The Circle of Blood

Chapter Eight

“HERE WE GO,” said Ben, gently unwrapping the sheet.

The cold, heavy feeling spread through Cameryn as she looked down at Mariah’s pale face and the bullet hole in the side of her head. Beneath the bright autopsy lights, she noticed the thickness of Mariah’s lashes and the curve of her cheekbones, the waxiness of her skin, the ragged edges of her hair. It was easier when she’d seen her as the enemy. Lying there, Mariah looked more like a victim.

While Patrick checked the body bag, which came up clean, Justin handed Cameryn a digital camera. Pictures got snapped once again, encompassing the ABFO scale that Ben moved from Mariah’s head to her elbow to her knee to her foot. Each hand had been placed in a paper bag secured with a rubber band.

“This child is young,” Ben breathed, leaning close and examining her face.

Cameryn said, “Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

“There’s hearing, and there’s seeing,” answered Ben. “I never get used to the kids. Um-mm-mm. I wonder who she is?”

“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” added the sheriff, shifting awkwardly in his boots. “You know, I got kids of my own. That girl had her whole life ahead of her, and she did this.”

“Perhaps,” said Dr. Moore.

Her father gave Cameryn a look but said nothing.

Cameryn knew the drill. There was a rote momentum in autopsies that never varied. She tried to get lost in the checklist, attempted to ignore the undigested secret that sat in her stomach like a stone. When she finished taking pictures, her father asked her to chronicle the inside of the backpack, which she was only too glad to do. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she unzipped the dark blue pack.

What if Justin missed a pocket with Hannah’s wallet inside it? What will I do then? Hide it? Confess?

She needn’t have worried. After she opened every zipper and searched each pocket, the backpack revealed only a plastic comb, a ChapStick lip balm (coconut flavored), a small package of Kleenex tissues, and the pair of silver scissors with the etched handles. Each went into a separate evidence bag, which her father took from her, signing and sealing them mechanically. “We’ll take possession of the backpack itself when you’re done,” Justin told her, handing her a grocery-sized paper bag. It was strange, she thought, that the backpack had been so empty. She was just about to bag the backpack itself when something caught her eye. Something was written on the nylon interior. Block letters, printed in ink along the zipper line.

“Dad, do you see this?” she asked, excited. “Right there-it’s hard to read because the black ink barely shows. It says ‘GILBERT.’ Look,” she said, pointing.

Eyes slanting, her father peered at the square letters. “That would have been easy to miss. I think you found us a real clue there.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Maybe. Unless she stole the backpack from someone.”

Her father looked at her quizzically. “Why would you say that? This girl doesn’t look like a thief.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered too quickly, nodding. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“At least that gives us a place to start. We’ll put that name in the database and see what we get. Well done.”

Gilbert. Mariah Gilbert. Now Cameryn had a name to go with the person she’d chased through the street, the girl who had only moments later put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Having the surname made it harder, not easier. It made Mariah seem more real.

“Hey, where’s her braid?” Cameryn asked suddenly. “It was in here, too,”

It was Justin who answered. Standing next to the sheriff, wearing street clothes, he told her, “In the paper bag on the counter. Your pop signed off on it.”

“There was a braid in her backpack?” Dr. Moore interjected, clucking his tongue. “So she cut off her hair and put it in her backpack? Very, very odd.”

Patrick said, “The haircutting dovetails with the suicide. ”

“If that is what we’re dealing with. You Mahoneys seem to want to jump the gun, pardon my pun.” Dr. Moore laughed softly at his own joke. “The word autopsy means ‘seeing with one’s own eyes.’ Shall we wait to discover what the body reveals before rendering a diagnosis? Let’s roll her. Ben-if you will.”

Dr. Moore and Ben flipped Mariah onto her belly, which was a signal to Cameryn to take another round of pictures. There was mud along the cuff of Mariah’s jeans, and a tiny rip in the shoulder seam of the parka. Cameryn took more overall shots, and then they flipped Mariah once again so that she was supine. Ben, as gentle as a parent, pulled the hair back from Mariah’s face.

