“Ah, Charlotte, I see you are well along!” The chief forensic pathologist spoke loudly as he strode into the room, filling it with the scent of Old Spice. “This is Charlotte,” he added condescendingly to the chief fed. “Our first African American pathologist. Top notch.” He turned back to her. “May I?”
“Go ahead, sir,” said Fauchet, keeping her voice studiously neutral.
She should have expected this. Naturally, he was all gowned up and ready to go, and he quickly moved in, crowding her back from the body, picking up a scalpel with a flourish, and starting to poke and prick and cut here and there, making disapproving noises — mostly, whether he realized it or not, relating to the hastily done 2007 autopsy.
“The dissection of the carotid should be diagonal,” he told her. Naturally, he was wrong — that technique was twenty years old — but Fauchet had learned never to contradict her boss while the tape was running.
He fussed and poked, slicing away in the neck area she had already half finished. She winced as she saw his scalpel make a hash of her work. “You forgot to fully expose the first cervical,” he said. “Let me do it.”
She was about to say that she was in the middle of doing so, but again held her tongue.
He worked for a few minutes as everyone watched. “I was speaking earlier about this case with ADC Pickett, here,” he said, “and it seems to me there are no surprises. Everything I see here is consistent with death by hanging. Do you agree, Charlotte?”
“Yes.” And she did in fact agree.
Moberly poked at the corpse a bit more, and then straightened up and looked around, pulling down his mask. “Agent Pickett warned me this would be a waste of our time, and it appears he was correct.” He looked around. “So, Charlotte — are we done with the gross examination?”
She glanced at the neck. Her dissection was still not complete, even though Moberly had done his best to ruin an already-spoiled cadaver with his fancywork. “Just a few minutes more,” she said.
To her surprise, the silvery-eyed fed leaned in toward her. “Dr. Fauchet, would you do me the favor of examining the hyoid bone?”
“I’ve exposed most of it.” She stepped up and pointed her scalpel, using forceps to deftly expose the rest. “It’s fractured, if that’s your question.”
“Is that normal in such a hanging?”
“It depends. The hanging itself doesn’t normally fracture the hyoid, but in an incomplete hanging such as this, the violent struggles of the subject will sometimes result in such a fracture.”
“But you see no reason to question the cause of death?” interjected the senior agent — the one named Pickett. “Suicide by hanging?”
“No.”
She could see Pickett shoot a poisonous glance at Pendergast. She was sorry her findings didn’t support whatever he was looking for — he seemed like a kind enough man.
“Well, well,” said Moberly, “thank you, Charlotte, for your assistance.” He waved a hand. “You can wrap up here.”
He led the group of feds toward the door. Just before leaving, the one named Pendergast glanced back at her with a sympathetic expression, and — if she hadn’t known better — she would have felt sure that he’d winked.
Coldmoon did not enjoy autopsies, and this one had left him a little queasy. He followed Pendergast and Pickett out the hospital door. Once in the fresh air he breathed deeply, trying to flush the smell of formalin and death from his lungs.
As they waited for a driver, Pickett turned to Pendergast. “Satisfied?”
“I’m rarely satisfied.”
“Well, I’m satisfied. Moberly is one of the top forensic pathologists in the country, and that assistant of his looked pretty sharp, too.”
Pendergast paused. “I should like to go to Ithaca.”
Pickett stared at him. “I’m sorry — what did you say?”
“The Baxter death occurred on November seventh, 2006. The Flayley death on March twelfth, 2007. Four months apart.”
“Meaning what?”
“The timing appears unusually close. And both were Florida residents, killed outside of the state.”
“Coincidence. You’ve been around long enough to know that cases like this throw up meaningless coincidences. Agent Pendergast, it’s crystal clear that both victims committed suicide. That’s the connection. Our guy has a fixation with suicide. Look how sorry he feels for them. Besides, the women didn’t know each other. A trip to Ithaca isn’t going to shed light on anything of relevance.”
“Nevertheless, I would like to go.”
Coldmoon listened to all this with an impassive face. He had to agree with Pickett. It was a waste of time to go to Ithaca, and he wasn’t about to go out on a limb again after getting burned the last time.
“I can complete my investigation in a day,” Pendergast went on. “There and back.”
Pickett hesitated, as if considering something. Then he shook his head in disbelief. “Very well. If you feel that strongly, go ahead. No overnight — if Brokenhearts strikes again, you need to be here when it happens. But before you go, I want you to check in with the forensic lab to see if anything worthwhile has come up.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Agent Coldmoon, you’ll accompany Pendergast to Ithaca, of course.”
“Yes, sir.” Coldmoon silently indulged in a lengthy, and highly descriptive, Lakota curse.
Pickett’s car arrived and he got in. “I’m heading back to New York. It should go without saying I don’t want to have to come down here again.”
He slammed the door without another word, and the car immediately sped off.
18
They made their way down the icy East Avenue sidewalk, passing grim-looking administrative buildings, heading toward the Thurston Avenue bridge. Although upstate New York was not as cold as Maine had been a few days before, there were still plow-mountains of snow at the street intersections and in the corners of parking lots. Pendergast was again clad in his Snow Mantra coat, while Coldmoon was wearing his old down jacket, unzipped. He readjusted the satchel hanging off his right shoulder. Even for a chilly day in late March, the streets seemed quiet — apparently, it was spring break. Coldmoon had been through this town once or twice, several years back, and except for the Starbucks on the approaching street corner the place looked unchanged: gray and dejected, waiting for spring.
They reached the intersection and stopped briefly beside a flagman for a crew fixing a water main break. Coldmoon took advantage of this pause to reach into his satchel, pull out a battered thermos decorated in red-and-black plaid, remove the cover that also served as a cup, and pour some of his camp coffee into it. One of the nice things about being a fed was not having to deal with TSA bullshit — they could show their creds at the airport security station, board with the pilots and flight attendants, and bring whatever they felt like in their carry-ons.
As the delicious aroma of the burnt coffee wafted up, Coldmoon’s two companions turned toward him: Marv Solomon, a Cornell University security officer, in surprise, and Pendergast in displeased recognition. Coldmoon ignored them as he placidly sipped the tepid coffee; he had long since grown accustomed to such reactions.
It looked like they’d be delayed at the intersection another minute or so. “One moment, please,” Pendergast said. Then he disappeared into the nearby Starbucks. He came out shortly holding a cardboard cup with a white plastic lid, which he handed to Coldmoon.
Coldmoon took it in his free hand and examined it, turning the cup around.
“Espresso doppio,” Pendergast told him. “Two shots of pure French roast, freshly ground. Not quite Caffe Reggio, but more than adequate for a civilized brew.” There was the faintest emphasis on the word civilized.