Page 92 of Sharp Force
I grip the left arm by the wrist, lifting it, and rigor mortis is in the early stages. She’s relatively limber, and I examine cuts and stab wounds that are deep and savage. Two fingers of her left hand are barely attached. Her right palm is cut to the bone, blood oozing as I manipulate the body.
“She made multiple attempts at warding off the blade.” I continue describing what I see. “She fought like hell until she couldn’t anymore.”
I wonder if the Slasher watched Georgine sleep for a while. Did he stand by the bed with night-vision glasses on, and what a power rush that must have been. I imagine him fantasizing, getting more worked up before starting in with the knife.
“Some things we may never know,” I’m saying to Marino. “But she tried to defend herself, and it would make sense that she screamed.”
“Unless he’d already cut her throat, and she couldn’t.”
“She has too many defensive injuries to her arms and hands for me to think the cuts to her throat were first.” I pick up the thermometer from the foot of the bed.
The room temperature is sixty-nine degrees, I report, and Marino writes it down in his small spiral notepad, the kind you can buy in a drugstore.
“It was a little less than that when I got here,” he says. “Because of the power being out.”
“There was an obvious sequence of events.” I tell him what I’m assessing.
The killer attacked her, and she likely screamed until her vocal cords, her windpipe and strap muscles were severed, one of the gashes almost to her spine.
“When she wasn’t thrashing anymore, he cut her pajamas off and started biting,” I go on. “The last thing he would have done before leaving is pour the bleach.”
“No way Zain came down the stairs the minute he heard her scream,” Marino decides. “Or the bleach wouldn’t have been poured yet. And he claims he smelled it. He said it smelled like a swimming pool.”
I think of the video made by Officer Horace’s body camera. I couldn’t tell by looking if Zain had bleach on him, but I assume not.
“Otherwise, his skin would have been burning. His eyes would have been bothered by the fumes,” I explain. “There also doesn’t appear to be bleach in the hallway where he was cut and claims to have played dead.”
“Makes sense he wouldn’t have bleach on him,” Marino says. “If he’s the Slasher he sure as hell wasn’t going to pour it on himself.”
CHAPTER 30
Iremove the thermometer from the liver, and the core temperature is 87.6 degrees, I report to Marino. Nude and with low body fat, she’s lost most of her blood, and would cool more rapidly.
Shining a flashlight, I notice a laceration on the inside of her lower lip. The injury is what I expect when an assailant clamps his hand over the victim’s mouth, smashing the lips against teeth. The edges of the wound are inflamed and bloody, consistent with her receiving the injury while still alive.
“He tried to silence her,” I tell Marino. “It appears he covered her mouth with his hand, and he might have done it first. That could be what woke her up.”
I begin swabbing under the fingernails, short and neatly squared, the cotton tips turning red. I place them into a paper envelope that Marino labels, tucking it into the scene case. Taking off my bloody gloves, I swap them for fresh ones.
“Before I start swabbing for DNA, I’d like to take a look at what’s fluorescing.” I return to the doorway.
Marino selects a handheld crime scene light from the case of them. We put on orange-tinted goggles, and he turns off the overhead chandelier, the room swallowed by blackness. The stickysound of our walking on the paper mats seems unnaturally loud, the crime light’s lens glowing purple.
I begin painting the body with ultraviolet light an inch at a time, starting with the head. Blood shows as a black void in UV. But when I shine the light on the lower face, a dusting of something blazes red.
“Well, now we know the source for sure,” I tell Marino in the dark. “The killer. He must have had whatever this residue is on his gloves and transferred it when he clamped his hand over her mouth.”
I swab the fluorescing residue, and it glows as if red hot on the cotton tip. I place the swab inside a paper envelope Marino holds open. Next, I direct the light at the oat-colored upholstered chair in a corner. A vaguely rectangular shape lights up the same iridescent red.
This residue also fluoresces on the carpet in the hallway. The bright red shapes look like partial footprints with no tread, consistent with someone wearing shoe covers the same way we are.
Lights back on, and I’m startled by Benton waiting near the stairs, a small black Pelican case in hand. He’s suited up the same way we are, covered head to toe in white Tyvek.
“Clark Givens is waiting outside with the laser scanner,” he lets us know. “And Fabian’s in the van. He gave me your medical kit, and I put it in the car.” Benton says this to me.
“We’re almost ready to move her,” I reply. “Maybe another thirty minutes.”
Opening the Pelican case, I lift out a Raman spectrometer not much bigger than my cell phone. I attach the fiber optic connector. The three of us put on the orange-tinted plastic goggles, and Marino cuts the overhead light again.