“Let’s get the bags off her hands,” Dr. Moore said. “I’ll wipe them for gunshot residue. Unfortunately, a.22 never leaves much of it.” With a small porcelain pad, Dr. Moore dabbed the palm and fingers of each hand and dropped the pad into a gunshot-residue envelope, which he then sealed and signed. Next he clipped Mariah’s nails and folded the crescent pieces into a tissue, shaking his head as he did so. “The girl’s a nail-biter like you, Miss Mahoney. It makes my job harder since there’s not as much to work with. All right, people, hair samples are next.”

Evidence was gathered piece by piece. With a black plastic comb, Dr. Moore gently raked through Mariah’s hair, placing the hairs, plus the comb itself, into a tissue. Once again these were slipped inside a coin envelope. This time, though, Moore handed the envelope to Cameryn.

“Seal and sign,” he ordered.

As Cameryn busied herself writing down the date and the name “Jane Doe,” Ben held on to Mariah’s head. Bending so close that his back resembled a question mark, Dr. Moore plucked more golden-red hairs with forceps, from the front, back, and finally the nape of Mariah’s neck. “You say this girl is a stranger to your town?” he asked as he worked.

“Yeah, we’ve never seen her,” answered Jacobs. “It’s our Christmas festival, so there were a lot of strangers in town.”

Dr. Moore plucked eyebrow hairs from Mariah’s left eyebrow. “That’ll make it harder to figure things out,” he said, folding the hairs into tissue.

“You ready for the clothes now, Doc?” Ben asked as he set the coin envelope next to the others.

Dr. Moore nodded. As if on cue, the team stepped forward to help unwrap Mariah’s clothing, piece by piece. The process reminded Cameryn of undressing a doll. Mariah’s head bobbed as they removed the jacket, tugging it awkwardly over stiff hands. Inside a pocket she found a pair of blue knit gloves, which she also bagged. Next came the shoes-Cameryn unlaced them, placing each in a separate paper sack. The socks with an orange daisy print encircling each ankle came next, one bag for each sock, the bags labeled separately. The jeans were harder to remove, but Ben tugged at the cuffs, and soon they, too, slipped down Mariah’s legs. They were placed in a large paper supermarket bag stamped ALBERTSONS.

“We get them from the store ’cause they work just as well as the large evidence bags, except they’re practically free,” said Ben, following her gaze as she read the logo.

“This office tries to save where it can,” Moore interjected. “We’ve learned to make do. Lift her up so I can remove the shirt.”

Beneath the top was a modest bra, which Ben unfastened with a single expert motion. It looked different from the kind Cameryn wore. This brassiere had no lace or ribbon rosettes-just basic, unadorned fabric, plain and utilitarian. Cameryn couldn’t help but be surprised, too, by Mariah’s old-fashioned white cotton panties, the kind that went all the way to Mariah’s waist and to the top of her thigh. These were the style her mammaw would wear. As Ben pulled them down, Cameryn once again reminded herself of a hard fact: there was no privacy in death.

Dr. Moore placed a small terry-cloth towel over Mariah’s hips and pulled out the rape kit, removing long Q-tips and glass slides from a box. At that moment Cameryn could feel a hand on her forearm. It was Justin.

“Come help me log in the evidence bags?” he asked her softly.

“Okay. Sure. If you think they need to be done right now.”

“I do,” he said.

She understood that Justin was trying to protect her from the indignities of the rape kit. “Here,” he said, “I’ll read them off and you write them down.”

Her mind was divided, half of her writing while the other half was attuned to what was happening to Mariah. As she recorded the bags and coin envelopes, Cameryn listened to Dr. Moore swabbing Mariah’s internal cavities, including her mouth. She heard the hiss of aerosol as he applied fixative to the slides and the hum of the blue light as Ben passed it over Mariah’s naked body, searching for more trace evidence.

