I Am Death

Twelve

Hunter and Garcia followed Doctor Hove past the reception counter, through a set of double swinging doors and into a wide corridor with strip lights on the ceiling and shiny floors.

As they entered the corridor, they were all greeted by a cold, antiseptic odor that lingered in the air and scratched the inside of their nostrils as if it were alive.

Hunter hated that smell. No matter how many times he’d been through these corridors, he just couldn’t get used to it. He subtly scratched his nose and did his best to breathe only through his mouth.

They passed a couple of closed doors with frosted-glass windows on the left side of the corridor, before turning right at the end of it and into a second, narrower hallway. There they came across three lab technicians, also in white medical scrubs, standing around a coffee machine. None of them looked their way.

They pushed through a set of double swinging doors and, as they did, they all had to squeeze against the wall and wait for a trolley wheeled by an orderly to go past. The body on the trolley was covered by a white calico sheet. Balanced on its torso was a box of test tubes containing blood and urine.

Garcia made a face and looked the other way.

At the end of that corridor, they finally reached a small anteroom. Another set of double doors with two small frosted-glass windows stood directly in front of them. Above the doors, in big black letters, a plate read — Autopsy Theater One.

‘Here we are,’ Doctor Hove said, as she punched a six-digit code into the keypad to the right of the door. It buzzed loudly, and then the door unlocked with a hiss like a pressure seal.

Most people who have never been inside an autopsy room would expect the air to be heavy with the smell of a compound like formaldehyde — something many associate with biomedical labs and the preservation of a body or part of it, human or otherwise. Instead, Hunter detected a faint scent of antiseptic and industrial soap. The temperature inside the autopsy rooms was also a few degrees below what would be considered comfortable. Within minutes, an unprepared visitor would be shivering in here from the temperature alone.

The room was relatively spacious. A large double sink hugged the west wall, with a central channel that led to a drain. Next to it was a metal counter with a multitude of tools, including a Stryker saw. Parked against the north wall, in neat rows, were three empty trolleys. The center of the room was taken by two stainless-steel examination tables. The body on the furthest of the two was completely covered by a white sheet. Just above the table, circular and powerful halogen lights were suspended from the ceiling.

Doctor Hove gloved up and approached the table. Hunter and Garcia followed, each grabbing a pair of latex gloves themselves.

The doctor positioned herself on the other side of the table from the two detectives and pulled back the sheet, revealing Nicole Wilson’s naked body. Her skin had begun to turn a pale, ghostly shade of white. Her eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets, and her thin lips had now lost all color. Her hair looked wet and messy, with some of it sticking to the sides of her face. Clearly visible was the large Y incision that started at the top of each shoulder, ran down between her breasts and the front of her stomach, and concluded at the lower point of her sternum. A second large incision had also been made around her head, running across the top of her forehead to open her cranium, which indicated that her brain had been examined. Hunter found that a little peculiar, but he knew the doctor would explain it in due time. Both incisions had been stitched up with thick, black surgical thread. All that gave Nicole’s body a plastic, Frankenstein-mannequin look, a far cry from the person she had once been.

As the white sheet was pulled back, Hunter and Garcia paused, looked at each other for a split second, then back at the body. What caught them by surprise wasn’t the ugliness of the two incisions, or the roughness of the black thorn-like stitches. They had seen those more times than they cared to mention. What had made them pause was the incredible number of open wounds that covered most of the victim’s torso and thighs. They all looked to be fresh lacerations, probably no more than three to four days old, varying in sizes and orientation — some were horizontal, some diagonal, some vertical.

‘What the hell?’ Garcia breathed out.

‘I know,’ Doctor Hove agreed. ‘I was as surprised as you are when I undressed the body as I prepped it for the post mortem earlier today.’

Both detectives approached the table, bending down slightly to have a better look at the cuts.

‘What we have here is a combination of two types of wounds,’ the doctor announced. ‘As you can plainly see, they all vary in size — the smallest being just over an inch long, and the largest measuring five and three quarter inches. No two lacerations are the exact same size.’

She placed her fingers over the sides of one of the cuts and pressed it down, spreading it open.

‘None of the cuts is deep enough to have reached a major organ, artery or vein.’

She repeated the process with a couple more cuts.

‘They’re essentially all flesh wounds.’

‘Torture,’ Garcia stated rather than asked.

‘No doubt,’ Doctor Hove replied.

‘You said that they were a combination of two types of wounds,’ Hunter queried. ‘What do you mean, Doc?’

Doctor Hove shrugged and tilted her head to her left. ‘To be more precise, not two types of wounds, but wounds inflicted by two different instruments.’

Garcia repositioned himself by the foot of the examination table.

‘Some, like this one for example,’ she indicated a diagonal wound just above the body’s right nipple, which looked to be about three inches long, ‘were made by a laser-sharp instrument. Maybe a kitchen knife, or perhaps a surgical scalpel. Very clean. No serrated edges. Further analyses showed that some of the cuts created by such an instrument were made from right to left, some from left to right. The ones that aren’t horizontal in orientation also vary. Some were made starting at the highest point and moving down. Some, the exact opposite.’ Doctor Hove moved her index finger from the lowest point of the wound to the highest. ‘That makes it impossible for us to tell if the assailant was right or left-handed. To me, it looks like the killer was having fun. He enjoyed torturing her.’

