Page 61 of Unnatural Death

I explain that the bones of the neck are broken in a pattern that’s unfamiliar. I’ve handled a lot of strangulations in my career but never seen one like this.

“First, she was shot in the abdomen. After that, the assailant confronted her physically,” I say to the video displays. “He struck her hard enough to break her teeth and the bones in her lower face. He fractured her skull.”

This is when she bit her tongue, I suspect. Her neck was crushed as she hemorrhaged internally from the gunshot wound. At some point she was impaled with the hiking poles, but by then she was dead or close to it.

“Although her eyes and some areas of her face are missing, we’re not seeing any sign of petechia, the pinpoint broken blood vessels I would expect if she’d still had a blood pressure when she was throttled,” I’m saying. “That’s one of the hallmarks of manual strangulation.”

“Overkill.” Benton keeps saying it. “Sexualized aggression.”

“The injuries to her neck go all the way around, and I’ve not seen anything quite like that before.” I continue to explain. “Something gripped her with extreme force.”

“Which brings us back to a huge animal,” Elena suggests. “Is that possible, Doctor Scarpetta?”

“Not unless it has hands.”

“That’s not good considering the footprint I found,” Marino reminds everyone. “A Sasquatch can crush an alligator’s skull with its bare hands. Imagine what it could do to a person.”

“These two victims weren’t attacked by a Sasquatch, assuming there is such a thing,” I reply. “They were brutally killed by a human.” I move out of the way as Marino takes photographs, using a plastic ruler as a scale.

“But how do we know this for a fact?” Bella plays devil’s advocate again. “If there’s an ongoing debate about whether Bigfoot is real, then I suppose it’s possible it is. And if so, we can well imagine the damage something that huge and powerful could do if enraged or threatened.”

“The assailant who killed these two people didn’t show up on thermal imaging. This person was bulletproof and armed with an assault rifle,” Benton says to everyone. “The female victim was shot by an armor-piercing bullet. Then she was beaten and manually strangled, which is personal. Often, it’s sexual. The violence itself is the turn-on, the source of the offender’s fantasies. It’s the ultimate power rush to rip someone’s life from them.”

“She has what appears to be fingertip bruises, also consistent with manual strangulation.” I adjust the overhead surgical lamp to get a better look. “And yet they’re not. They’re wider and go all the way around the neck, as I’ve mentioned. This is most unusual.”

“Do you have an explanation?” Bella asks me. “Beyond someone with very big hands.”

“I don’t think a normal person could have the strength to inflict these injuries. I’ve never seen a neck crushed like this unless the victim was run over by a car or something similar.”

“I hate to keep saying it, but that brings us back to Bigfoot,” Bella replies. “I’m just asking the same questions the public will if word of that footprint gets out.”

“For what it’s worth, the injuries don’t fit with a primate attack,” I reply. “In journal articles I’ve read, the target areas are the face, hands, feet, the genitals.”

“Like that poor lady whose face was ripped off by someone’s pet chimp,” Aiden the press secretary says. “She may have lost her hands too, as I recall.”

“I’ve never heard of a chimp, gorilla or other primate strangling anything or anyone. That’s not how they kill, as best I know,” I explain.

“And a Bigfoot wouldn’t be bulletproof or invisible on trail cameras,” Marino offers as he collects the plastic bucket, setting it on top of the autopsy table.

Inside are sectioned organs and festoons of entrails that he’ll place inside a plastic bag. The chest cavity is open like a tulip. Everything I’ve removed will be returned to the body except for tissue requiring further analysis. I close the Y-incision with long sweeps of the surgical needle.

Returning broken pieces of the skull cap to their proper position, I pull the scalp back over it, suturing the incision along the hairline with the very string I buy in bulk at Wild World. And what a strange feeling. I tell everyone watching that I’m about to start the second case. It’s a good time for them to take another break.

“We’ll see you in a few minutes,” Benton says to me as he and his colleagues get up from the conference table. “And we won’t need to watch much longer, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know. I think we’ve got what we need, and for that we’re grateful. We’re fortunate some things weren’t found by others.”

He’s referring to the micro hard drive I recovered from the female’s body. Marino helps me lift the body off the table. He wheels the stretcher back to the cooler as I pick up a Sharpie from the surgical cart. I jot the date and other information on jars of sectioned organs and test tubes of fluids that I place inside a refrigerator for Fabian to collect later.

Stepping inside the decontamination compartment to disinfect, I spray down my PPE. I drink water and eat a protein bar before returning to the autopsy compartment. When Marino wheels in the second victim, we unzip the double pouches and I’m startled by a trilling chirp. Then a cricket hops out. It flies off the stretcher, landing on the floor.

“Looks like someone hitched a ride,” I say to Marino. “See if you can catch it in a carton and we’ll figure out what to do with it when we leave.”

The cricket stares up at us as Marino finds a transparent plastic container we use for tissue and organ sections.

“Come here, Jiminy … Hold still. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

It hops away as Marino tries to block it with his Tyvek-covered foot. For the next few minutes, he makes considerable noise moving things about while the cricket artfully dodges him.

“… Stay! Crap … ! Almost … Dammit … !”

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