Page 5 of Gemini
The man was built like a brick house, with thick, muscular arms and a wide torso. I could tell enough from that alone it wasn’t one of the twins. Not that the twins hadn’t been fit, just that this man looked like he was ready to compete in a body building tournament. Every part of him was shaved save for the matted brown hair on his head. He had none of the other tattoos that the twins had save for the double snakes.
The body had been the deciding factor. His face, on the other hand, was practically non-existent. The skull was crushed in, his eyes gone, along with his nose and half his teeth.
Someone or something had done this to him.
“Gruesome, right?” said Cameron behind me. He helped me transfer the body on to a gurney before rolling it over to the weighing station.
“I’m thinking you won your bet.”
Cameron chuckled. “You think? He could have come in from one of the factories. Machine might have crushed him.”
I pressed my fingers into the man’s shoulder, noticing a smattering of dark bruises up his collarbone and along his neck. I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I just didn’t like to think someone would go to these kinds of lengths. Pretty sick.”
I let my fingers drop from the corpse’s shoulder. I got another bad feeling in my gut, something I couldn’t explain. “When did he come in?” I asked.
“Real early this morning. Found next to a dumpster down river.”
As Cameron went back to weighing a set of organs, I took my time examining the body and preparing it for the autopsy room down the hall. My eyes continued to drift over to the tattoo on his wrist. It had to mean something; it was no coincidence they all had the same one.
What kind of trouble were those two into now?
I shook my head. Didn’t matter. Wasn’t my concern. It was likely a gang related thing anyway, something they would be a part of considering their past.
Throwing the sheet back over him, I tugged on the gurney and rolled it out to the hallway and down to the main exam room.
Sliding past the double doors, I caught Jana’s slender form at one of the counters, packing away a set of samples.
“Good timing, Lena, I was just finishing these up,” she called, not looking my way. I rolled the corpse over to the examiner station, right underneath the big light. On one side was a large metal slab filled with tools, from saws to pliers and more than a few types of knives. Next to that were a few microscopes and a mini fridge for blood samples. A bigger fridge sat in the corner for the larger samples like hands and feet. On one wall was an erase board with a few notes scribbled, hardly readable.
Jana packed her last set of samples up and placed them in the fridge. “Looks like we got a looker today.” Her black gaze glanced my way, her medical mask hid any trace of a smile. “You ready or do you need a minute?”
My knees ached only a little and the anxiety was still swelling in my chest, but I nodded anyway. “I’m ready.”
Jana replaced her pair of gloves and retied her apron. “Let’s get to work.”
We started on the face first, since that was where most of the trauma was located. Carefully, I took samples of hair and bone fractures, placing them in little bags.
“Subject is in his early to mid-thirties,” Jana commented as her computer recorded everything. “According to Ms. Martinez’s report, subject weighs two hundred and eighty-five pounds and is six feet two inches.” With a set of small pliers, she popped out a broken molar that was lodged under his upper lip. “Subject has gone through extensive blunt-force trauma to the head and the face.”
As I peered at his face, I found his eyes weren’t gone, just damaged so badly they were like shriveled raisins in his skull. This man was beaten to death, it was clear as day. Usually, I wasn’t affected by the damage to the bodies, but this one had my stomach turning a little.
“Besides the head, most of him looks to be intact on the surface,” Jana continued.
I grazed the side of his collarbone again. “It looks like some of the blows missed.”
Jana pressed on his other shoulder to examine the bruises. “Clear observation. Do you notice anything else?”
I searched around the body. Taking his arm, I raised it carefully, turning it one way and then another. More bruising on the backs of the arm and elbow. “Trauma on the arm,” I answered.
Jana nodded. “He tried to defend himself.”
After examining the head, we turned to the torso. There were no stab wounds or gun wounds but there was some more bruising on the side of his ribs. Samples of the dirt under thefingernails were taken. One nail was broken. There were dirt stains on him and, when we flipped him on his back, we found little scratches and dirt embedded along the skin.
“He was dragged?”
“Definitely strong evidence. And look—” Jana slipped her tweezers into the back of his head and pulled out pieces of bloody hair along with what looked like—
