Page 93 of This is Why We Lied

In Sara’s first years working as a coroner, body bags had been similar in design to sleeping bags with a gusset at the bottom. They were always made of black plastic and the zippers had been metal. Now, the bags were white and came in various materials and shapes depending on the application. Unlike the previous version, the industrial zippers formed a complete seal. The upgrades were well worth the extra cost. The white color helped in the visual identification of evidence. The waterproof aspect kept fluids from escaping. Both were needed in the case of Mercy McAlpine’s corpse. She had been stabbed multiple times. Her bowel had been pierced. Some of her hollow organs had been opened. The body had entered the state of putrefaction where fluids had started to leak from every opening.

“Fuck!” Biscuits cupped both hands over his nose and mouth to block the smell. “Jesus Christ.”

Sara helped Nadine free the top half of the bag. Biscuits opened the door and stood with his feet on the threshold. Amanda hadn’t moved, but she started typing on her phone.

Sara steeled her composure before she turned her attention to the body.

Mercy had been left inside the bag and fully dressed for X-rays. It could be dangerous handling a corpse. Clothing could conceal weapons, needles, and other sharp objects. Or, in the case of Mercy, a knife lodged inside of her chest.

Will’s shirt was still draped across her upper torso. The material was bunched up around the tip of the broken blade, which jutted from Mercy’s breastplate like the fin of a shark. Blood and sinew had dried in ropes around the serrated edge. Sara imagined the X-ray would show the blade angled between the sternum and scapula. The killer had likely been right-handed. Hopefully, they would find fingerprints on the missing handle.

Sara let her gaze travel up and down the body. Mercy’s eyes were slit open, her corneas clouded. Her mouth was agape. Dried blood and debris patched her pale skin. Several shallow stab wounds had gouged out the flesh of her neck. The white of her right clavicle bone was exposed where the blade had flayed open the skin. The wounds in her lower back and upper thighs were weeping into the body bag. Every inch of exposed skin showed the brutality of her death.

“God bless her soul,” Nadine whispered. “Nobody deserves this.”

“No, they don’t.” Sara was not going to let herself feel helpless. She asked Nadine, “Do you record or transcribe?”

“I always feel funny talking into a recorder,” Nadine said. “I usually just write things down.”

Sara normally recorded, but she was mindful that this was Nadine’s turf. “Could you take notes?”

“No problem.” Nadine gathered the notebook and pen. She didn’t wait for Sara’s instruction to start writing. Sara read her block handwriting upside down. Nadine had noted the date, time, and location, then added Sara’s name as well as Hartshorne’s and her own. She asked Amanda, “Sorry, hon, but can you remind me of your name?”

Sara barely registered Amanda’s response as she looked down at Mercy’s ravaged body. Her jeans were still down at her ankles, but her bikini-style, dark purple underwear was pulled up around her hips. Dirt was caked into the waistband. Streaks of dirt traveled down her legs and caked into her jeans. There was a cluster of round scars on her upper left thigh. Sara recognized them as cigarette burns. Will had similar scars on his chest.

She felt her throat work at the thought of her husband. Her brain flashed up the memory of nuzzling his shoulder on the lookout bench. Back then, Sara had thought the worst thing that would happen on her honeymoon was watching Will struggle with thoughts of his lost mother.

Mercy was a lost mother, too. She had a sixteen-year-old son who deserved to know who had taken her away from him.

“All right.” Nadine flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “Ready.”

Sara continued the external exam, calling out her findings. Mercy’s body had passed the peak stages of rigor mortis, but her limbs were still stiff. The muscles of her face had contracted, giving her the appearance of intense pain. Her upper body hadn’t been submerged in the lake for long, but the skin at the back of her neck and shoulders was loose and mottled from the water. Her hair was tangled. There was a pink cast to her pale skin from the blood that had swirled into the water.

