4th of July

Chapter 70

THE MORGUE WAS IN the basement of the Seton Medical Center. It was a white-tiled room smelling as pristine and fresh as the frozen-food section in a supermarket. A cooler hummed gently in the background.

I nodded at two evidence techies who were grousing about some bureaucratic scheduling screwup as they folded the victims’ garments into brown paper bags.

I was drawn to the autopsy tables in the middle of the room, where the ME’s young assistant was running a sponge and hose over the Sarduccis’ bodies. He turned off the water and stepped aside as I approached.

Joseph and Annemarie lay naked and exposed under the bright lights. Their glistening bodies were unmarked except for ugly slash wounds across their necks, their faces as unlined in death as those of children.

Claire called my name, breaking my silent communion with the dead.

I turned and she introduced me to a man in blue scrubs and a plastic apron, with a net over his gray hair. He had a slight, stooped build and a lopsided smile, as if he had Bell’s palsy or had suffered a stroke.

“Lindsay, this is Dr. Bill Ramos, forensic pathologist. Bill, this is Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, Homicide, from SFPD. There may be a link between these murders and a cold case of hers.”

I was shaking Ramos’s hand when Chief Stark came over.

“Doc, tell her what you told me on the phone.”

Ramos said, “Why don’t I show you?”

He spoke to his assistant: “Hey, Samir, I want to take a look at the female’s back, so give me a half turn. Let’s put her on the side.”

Samir crossed Annemarie’s ankles left over right, and the doctor reached over and took her left wrist. Then the two of them pulled the corpse so that it rested on one side.

I peered at seven yellowish marks crossing over one another on the dead woman’s buttocks, each about three-quarters of an inch in width, approximately three inches long.

“Tremendous force in these blows,” said Ramos. “Still, you can barely make them out. Samir, let’s turn Mr. Sarducci now.”

The doctor and his assistant pulled the male onto his side, his head lolling back pathetically as they did so.

“Now, see,” the doctor said, “here it is again. Multiple faint rectangular patterns, pressure-type abrasions. They aren’t the red brown color you’d see if the section had been struck while he was still alive, and they’re not the yellow parchmentlike abrasions you’d get if the blows were administered postmortem.”

The doctor looked up to make sure I understood.

“Punch me in the face, then shoot me twice in the chest. There won’t be enough blood pressure for me to get a rip-roaring bruise on my face, but there’ll be something there if my heart pumps for a moment.”

The doctor took a scalpel to one of the marks on the male’s back, cutting through unmarked tissue and the pale strap mark. “You can see this light brownish color under the abrasions, what’s called a ‘well-circumscribed focal accumulation of blood.’

“In plain English,” Ramos continued, “and wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Washburn? The deep slash across the carotid artery and the vagus nerves stopped the heart almost instantly, but not instantaneously. This man had one last heartbeat when he was whipped.

“These blows were administered cum-mortem—just before or at the time of death. In the mind of the killer, the victim could still feel the lash.”

“Looks like it was personal,” said Stark.

“Oh, yes. I’d say the killers hated their victims.”

There was a hush in the room as the doctor’s words sank in.

“The marks on Joe are narrower than the marks on Annemarie,” Claire noted.

“Yes,” Ramos agreed again. “Different implements.”

“Like a belt,” I said. “Could these whippings have been made by two different belts?”

“I can’t say positively, but it’s certainly consistent,” said Ramos.

Claire looked not only focused but sad. “What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“I hate to say it, Lindsay, but this really brings me back. The marks look like what I remember seeing on your John Doe.”