Page 21 of Absent Remorse

Amber suspected that last part was aimed at her. She wished that she could promise that she wouldn’t, but she hadn’t spent as much time around the dead as Simon or the coroner had. All she could do was hope that she would be able to hold it together in there.

The coroner gestured to a set of double doors, and Amber steeled herself to walk towards them. It was cold on the other side, cold enough that Amber shivered with it. At least, Amber thought that it was the cold that made her shiver. Perhaps it was just the prospect of the bodies that lay within.

There weren’t any set out there. Instead, a steel autopsy table sat at the center of the room with a series of spotlights around it and a couple of metal tables with medical instruments set upon it. Steel doors placed around the walls showed where the bodies of those within the morgue rested. Amber knew that the bodies of Alicia Greening, Mandy Grieder, and Rose Ferne would be behind three of those doors, carefully preserved by the cold, carefully labelled, and waiting for collection.

The coroner went over to those doors.

“So, we have three victims.”

He opened three doors and pulled out three gurneys, each holding the bodies of one of the three young women who had been the victims, a blast of cold hitting Amber as each dead woman was withdrawn.

“This is Mandy Grieder, found dead at 5pm two days ago at 14 Peel Street by a passerby. This is Rose Ferne, found outside the Hambledon Hotel, 15 Greater Square at 8am yesterday. Andthisis Alicia Greening, who dropped dead on 9thstreet earlier today after being stabbed by a passing stranger.”

The coroner said it almost mechanically, as if it were all normal, when it was anything but that. Maybe it was just his way of coping with the horror of dead bodies in front of him, or maybe he’d just become callous as a result of his job. Either way, Amber couldn’t stay that neutral at the sight of three dead bodies. Suddenly, she understood the necessity of the warning not to throw up, as she had to fight back a wave of nausea at the horror of it.

The coroner moved over to Rose Ferne. Amber had to force herself not to look away as a fresh wave of revulsion hit her. She was looking at a dead body. Rose was mostly covered by a sheet, but even so, she could make out the stitching where her body had been sewn back together after the autopsy. Amber half-suspected that the coroner had pulled out the body specifically to see how she would react.

“What do you have for us, Liu?” Simon asked, with a slight note of impatience as if suspecting the same as Amber did, that the coroner was doing this to test her.

“All three victims are the same,” he said. “I’ve picked Rose Ferne because she’s the clearest example, but the autopsies for all three were almost identical.”

He pulled down the sheet a little, revealing a single wound to the chest of the young woman.

“See the clean edges to the wound?” he said.

Amber looked closer, and despite her revulsion at the sight of the corpse, there was a kind of fascination there in her too. She understood then that the coroner was solving his own kinds of puzzles, each dead body a mystery with an answer to be discovered. She could understand that part of it, and even thought that she could see what the coroner was trying to point out.

“What does that mean?” Amber asked.

“It means a single thrusting blow with a sharp blade,” the coroner said. “There are no signs of any defensive wounds on the body, no hints of any hesitation. See the bruising around the wound where the hilt struck? It means that he drove the blade in hard.”

“Does that tell us anything about the killer, though?” Simon asked.

Amber saw the coroner shrug.

“Maybe it means he knew what he was doing, but you already suspected that. Beyond that? I told you at the crime scene that I can only give you the facts.”

That was it? That was all that the coroner could tell them? That the three women had been stabbed? They knew that already. It didn’t get them anywhere new.

“Are there any links between the women?” Amber asked. “Anything medical or that wouldn’t be obvious?”

The coroner shrugged. “As far as I can tell, the only similarities between them are that they are all young women, and that they are all of roughly similar ages. Whether that is relevant is for you to decide.”

“It might mean something in terms of the killer’s victim profile,” Simon said. “But since we already know that the victims knew one another, that might not be relevant. He might be selecting victims through that connection, rather than because they fit a particular type.”

Again, Amber had the feeling that they weren’t getting anything useful from being there at the morgue. The coroner wasn’t giving them any new information, because the method of the murders appeared to be so simple and straightforward. It was the setup and the puzzle that made it more complex.

“What about the murder weapons?” Simon asked, obviously determined to get something out of all of this. “Do you still have them here, or have they gone over into evidence?”

“We still have them,” the coroner said. “We were going to send them over to the Washington PD, but then when the FBI became involved, that made things more complicated, and we haven’t had a chance to send them over to your office.”

That was a reminder of just how quickly things had progressed on this case. Three women were dead in a matter of days. Amber and Simon were trying to play catchup, but if they didn’t do it quickly enough, more women might die.

Or would they? If this really was something to do with the links between the three victims, was it possible that a killer had targeted them for some personal reason and now that he’d achieved his aim, he would stop?

No, Amber didn’t believe that. The puzzle didn’t fit with that idea. This was a killer murdering woman because it was a part of some grand puzzle scheme. He wouldn’t stop until they stopped him.

“Over this way,” the coroner said, leading them to a small office just off the mortuary, with books on aspects of anatomy, poisons, and more around the walls. A large desk at one side was covered in papers.

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