Page 115 of Cold, Cold Bones
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“This girl was murdered.”
“Yeah.” Slidell was still scowling, his mouth compressed into a tight, bitter line. “That part I got. Explain.”
I gestured him to the monitor and brought up the X-ray showing the left arm bones. Using a pen, I pointed to the humeral shaft, four inches below the shoulder joint.
“See this dark line?”
“Umh.” Slidell was peering at the gray-and-white image.
I indicated the hand. “Note the medial and distal phalanges.”
“Don’t go all jargony on me.”
“The finger bones.”
Slidell leaned in and studied the illuminated fragments at the tip of my pen.
“The middle phalanges should look like small pipes, the distal ones like tiny arrowheads,” I said. “They underlie the fingertips.”
“Looks like all that’s crushed.”
I brought up a cranial X-ray.
“There are no skull fractures. But note the mandible, especially the mental eminence.”
Slidell made a noise in his throat.
“The chin,” I explained.
“Fine. Her chin’s broken, her arm’s broken, and her fingers are smashed. How’s that add up to murder?”
“The tread marks on her thighs tell us this is a vehicular death. But it’s no regular hit-and-run. The victim wasn’t strolling along the side of the road. Not hitchhiking on the shoulder. Not waiting for a bus. She was struck square in the back.”
Nguyen nodded glum agreement.
The id guys were raising a clamor. I tried to ignore them.
Slidell continued staring at the film.
“Picture this,” I said. “She’s walking, maybe running. A car comes at her from behind and plows into the backs of her legs.”
Slidell said nothing. Nguyen kept nodding.
“She goes down hard, arms outstretched. Her chin hits the pavement. She’s forced beneath the chassis. The left tires roll over her left hand, crushing her fingers.”
“How the f—”
“Then.” I indicated a second tread mark, this one angling across her back, just above her waist. “That’s where the vehicle backed over her.”
“You sure about this?”
I gestured an upturned palm at Nguyen, who began speaking.
“In an auto-pedestrian accident, typically, the victim is slammed onto the windshield or thrown sideways and outward, resulting in injuries to the head, upper torso, or legs,” she said. “This victim has no cranial or thoracic trauma consistent with a windshield impact or rapid deceleration angled to the left or right.”
“Where are you putting PMI?” I was asking Nguyen about postmortem interval.