A flash popped. Nadine had started taking photographs. Sara helped her align rulers for scale. There was debris under Mercy’s fingernails. A long scratch traced down the back of her right arm. Her right thumb was still bandaged where Sara had stitched up the cut from the broken water glass. Dark bloodstains indicated the sutures had torn free, likely during the attack. The red strangulation marks Sara had seen on Mercy’s neck in the bathroom were more pronounced, but not enough time had elapsed before she died for bruises to appear.

Sara turned Mercy’s right arm, checking the underside. Then she checked the right. The fingers and thumbs were curled, but Sara could see the palms. No slashes from the knife. No edema. Not even a cut. “She doesn’t appear to have defensive wounds.”

“It’s just not showing up,” Nadine said. “Mercy was a fighter. No way she’d just stand there and take it.”

Sara wasn’t going to disabuse her of the narrative. The fact was that no one knew how they would respond to an attack until they were attacked. “Her shoes tell us some of the story. Mercy was standing for part of the attack. The spray is from arterial blood. The spatter could be from the knife plunging in and out. There’s dirt caked onto the tops around the toes. We saw drag marks from the cottage to the lake. Mercy was face-down when this happened. There’s also dirt in the waistband of her underwear, on her knees, inside the folds of her jeans.”

Nadine said, “Dirt looks like the same type as what’s at the lake shore. I’ll go back out later and collect samples for comparison.”

Sara nodded as Nadine resumed photographing the findings. For several minutes, the only thing Sara could hear over the hum on the compressor on the refrigerated cabinets was the pop of the camera flash and Amanda typing on her phone.

When Nadine was finally finished, Sara helped her spread white butcher paper underneath the table. Then she picked up the magnifying glass from the tray. They worked in tandem going over every inch of Mercy’s clothing in search of trace evidence. Sara found hair fibers, pieces of dirt and debris, all of which went into collection bags. Nadine was quietly efficient, labelling every piece of evidence, then making a notation on the evidence log indicating where it had been found.

The next step was exponentially more difficult than the previous ones. They had to remove Mercy’s clothing. Nadine laid out fresh paper on the floor. Then she placed more paper on the long table by the sink so they could search the clothes again once they were removed.

Undressing a corpse was time-consuming and tedious, particularly when the body was still in rigor. Typically a human being had roughly the same amount of bacteria as cells. Most of the bacteria was in the intestines, where it was used to process nutrients. In life, the immune system kept the growth in check. In death, the bacteria took over, feeding on tissues, releasing methane and ammonia. These gases bloated the body, which in turn made the skin expand.

The material of Mercy’s T-shirt was stretched so tight that their only choice was to cut it off. The underwire of her bra had to be pried away from her ribcage and left more than a half-centimeter deep divot under her breasts. Sara followed the seam on her underwear to cut it off. The waistband had left its mark. The thin material had to be picked away. Patches of skin came with it. Sara gently placed each strip onto the butcher paper like the pieces of a puzzle.

They couldn’t remove the jeans without first taking off the shoes. Nadine untied the laces. Sara helped her remove the sneakers. The bands at the tops of Mercy’s cotton athletic socks were loose, which made them easier to remove. Still, the material left a heavy cabled pattern in the skin. Removing the jeans was much more of a production. The material was thick and stiff from blood and other fluids that had dried. Sara carefully cut first one side, then the other, to take them off like a clam shell. Nadine carried the jeans over to the counter. She wrapped both halves in paper to prevent cross contamination.

They all stood silently as Nadine worked. No one was looking at the body. Sara could see the grim set to Amanda’s face as she studied her phone. Biscuits was still in the doorway, but his head was turned as if he’d heard something at the end of the hall.

Sara felt her throat tighten as she studied the body. By her count, there were at least twenty visible stab wounds. The torso had received the brunt of the blows, but there was a gash in her left thigh, a gouge on the outside of her right arm. The blade had sunk to the hilt in some places, the skin imprinting with the outline of the missing handle.

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