Page 27 of Fade Out
“How did you get a hold of that file?”
“Last winter I stopped by her office and picked it up.”
He stared at me a moment, clearly aware that I was talking about a crime. “Well, let’s not dwell on that, shall we?”
“All right.”
“Don’t spend much time on the building angle. It doesn’t sound like it will lead to anything useful.”
I wasn’t as sure of that. I planned to follow it up unless I came across a more compelling lead.
“What else have you done?” he asked.
“I stopped by Peterson-Palmer. They’re going to run a daily report to see if Rita tries to access any of their dormant accounts. We know she’s already done that.”
“So she’ll be too smart to try it again.”
“I’m hoping she’s too desperate not to.”
“Does she have another source of funds?” he asked.
“I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure she does. Possibly she’s draining the girl in the box’s accounts right now.”
“I got the autopsy about an hour ago.”
“Did you?”
“I coaxed the medical examiner into sending it over Zapmail.” He nodded at the machine I hadn’t recognized.
“What’s Zapmail?” I asked.
“Federal Express. Facsimile machine.” That didn’t make much sense to me. He went on, “Anyway, we caught a break right off the top. She refers to the victim as Jane Doe.”
“Really?”
“The Medical Examiner isn’t convinced this is Rita Lindquist. The report notes they’ve drawn blood and sent it for typing. And they’re doing a search for Rita’s medical records.”
“They’ll need to search her aliases too. She may have used one to go to the doctor.”
“Do you know her aliases?”
I had to think that through. “Rochelle LaRue. Lingstrom. Randi, I think. Ruby no last name. And Regina Lawson, of course. Those are the ones I know. I’m sure there are more. What else does the autopsy say?”
Owen moved the report in front of him. It had that shiny, degraded Xerox paper they used to use when copiers first came out. The kind I usually only saw in fiche machines these days. There were about ten curling sheets stapled together.
“It starts with the typical narrative. How the body arrived at the morgue. Still in the box. She talks about lifting the corpse out. Notes that there is no head and no hands. ‘Victim was a well-nourished woman between the ages of twenty-one and thirty.’” Owen read forward a bit. “This is odd, she notes that the victim’s toes are painted. That it appears she’d had a recent pedicure. And that it looked expensive. Why would she write something like that?”
“If we knew who Jane Doe was we could trace her final movements,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Yes, but we don’t know who she is.”
“True, but it could still be useful. “An expensive pedicure suggests she was well off. Presumably she had a manicure at the same time.”
Thinking about her hands made me wonder if there might have been defensive wounds. It was a shame we couldn’t determine that. It’s possible to have defensive wounds on your feet—if she were killed somewhere while she was naked, or at least barefoot, she’d have scrapes on her feet from struggling.
“Does it note any cuts, scrapes, bruising?” I asked. “Anywhere?”
“No. Oh, wait…” He read for a moment. “Whoever cut her head and hands off was a real amateur. The incisions on the neck and hands show hesitation marks. And, uh—bruising on ‘posterior of the neck below the incision. Each bruise measures five to six inches.’”
