At the Stroke of Madness

CHAPTER 25

Maggie waited, gloved hands at her sides, while Dr. Stolz unzipped the body bag. She was used to participating in autopsies. Her forensic and medical background had prepared her for doing everything from helping place the body block to taking fluid samples to weighing organs. But she knew when not to participate, too, and this was one of those times. Dr. Stolz had made that clear. So she waited, alongside Sheriff Henry Watermeier, still angry with him for blindsiding her, but anxious to have this trip over and done with.

She was trying to be patient despite her anger and her urge to help. She wanted to help clean the woman’s chest wound so they could see the incision, the puncture marks, the rips and tears. There had to be multiple ones to have caused such an eruption.

Stolz must have sensed her restlessness when he said, “The chest wound is not the cause of death. Not as far as I can tell from my preliminary exam.” He began parting the long tangled hair, his gloved fingers carefully splitting dried, bloody clumps to reveal a large crescent-shaped wound to the side of the corpse’s head. “I’m betting this is what knocked her lights out for good.”

“There was an awful lot of blood in the chest area,” Maggie said, trying not to contradict the doctor. “Are you sure she wasn’t just knocked unconscious?”

Stolz looked at Sheriff Watermeier and pursed his thin lips as if showing him that he was purposely refraining from what he’d like to say. Then he began sponging the woman’s chest, cleaning the wound, the mess. “If he started cutting her immediately after he killed her, there would still be a boatload of blood. Especially here in the chest where there’s some major gushers. And he cut deep. May have even punctured the heart.”

“Wait a minute. Deep wounds sound like fatal wounds,” Watermeier said, which drew a scowl from Stolz.

“Not stab wounds.” The medical examiner lifted skin he had just cleaned. “She’s cut open. Nothing pretty about this handiwork, though. At least not as precise and detailed as with Mr. Earlman.”

“What did he remove?” Watermeier asked before Maggie got the chance.

“I’ll show you.” Dr. Stolz began opening the wound with one hand and with the other flushed the wound with the sprayer hose attached to the side of the stainless steel table. “My first guess would have been the heart, maybe a lung. You know, stuff like the usual crazies take. But this one sort of defies anything I’ve ever seen.”

With the wound now washed clean, Stolz pressed the mangled skin to the side and moved back for Watermeier and Maggie to take a closer look.

Watermeier stared, scratching his head, puzzled and not recognizing the scarred tissue. But Maggie knew immediately. And without getting out the photo Gwen had given her, Maggie also knew that this was not Joan Begley.

“I don’t understand,” Watermeier finally said, looking from Maggie to Stolz and realizing he was the only one in the dark.

“This woman must have been a breast cancer survivor,” Stolz explained. “The killer took her breast implants.”

Maggie had already prepared herself, had already planned what she would say to Gwen when she called with the news that her patient had been murdered. She should have felt relief. But for some reason she felt beginning panic instead. If Joan Begley wasn’t dead, where the hell was she?