Page 25 of Water's Edge

“Detective Carpenter.”

“This is Reserve Deputy Ronnie Marsh,” I tell him. He and Ronnie shake hands.

“Nice to meet you,” she says.

“That’s some grip you have there, Deputy,” he jokes, then grins at me. “Are you attending?”

Ronnie looks nervous, then draws herself up. “Yes. I am.”

Dr. Andrade begins walking and talking as he leads us inside the building. “Have you ever attended a post before?” Ronnie stays quiet. “I see,” he says. “Well this will be quite the experience. I hope you haven’t eaten this morning.”

Again he grins and gives me a conspiratorial wink.

“I don’t think you’ve attended one yourself, have you, Detective Carpenter?”

“Not here.”

I leave the answer vague, so he won’t pry.

I don’t know Dr. Andrade all that well except from phone conversations and trading emails. One thing I do know about him: he’s very thorough in the actual autopsies but not as thorough in his reports. I’ve caught him on a couple of occasions leaving out pertinent information. In one case a victim was missing her little toe. That didn’t make it into his report. It would have helped identify the body we found, because the toe wasn’t the only thing missing. The victim had been missing the little toe for a few years, but when I found her, her face was completely burnt off. I don’t generally handle the bodies at the scene enough to count their toes.

The door to the autopsy suite opens and my sinuses are immediately assaulted by the acrid smell of disinfectants. This part of the building is painted that color of green I like to refer to as puke green. The hue is fitting for what we are about to view. A long hall, also that stomach-turning shade, opens in front of me and is dotted intermittently with doors. One door is marked with the likeness of a gingerbread man and his gingerbread wife. Under that it reads, “HisandHers.” I don’t find that amusing but apparently the doc does.

“This is the most popular room with visitors.”

Very funny.

A continuous row of naked fluorescent bulbs runs the length of the hallway and buzz overhead like a hundred dragonflies. I follow Andrade to a door marked “Examination Room 1.”

Ronnie leans over to me and whispers, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You’ll be okay. If you think you need to leave, you can go. Just give it a try.”

She tries to smile. I feel some compassion for her. If she can’t, she can’t. It’s that simple. You never know what you can do if you don’t try. Rolland, my stepfather, taught me that. Myself. I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies. Some in not as good shape as Jane Snow.

I should be fine.

Dr. Andrade hands us paper masks, caps, booties and latex gloves, all in fashionable green.

“Put these on and we’ll get started.”

I look across the room to where the victim’s naked body is laid out on a stainless steel table, arms at her sides, a wooden block propping up her head. An operating room light on a swivel arm spotlights the body to the point where even the pores in the face can be seen. There is a reddish tint on one cheek that looks like smeared-on blush makeup. The nose isn’t straight. An assistant wearing a white Tyvek suit with a hoodie and goggles is washing the body down, removing what detritus remains.

Her eyes are still open and fixed.

“I’ve taken X-rays of the victim,” the pathologist says. “She has several broken ribs and broken bones in both of her hands.”

I walk with him to the table. He turns one of the victim’s hands palm down on the table.

“See this semicircular mark here?” He points to the top of the hand, and I can see what looks to me like the impression of the heel of a shoe or boot.

“Heel mark?” I ask.

“Look closer,” he says. “See the little intermittent spaces in the mark? It’s some kind of lug-soled boot. I can’t see it as well-defined on the other hand, but this one also has a broken metacarpal and a bone in the wrist.”

“Could she have broken the metacarpal pulling her hand out of handcuffs?”

“That’s what the coroner said. I agree with his assessment. I need to open her up to see how and how long the ribs have been broken, but I can tell you without a doubt that her neck has been broken. And not by a fall. Someone twisted her head.”

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