Page 64 of Dirty Valentine
“Sheldon, you doing okay back there?”I asked, glancing over my shoulder.
“Fine,” he said, sitting next to the gurney where Margaret Randolph’s body lay sealed in black plastic.“When someone gets their tongue cut out how do we prepare the body for an open casket?I’ve never dealt with a missing tongue before.I like working with you because I get to add new things to my mortuary journal.”
“Thank you?”I wasn’t sure if it was really a compliment directed at me or if it was directed at the depravity and creativity of murdering Virginians.
“Anyway, a missing tongue is no big deal,” I said.“If the shape of the mouth changes you just shove some cotton or putty in there to make it look normal, and then staple the mouth closed like normal.”
“I thought there’d be more to it,” Sheldon said, sounding disappointed.
“I had a guy once get the whole bottom half of his jaw blown off with a shotgun,” I said.“And the family wanted an open casket.You want to talk about miracle work?I was pretty proud of that one.By the time I was done you couldn’t even see he’d been in an accident.”
Lily navigated the familiar roads with ease despite the downpour that turned the windshield into a waterfall.The wipers fought a losing battle, each sweep immediately erased by fresh sheets of rain.
The funeral home materialized through the rain like a ship through fog, its red-brick façade dark with moisture.We pulled under the portico, and the sudden absence of rain on the roof was almost disorienting.The silence that followed felt heavy, expectant, as if the building itself knew what we were bringing into its walls.
We moved in tandem—Sheldon wheeling the gurney while Lily held the door and I punched in the security code.The elevator descended with its familiar mechanical groan, taking us from the world of the living to the realm where death revealed its secrets.The temperature dropped ten degrees between floors, the building’s climate control keeping the lower level cold enough to slow decomposition, cold enough to make me wish I’d grabbed my jacket.
In the lab, the fluorescent lights flickered to life with a harsh brilliance that banished every shadow, leaving nowhere for death’s secrets to hide.The sterile white walls seemed to close in, creating a world separate from the storm raging above—a place where violence could be dissected and catalogued, where the dead finally gave up their truths.
Lily started photographing while I began the external examination, and Sheldon finished the paperwork with the methodical precision of someone who’d documented too many violent ends.
“Time for autopsy is 5:17 p.m.,” I said into the recorder.“Subject is Dr.Margaret Randolph, age thirty-six.”
“Look at her hair,” Lily said, leaning closer with the camera.“Someone washed and styled it.That’s a lot of effort postmortem.”
“Same with the clothes,” I added.“Everything’s been adjusted, arranged.Our killer spent time with her after death.Check her hands, Lily—any defensive wounds?”
“Nothing.Not even a broken nail.”Lily photographed each hand methodically.“She never fought back.”
“Which means she was unconscious when taken,” I said.“I’ve got something here.Black fibers caught in the finger creases.”
“From gloves maybe?”Lily said, already adjusting her camera settings for a macro shot.
“Looks synthetic.Bag these for me while I check the oral cavity.”I positioned the overhead light.“The tongue removal is interesting—one clean cut, very sharp instrument.”
“Scalpel?”Lily suggested.
“Or surgical scissors.Something precise.”I opened the oral cavity a little wider.“I’m going to bet that when we open her up cause of death will be drowning.”
“You think she drowned in her own blood?”Lily asked.“That’s a horrible way to die.”
I agreed, it was a horrible way to die.They posed her so serenely.You’d never think she suffered by looking at her.But suffered she had.
“Wait,” I said, bringing the magnifier down over her arm.“She’s got a tiny puncture mark here.Injection site.So maybe she didn’t know she was dying.”
“Small favors,” Lily said.
The internal examination revealed no surprises.Healthy organs, no signs of disease.Stomach contents showed a partially digested dinner of fish and rice.
“Tox screen shows she has a BAC of .09,” Lily said.
“So she had dinner and a couple of glasses of wine,” I said.“She was over the legal limit so her reaction time would’ve been slow.She might not have even known she was in danger until the needle went into her arm.”
“I need to head upstairs,” Sheldon said, sealing the last evidence bag.“Mrs.Patterson has called three times about her mother’s viewing tomorrow, and if I don’t call her back she’ll show up here with that taxidermied cat again.”
“Good luck with that,” Lily said, not looking up from her notes.
After Sheldon left, Lily and I continued working through the internal examination.
