D’Agosta cleared his throat. The bolus in his stomach hadn’t gone away, but at least it wasn’t threatening to erupt. “So the perp might be an M.E. or orthopedic surgeon?” he asked.
A long silence. “It’s not my place to speculate.”
“I just want an off-the-cuff opinion, Doctor. Not a scientific conclusion. I won’t hold you to it. How about it?” He tried to speak gently, so she wouldn’t feel threatened.
Another hesitation. D’Agosta started to get a clearer idea of why she was so tense: she might be wondering if the murderer was a colleague. “It seems to me the person who did this had professional training.” It came out in a rush.
“Thank you.”
“The perpetrator also used surgical tools to cut the flesh down to the bone—the precision is remarkable—retractors to draw away the flesh—we documented the marks—and, as I said, used the Stryker to cut the bone. All the cuts were done very precisely, with no slips, no mistakes, much as a surgeon would in an amputation. Except, of course, the vessels weren’t tied off or cauterized.”
She cleared her throat. “The body was dismembered symmetrically: one cut three inches below the knee, one three inches above, one two inches above the elbow and another two inches below. And then the ears, nose, lips, chin, and tongue were removed. All with surgical precision.”
She indicated the body parts, laid out on the second gurney positioned next to the corpse. The ears, nose, lips, and other small bits and pieces had been washed and looked like waxwork fakes, or parts from a clown kit.
D’Agosta felt the knot in his stomach tighten, a burning rise in his throat. Christ, even that glass of mineral water had been a mistake.
“And then there was this.” Pizzetti turned and indicated an eight-by-ten print tacked to a corkboard, along with many others taken at the crime scene. D’Agosta had already seen this at the scene, but still he braced himself.
Written on the stomach of the victim was a message traced in blood. It read:
Proud of me?
D’Agosta looked at the guy from latents. What washis name? It was now his turn, and D’Agosta could tell from the gleam in his eye that he had something to say.
“Yeah, ah, Mr.—”
“Kugelmeyer,” came the quick, eager response. “Thank you. Well. We got practically a full series off the body. Right and left thumb, right and left index, right ring, some partial palms. And we got two beauties right from that message there, in the victim’s blood, no less, written with the leftindex finger.”
“Very good,” said D’Agosta. This was more than good. The killer had been shockingly careless, allowing himself to be recorded by half a dozen security cameras, leaving his prints all over the crime scene. On the other hand, the crime-scene unit hadn’t been able to recover much from the scene itself: no saliva, semen, sweat, no blood or other bodily fluids from the perp. Naturally they had a lot of hair and fiber—it was a hotel room—but nothing that looked promising. No bite marks on the body, no scratches, nothing yet that would yield the killer’s DNA. They had swabbed many of the latents, however, hoping to pick up some stray DNA, and they were confident the lab would succeed in this.
Pizzetti went on. “There was no sign of sexual activity, penetration, sexual violence, or molestation. The victim had just taken a shower, which made recovery of potential evidence from the body easier.”
D’Agosta was about to ask a question when he heard, behind him, a familiar voice.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Lieutenant D’Agosta himself. How are you, Vinnie?”
D’Agosta turned to see the hugely imposing figure of Dr. Matilda Ziewicz herself, chief medical examiner for New York City. She stood there like a linebacker, a cynical smile on her red-lipsticked mouth, her bouffant blond hair covered by an oversize cap, her specially sized smock bulging. She was brilliant, imposing, physically repellent, sarcastic, feared by all, and extremely effective. New York had never had a more competent chief M.E.
Dr. Pizzetti tensed up even more.
Ziewicz flapped a hand. “Carry on, carry on, don’t mind me.”
It was impossible not to mind her, but Pizzetti made an effort, resuming her rundown of all the preliminary results, relevant or not. Ziewicz listened with great attention and then, as Pizzetti continued, clasped her hands behind her back and made an excruciatingly slow turn around the two gurneys, the one holding the body and the other all the parts, examining them with redly pursed lips.
After several minutes, she issued a low hmmmm. And then another, with a nod, a grunt, a mumble.
Pizzetti fell silent.
Ziewicz straightened up, turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, do you recall, these many years ago, the museum murders?”
“How could I forget?” It was the first time he had encountered the formidable woman, back in the days before she’d been appointed chief M.E.
“I never thought I’d live to see a case as unusual as that one. Until now.” She turned to Pizzetti and said, “You’ve missed something.”
D’Agosta could see Pizzetti freeze. “Missed… something?”
A nod. “Something crucial. Indeed, the very thing that lifts this case into…” She gestured toward the sky with a plump hand. “The stratosphere.”
A long, panicked silence followed. Ziewicz turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, I’m surprised at you.”
D’Agosta found himself more amused than challenged. “What, you glimpse a claw in there somewhere?”
Ziewicz tilted her head back and issued a musical laugh. “You are very funny.” She turned back to Pizzetti while everyone else in the room exchanged puzzled glances. “A good forensic pathologist goes into an autopsy with no preconceptions whatsoever.”
“Yes,” said Pizzetti.
“But you did come in here with a preconception.”
Pizzetti’s visible panic mounted. “I don’t believe I did. I had an open mind.”
“You tried, but you did not succeed. You see, Doctor, you assumedyou were dealing with something—a single corpse.”
“Respectfully, Dr. Ziewicz, I did not. I’ve examined each wound and I specifically looked for substituted body parts. But each part goes with the others. They all match up. None were switched with any other corpse.”
“Or so it seems. But you did not do a completeinventory.”
“An inventory?”
Ziewicz moved her ponderous bulk over to the second gurney, where pieces of the face had been rinsed and laid out. She pointed to a small piece of flesh. “What’s this?”
Pizzetti leaned forward, peering. “A piece of… the lip, is what I assumed.”
“Assumed.” Ziewicz reached out, selected a set of long tweezers from a tray, and picked up the piece with great delicacy. She placed it on the stage of a stereo zoom microscope, switched on the light, and stepped back, inviting Pizzetti to look.
“What do you see?” Ziewicz asked.
Pizzetti looked into the scope. “Again, it seems like a bit of lip.”
“Do you see cartilage?”
A pause. Pizzetti poked at the bit of flesh with the tweezers. “Yes, a tiny fragment.”
“So I ask again: what is it?”
“Not a lip then, but… an earlobe. It’s an earlobe.”
“Very good.”
Pizzetti straightened up, her face a mask of tension. Ziewicz seemed to expect more, however, and so after a moment Pizzetti stepped over to the gurney and examined the two ears lying like pale shells on the stainless steel.
“Um, I note that the ears are both present and undamaged. The lobes are not missing.” Pizzetti paused. After a moment, she went back to the stereo zoom and stared once more into the eyepieces, poking and prodding the earlobe with the tip of the tweezers. “I’m not sure this belonged to the perpetrator.”