Page 12 of Dirty Looks

I left the coffee brewing in the pot and put the creamer back in the fridge, and then grabbed the bag of samples I’d taken from the crime scene off the counter.

My parents had built the lab in the basement of the funeral home, so I couldn’t take credit for the state-of-the-art equipment or the fact that it had security that rivaled Fort Knox. Only the best for Virginia’s most-wanted criminals.

I coded us in and the pressurized metal door snicked open. The lights came on automatically when we crossed the threshold and the temperature dropped drastically. I had an elevator that was large enough to carry bodies down to the basement level,but otherwise I took the metal stairs. Our footsteps echoed as we descended into the deep cavern.

Everything in the lab was bright and white and sterile, and the black body bag was a stark contrast to its surroundings. I grabbed my lab coat from the hook and a heavy apron and then I pulled my hair back from my face before collecting the correct forms from my desk.

Most people I met thought that being a coroner must be exciting work, but in reality it was a lot of administrative paperwork combined with the tedious and meticulous examination of the body. It was a game of details, patience, and perseverance. And the reward was a definitive cause of death that would help catch a killer.

Lily had suited up and adjusted the overhead lighting, and she was pulling down the zipper on the body bag.

“Recorder on,” I said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Dr. J.J. Graves performing the autopsy of minor Jane Doe on the fifth of April at—” I stopped and looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh-eight hundred hours and nineteen minutes. Assisting is Lily Jacobs.

“Ready to move her?” I asked.

“On your count,” Lily said.

I counted down from three and Lily and I lifted the small body from the bag and laid her gently on the metal autopsy table.

“I’ll put in a request for dental as soon as we can get molds taken,” Lily said.

“Good,” I told her. “That might save us some time. Let’s go ahead and get her prints and get those sent over digitally so they can run them through the system. We might get lucky there if they took part in the county’s next-gen fingerprint program.”

I carefully removed the plastic bag over the victim’s right hand and Lily took a set of digital fingerprints and sent themto Martinez to input in the State Fingerprint Identification Program.

“Weight of Jane Doe is thirty-two point two kilograms,” I said into the recorder. “Height is one hundred and fifty-two centimeters.”

“I hate the metric system,” Lily said. “Why can’t we just say she was seventy pounds and five feet tall? Who decided metric was the way to go?”

“The rest of the world,” I said, lips twitching.

I brought the overhead light down some and moved it with me as I looked her over for any other identifying marks like birthmarks or scars, but there was nothing.

“You want x-rays next?” Lily asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “And let’s use the ultraviolet light on her and see if we can pull any more prints, just so we can narrow it down that we’re dealing with one suspect.”

It was monotonous and mindless work, something I’d done hundreds of times through the course of my career, but somehow posing the fragile body for the x-rays felt like an intrusion on her peace. She’d suffered greatly and been through more than any human should ever have to endure. I reminded myself that every piece of evidence I found would help put her killer away. It was all I could do.

“Fracture of the distal phalanx on the third and fourth digits of the right hand,” I said into the recorder. “Distal radius fracture of the same hand. What does that mean?” I asked Lily.

“Umm,” Lily said, looking intently at the x-rays. “Distal radius fractures are usually caused from falling and trying to catch yourself. And distal phalanx fractures are crushing fractures.”

“Paint the picture,” I encouraged.

“The victim fell backward and tried to catch herself, breaking her wrist, and then the killer stepped on her fingers and crushed them.”

“Good,” I said, nodding approvingly. “She’s got a remodeled fracture on the same right arm. Maybe a couple of years old. No other breaks that I can see.”

I took samples of the particulates in her heels and bagged and tagged them, along with the skin beneath her nails.

“Do you think…” Lily began and then swallowed. “Do you think she was sexually assaulted?”

I felt the weight on my chest again. “There’s visible signs of blood and semen, which pisses me, but the more DNA we have the better to nail the bastard.”

“I just don’t understand how someone could do something like that right in the middle of the park. It wasn’t even that late.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it there,” I said, trying to run the scenario in my head. Because none of it made sense. “Maybe she escaped from somewhere. Jumped out of a car or something. It would explain why we didn’t find her clothes.”

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