.
When I had come to terms with the full horror of the case, I had realized that the head, or, to be precise, the face, was the biggest mystery. When Supatra opened the drawer it was exactly as I remembered from last time: the head of a young woman or girl, Southeast Asian, eyes closed, almost serene, like a Buddha image, pale and frosty from the refrigeration. I had ransacked past cases and found nothing relevant. The only case thrown up by research that bore any resemblance was of a religious fanatic in the sixties in the U.K., a gay man who had cut off the head of his guru lover and was found by police cradling it in his arms. He explained that the head was the only part he could respect and revere, the rest was animal. I paused over the long neck and remembered the Long Neck women of the Karen tribe: but they took a decade to stretch their necks using brass rings they added one by one every year. I shook my head, then searched Supatra’s grim face.
“Like this,” she said. “Don’t think I haven’t obsessed, too. This is the only way he could have done it to have such a result.” In a moment of physical intimacy that was almost alarming, the Doctor placed a tiny hand at the base of my neck and squeezed. “Imagine my hand is like a big steel pincer,” she said, “like a crab’s claw. So I dig into the flesh with my nails, which are sharp enough to cut skin and minor muscles. Then I snap the vertebra at C5, twist until the head is facing backward, and then simply push.” She was now trying to push my head off using her second hand under my chin while the first remained clamped to my lower neck and squeezing hard as if trying to cut the sinews with her nails. I experienced not the slightest fear that she could do any serious harm. “You get the picture? That’s why the neck is so stretched. But no normal man could do it. It’s not just a question of strength; arms and hands are simply not designed for such a feat. It’s not how we evolved.”
“But the face is not damaged.”
“Right. That’s part of the point. The only way he could have left the face undamaged is by doing it the impossible way I just showed you.”
“Shouldn’t she be bloated from suffocation?”
“She didn’t suffocate. I think she fainted, then died as soon as he broke her neck. No fighting for air, no bloating. There are no signs of resistance.”
“Meaning she knew her assailant?”
“Not necessarily. It could be that the assault happened so fast with an assailant so powerful there was no time or opportunity to resist.”
Supatra closed the drawer.
“The video,” I said.
She shook her head at me, then took me to her office.
“You’re here to investigate or torture yourself? Take a copy, I have a thumb drive you can borrow.”
“I don’t want it in my house,” I said. “I’m superstitious.”
“So you’re a normal Thai man after all. Have you been to temple? Have you talked to a monk? Did you go to see that mordu I told you about?”
“I saw him just for ten minutes-he said to come back.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know.”
She clicked a few times on her desktop until she found the video that the forensic team had made. The video shook somewhat at first due to the operator’s shock. He was careful, though, to follow the rule: a meticulous panning from left to right, covering the crime scene like a lawn mower so nothing was left out. It took less than five minutes. At the end the video concentrated on the walls, which were bare plaster save for the blood splatter. The video recording halted at the mirror, however, and hovered there. English characters that were not crude or childish, but quite elegant: Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, I know who [smudge] father is.
I had come to the morgue as a kind of check of myself. I wanted to know if I had hardened enough to carry on. The Doctor, also, was interested to know the answer to this question. In my opinion the experiment was inconclusive. I was shaking, but not quite as much as before. I even managed a grim smile.
“I would like a still of the handwriting,” I said.
Supatra clicked on her mouse a few times until her printer produced a copy of the writing on the mirror and handed it to me. “What use is a handwriting expert? It’s the one form of communication even the NSA doesn’t collect.”
“I know. But they can tell likely level of education, cultural origins, even certain character traits.”
“Sure, that will narrow it down to a few million. Better you go see the mordu. A clairvoyant would be more specific. Okay, I’m a scientist, but I’m still Thai. I’ve never seen such an obvious piece of black magic in my life. I was joking about extraterrestrials, actually this whole case has Khmer written all over it. Go see the holy man, there’s no one else.”