Hunter and Garcia kept their full attention on the body.

‘He took his time,’ Hunter added, his eyes tracing the cuts. ‘To him it was almost like putting brush strokes on to a canvas.’

‘There’s no doubt that he took his time,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘As I’ve said, some of the cuts were made by a very sharp instrument, but not all of them.’ She directed their attention to the lower half of the body. ‘Like most of the wounds inflicted on her legs and back.’

Hunter took a step closer to examine the wounds to her thighs. Neither detective was surprised to hear that the victim also had lacerations to her back.

‘These cuts weren’t created by a sharp instrument,’ Doctor Hove continued.

‘So what was used?’ Garcia asked.

‘A whip.’ The answer came from Hunter. He had seen similar injuries before.

‘That’s correct,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But not the kind used for sexual play, or what have you. What was used here was a proper leather bullwhip. The kind used to tame animals. I counted and recounted them. She received sixty lashes. But they were expertly controlled. Hard enough to break the skin and cause extreme pain, but light enough so it wouldn’t cut too deep into her flesh and cause excessive bleeding. That would’ve no doubt driven the victim into unconsciousness too often. He didn’t want that to happen. The same level of control was applied to the laser-sharp cuts which, by the way, also amount to sixty — hard enough to break the skin and rupture flesh to cause pain, but light enough to not cause excessive bleeding.’ Doctor Hove lifted her finger to emphasize her next point. ‘The interesting thing here is, healing progress differs slightly from one batch of wounds to another.’

‘Batch of wounds? What do you mean, Doc?’ Garcia asked.

‘Front of the torso, back of the torso, front of the legs, back of the legs, and buttocks.’ The doctor paused, her words hanging in the air for a moment, like smoke. ‘And that means that they were inflicted upon her at different times, most probably daily. In my opinion, she was flogged and tortured for five days, give or take a day.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Hunter asked.

‘Repeatedly. But unfortunately for us the assailant was careful enough to protect himself. I could recover no trace of semen, foreign blood, or any other bodily fluids.’

As a sign of respect, the room went silent for a moment.

Hunter walked over to where Garcia was and bent over to have a closer look at the victim’s neck.

‘I found no signs that she was either strangled or suffocated,’ the doctor added, anticipating Hunter’s question. ‘X-rays also revealed no broken bones. Toxicology will be another day or two, and if the killer used any sort of drugs on her prior to her death we should get a result for traces of it soon enough, but we won’t get a positive result for poisoning. That’s not how she died.’

‘So what was the cause of death, Doc?’ Garcia asked.

‘I’ll get there in a minute, Carlos,’ Doctor Hove said, paused, and called their attention to the marks on the body’s wrists, ankles and cheeks. ‘First let me show you a peculiarity about these. These marks indicate that she was very tightly restrained, and for a considerable amount of time. Most certainly while she was being tortured and violated. The restraint used on her wrists was some sort of thin rope. Probably nylon. Probably very easy to obtain from a multitude of stores. But I found no residues to examine, so that’s just an educated guess.’

‘On her wrists?’ Garcia asked with a frown.

Doctor Hove nodded. ‘And that’s what I mean by peculiarity. Her captor used different restraints on her ankles — stronger, harder, thicker. From the pattern left on her ankles, I’d say he used a metal chain.’

‘And why would he do that?’ Garcia again. ‘I mean, why two different types of restraints?’

Doctor Hove allowed her gaze to move around the room aimlessly, almost as if she was trying to pass the question on.

‘More torture,’ she finally replied. ‘The kind that won’t show externally.’

‘Whoa.’ Garcia lifted a hand. ‘Are you saying that her internal organs were also damaged? I mean, due to torture?’

‘One was,’ Doctor Hove replied. ‘And that’ll finally bring us to the cause of death, which baffled me throughout the entire post mortem examination until I examined her brain.’

Doctor Hove’s words seemed to chill the air inside the autopsy room even further.

‘Her brain showed signs of being damaged?’ Garcia asked. His eyes moved to Nicole’s head. ‘With no visible external trauma? Was her cranium injured?’

‘No. Her cranium was intact.’

Garcia raised his eyebrow questioningly.

Doctor Hove retrieved two sheets of paper from the instrument table behind her and handed one to each detective. ‘What caused her death was oedema of the brain.’

Garcia frowned at the sheet. ‘Wait a second, Doc, isn’t oedema some sort of swelling?’

‘Well, swelling is a consequence of it,’ the doctor clarified. ‘More precisely, oedema is an excessive build-up of fluid in the body’s tissues, which will often cause swelling and can result in further damage. It’s most common in the feet and ankles, but it can occur anywhere in the body — the lungs, the eyes, the knees, the hands, and in rarer cases, the brain.’

‘So you’re saying that her brain swelled up because of fluid excess?’ Garcia again.

‘That’s correct.’

‘What sort of fluid?’

‘Her own blood.’