Full Tilt

41

Ramsey, Minnesota

The unidentified victim’s naked corpse lay on a stainless-steel tray in one of the autopsy rooms of the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Ramsey.

Female. White. Five feet four inches. One hundred twenty pounds. Age between twenty-four and twenty-eight.

Her open, lifeless eyes stared up into the brilliant LED exam light.

What dreams did they hold? Did she have a good life? Pathologist Dr. Garry Weaver wondered before he and Monica Ozmek, who was assisting, resumed their work.

Weaver and Ozmek had conducted many autopsies over the years.

They’d grown accustomed to the coolness of the autopsy room with its smells of ammonia and formaldehyde. They knew the egg-like odor of organs, their meaty shades of red and pink. They were familiar with the pop sound when the calvarium was removed, opening the skull to reveal the brain and dura. Weaver made the usual primary Y incision across the chest as they worked their way through the external and internal examination of the body.

They’d photographed it, weighed it, measured it and x-rayed it.

Their job was to determine the manner, cause, time and classification of death, as well as positively confirm the victim’s identification. Weaver was confident about manner and cause, but identification would be a challenge.

“The dermis of the victim’s fingertips has been disfigured, likely due to being subjected to a caustic substance,” he said.

“Yes, I noted that when we were bagging the hands after we’d removed the body from the ground.”

“This tattoo may help.”

Weaver’s rubber-gloved right hand pointed a finger at the left upper neck and the tattoo of a small heart with wings.

“It should.”

“Did you submit the dental chart to the databases?”

“Yes.”

“And we also have a shot if Anderson’s team down in Saint Paul gets a hit through DNA-Monica? Are you all right?”

He saw that, behind her plastic shield, her face had saddened.

“Yes, let’s continue.”

Weaver hesitated before resuming.

Bearing in mind that his assistant seemed to be struggling with her composure, he maintained his clinical, professional distance as he found the facts to support his findings. The victim had been buried and as a result she had suffocated. There was thorax compression, but death by asphyxiation was a result of occlusion of the respiratory tract.

For a moment, before they’d concluded, Weaver considered the sensations of the victim’s last moments of being buried alive. She would have felt the crushing pressure of the soil. The pain of it pressing on her, on her organs, would have numbed her, but she would’ve still been able to think as she slowly became entombed. The soil would’ve grown warm around her face. Reflexively, she would’ve clenched her mouth shut, but eventually she’d have been forced to inhale soil, which, in combination with the earth encasing her, led to death.

He was at his computer writing his report after they had finished when Ozmek came into his office and sat in the chair near him.

She contemplated the frosty can of diet soda from the vending machine that she held in her hands.

Weaver stopped.

“Want to talk about it?”

She stared deep into the framed painting of the sun setting on the Caribbean Sea that Weaver had on the wall next to his degrees.

“I don’t know, Garry.”

“What don’t you know?”

“We go way back, don’t we?”

“Sure, way back to before the ME’s office was at the Mercy and the morgue was in the basement, remember that?”

“Sure.” She took a hit of her soda and swallowed. “But the thing is, we’ve seen it all-the fires, the car wrecks, stabbings, shootings, drownings, hypothermia, suicides, just about everything you can think of.”

“Right.”

“But this. I mean she was buried alive. We both know what she would’ve gone through.”

“Yes, but it would’ve been short, a minute or two, if that’s any comfort.”

“It isn’t. What I cannot comprehend is why someone would take her life with such vile, calculating malevolence.”

Weaver nodded.

“This one just pierced me. It just-” She shook her head.

Weaver patted her hand.

“Let’s move on getting our findings to BCA, submit everything to every possible database, so we can help catch her killer.”