Page 16 of Girl, Undone
Death had a scent, and nowhere was it more present than an autopsy room.Ella couldn’t decide if she'd grown accustomed to it or just better at lying to herself.The room was a metal slab fit for the dearly departed, because the sterile white lights above exposed nothing but truths.An autopsy table in the center of the room held a body covered with a pristine sheet.
‘I received the body an hour ago, but I managed to get a quick preliminary done in that time.Toxicology reports are still with the lab, but I should have them back by tomorrow.Where do you ladies want to start?’
‘We’ll follow your lead,’ Ella said.
‘You’ll want your masks and gloves on, because decomposition hasn’t been kind to this one.’
Ella found the gear waiting on the side, but Ripley waved hers off. ‘Ready.’
Doctor Sanchez pulled back the sheet to reveal Julia Dawson’s rigid body in full.The overhead lights made her look flatter than she'd been in life, like someone had drained her of dimension.But it was the hole in her abdomen that demanded attention; a crater rimmed with tissue that had gone from pink to brown, with its edges curled inward like flower petals in reverse.Ella’s stomach did the flip it always did when presented with a body.Ripley's face went carefully blank, which meant she was feeling it too.
Sanchez grabbed her pointer and began at the victim’s head.‘Heavy bruise to the back of the skull.Certainly the result of blunt force trauma, although I can’t pinpoint exactly what made it.’
‘Enough to knock her unconscious?’
‘Very much so.Other than that, it’s all quite strange, because some things don't quite add up.Things that don't align with the initial hypothesis of death.’
‘We’re listening,’ Ripley said.
'Well, you see any cuts, bruises, or lacerations on the arms or legs or torso?’
Ella peered closer.‘No.Nothing.I see where you’re going with this.’
‘Where am I going with this?’
‘There are no suppression or defensive wounds anywhere, which is rare for victims who were restrained.’
‘Exactly that.I’m no profiler, but if you tie someone up while they’re conscious and they’ll tear themselves apart trying to get free.You get friction burns, skin stripped off where they've been pulling against rope.Sometimes they dislocate their own thumbs trying to slip cuffs.'Sanchez tapped the pointer against Julia's unmarked forearm.'She didn't do any of that.'
‘So, the victim was probably unconscious by the time the restraints were applied?’Ella asked.
'I wouldn't say unconscious, but this woman was weakened somehow, maybe in a state of paralysis.I'm certain she was moving under her own power or there'd be more marks on her.You can't lug an unconscious body around without leaving a few scrapes.’
That detail landed sideways in Ella's brain, something to examine later.She moved down to the main event.‘What about the hole in her stomach?’
‘This is where things getreallyweird,’ Sanchez said, ‘because I can’t figure out what caused this hole.’
Ella had rarely heard a mortician admit they didn’t know something.‘You can’t identify the weapon?’
'I spent ten years in the Milwaukee County Morgue before I came here for the peace and quiet.I've seen everything the city can dream up.Knife wounds, I know.Gunshots, blunt trauma, saw blades, industrial accidents - I can tell you what made the cut and usually which brand of tool.'She gestured at Julia's abdomen.'This is different.Look at the margins.'
Ella studied the edges.Ragged, inflamed, but not sliced.More like something had been scraped away.
'No metal traces?'Ripley asked.
'None.No steel, no iron, no zinc.Not a knife.Not a surgical tool.'
'What about a saw?Drill?'
'Power tools leave patterns.Blade marks, scoring.This is more like-' Sanchez paused, searching.'Like someone used sandpaper.Thousands of tiny abrasions instead of clean cuts.The tissue's been worn away, not severed.'
'Death by a thousand cuts,' Ella said.The phrase surfaced from some documentary she'd watched at two in the morning when sleep wouldn't come.'Lingchi.Ancient Chinese execution method.'
Ella remembered what Julia's roommate had said about Julia taking an interest in medieval history.A strange theory emerged in Ella’s head, but she benched it for a moment.
‘What could do that?’asked Ripley.‘There’s only a six hour window between the victim going missing and her showing up dead.Is that long enough for someone to do this?’
Sanchez placed her pointer down then picked up her clipboard.'No.Six hours is nowhere near long enough for someone to do this.These cuts have sliced through flesh, muscle, bone, and internal organs, and that's where things get weirder still.'
