Page 91 of Sharp Force
I take a photograph of a bloody handprint on the hallway wall. It appears Zain might have lost his balance, maybe when he fell to the floor. Drops on the carpet runner and oak flooring verify his story.
At some point after he was injured, he was upright and walking away from here, through the dining room, the living room, and out of the house.
I look through the doorway at the butchered body tangled in bedcovers. Marino has placed more sticky mats on the floor. He continues to assure me that he took photographs and swabs first thing when he and Fruge got here during the early morning hours.
“It was pitch-dark inside the house at that time, as you can imagine with the power out. The killer wouldn’t have been able to see anything without a flashlight or night-vision goggles,” Marino explains as we swap out shoe covers again.
We stuff soiled ones into the biohazard bag we brought with us from the foyer. Changing my gloves, I retrieve a long chemical thermometer and a disposable scalpel from my scene case. Beneath the acrid stench of bleach, I detect the putrid-sweet odor of blood breaking down, the early stages of decomposition getting started.
I move aside a bloody sheet and duvet, a pair of blood-soaked pajamas in a heap on the foot of the bed. I pick up the top, then the bottoms for a better look at the slits and slashes from the knife. Areas of sparing show the satiny fabric is pale blue before it turned dark red.
“You’ve got photographs of all this?” I ask.
“Out the wazoo,” Marino says. “And video.”
He hands me a plastic ruler, and the largest buttonhole-like perforations from multiple stabs are two inches long.
“The knife is single edge,” I tell him as he makes notes. “The blade is a maximum of two inches wide, tapering to a narrow point.”
I know this because defects in the fabric and flesh are smaller where the blade barely penetrated before striking bone and cartilage. Her ribs and hips. Her sternum and skull. She obviously was wearing the pajamas when the killer attacked. After the fact, he cut them off her.
“By the looks of things, the sharp force injuries were made by a knife that’s consistent with the one used in the three earlier cases,” I tell Marino. “The measurements are the same so far. We should be able to find tool marks in cartilage and bone for comparison. All indications point to the Slasher again. I think he did this.”
“Which looks really bad for Zain Willard,” Marino says. “But then, you know what I think. The spoiled punk’s a closet psycho.”
“There are dozens of stab wounds.” I describe what I’m seeing. “More than there were in the other three cases. I’m sensing a stronger emotional response, making me wonder if he had a connection to Georgine Duvall.”
“It’s like he hated her,” Marino says, and I know who he’s thinking about.
“I think it’s a fair statement that the Slasher hates everyone he hacks to death,” I answer. “Most of all, he hates what they represent.”
“All of them are health workers,” Marino replies. “He goes after people like that for some reason that probably goes back to his childhood.”
“Zain’s mother is a pediatrician,” I tell him.
“Bingo,” Marino says. “That totally fits. Maybe when Zain wascoming along, his mom spent all her time with her patients. Maybe he felt she had other kids in her life who were more important than him.”
“We have no idea if that was the case.”
“And she probably ended up working on holidays.” He continues to script what sounds more like his own story of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey.
His father was a drunk and largely absent. Marino’s mother taught in the local elementary school and was overwhelmed on every front. He spent a lot of time on the street fending for himself. I imagine his holidays weren’t Hallmark happy.
The body is warm through my gloves as I make a small incision over the lower left abdomen. I insert the thermometer, gently pushing it all the way into the liver to get a core temperature. It will be more accurate than what Marino recorded with infrared, and I set a second thermometer on top of the dresser.
“She looks like she worked out, was in good shape for her age.” He stares at the carnage on the bed. “I bet she used the fitness center here.”
“Regularly, I’d hazard a guess,” I reply. “Making it easy for someone to see her coming and going. I assume she would have walked there. It’s not far from here.”
Lean with good muscle tone, Georgine has the build of a gym enthusiast, and always did, I explain.
“When I’d see her in Charlottesville, she often mentioned exercising and playing sports,” I add. “I remember the Duvalls had an indoor swimming pool, a workout room. They were physically active, big outdoor enthusiasts.”
I envision the photograph on her driver’s license, her face attractive in a handsome way, almost regal. I can’t tell that now. The killerslashed open the forehead and scalp, lopping off the tip of the nose and part of an ear. I survey the damage, the wounds more frenzied and vicious than in the previous three cases.
I note multiple slits in the sheets where the killer missed the body entirely, stabbing and slashing the mattress, even nicking the wooden headboard and a bedpost.
“She was moving around a lot,” I say to Marino as he takes notes. “She struggled with him. More than we’ve seen in the other cases, and those were frenzied enough.”