“No sign of any trauma,” rumbled Moore.

“I’m getting nothing, too,” agreed Ben. Sheriff Jacobs said something inaudible, and her father whispered in reply. She took a quick glance and saw Patrick and the sheriff leaning close, their hands clasped behind them while Dr. Moore jabbed a needle into the intersection where Mariah’s thigh met her crotch. The syringe was filled with blood, purple-red, which he once again handed to Ben.

Justin kept his voice low. “They’re finishing up the stuff for toxicology. Moore ’s just pulled blood from the femoral artery. Next is the urine, which means they’re almost done. We’ll be able to open her up real soon. Whoa,” he said.

“What?”

“That is one extreme needle Moore ’s using-at least eight, maybe ten inches long. He didn’t used to do it that way.”

She couldn’t help but turn and watch as Dr. Moore poked a long needle between Mariah’s legs. A syringe was soon filled with urine, destined for the toxicology lab. Cameryn felt a surge of curiosity. To understand death fascinated more than repelled her. The body was a puzzle meant to be read, and Cameryn wanted to read it.

“Let’s do the log later,” she said. “I want to see.”

Justin blinked. “You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s just sort of embarrassing with the vaginal swabs, being the only female in the room. Besides the decedent, I mean. But this is what I want to do.”

They returned to the autopsy table just as Dr. Moore peeled open the lids to Mariah’s right eye, pushing at the bottom of the eyeball until it bulged from her face. “No petechial hemorrhaging,” he said, repeating the procedure on the left. Then, with a sure motion, he took a smaller syringe and stuck the needle straight into the white of Mariah’s eye. Cameryn tried not to wince as he removed vitreous fluid, slightly deflating the eyeball. Once again he handed the syringe to Ben, who placed the contents in a tube he capped with a red rubber lid.

“And why do we do this procedure, Miss Mahoney?” Moore asked.

“Because-because drugs show up in the vitreous fluid at a higher level.”

“And why is that important?”

For the second time that day, Cameryn felt as though she were being tested. “You can compare the levels of drugs between the different organs. You could figure out if a decedent was, say, getting drunk or coming off of being drunk. I think.”

“Correct,” he said, sounding pleased. “My, my-no wonder that recruiter is courting you. What’s her name?”

“Jo Ann Whittaker.”

“She’s a friend of mine. Tell her to call me. I’ll give you a recommendation.” Tilting his head toward the music, he said, “Appropriately, at this moment you are hearing the jealous lover José singing for Carmen. ‘Oui, nous allons tous deux commencer une autre vie, loin d’ici, sous d’autres cieux.’ Roughly translated, it means, ‘Let us begin another life, under other skies.’ That’s what you are about to do, Miss Mahoney. You’ll begin a new life in college.” Grabbing Mariah’s jaw, he gently rolled her head to the side as he bent close to study the wound he swabbed for gunshot residue. Speaking into the bullet hole as if it were a tiny mouthpiece, he murmured, “But there will not be another life for you, will there, Baby Doe?” Sighing, he straightened and said, “I’m ready to cut.”

The five of them crowded in-Justin, Cameryn, and her father on one side, Ben and the sheriff on the other. Water burbled like an artesian spring, the walk-in freezer thrummed behind, the fluorescent lights trilled like crickets as they all stood, perfectly still, waiting. Dr. Moore moved to Mariah’s right shoulder and Jacobs stepped back as Dr. Moore raised the blade. Then he cut. Starting from her left shoulder, the doctor made a sure, deep incision that curved beneath Mariah’s teacup-shaped breast. From the right shoulder he slashed again, until the incisions joined at her breastbone. At the juncture he whipped the scalpel to Mariah’s pelvic bone in a classic "Y” incision. Cameryn could see a thin layer of fat, yellow as butter, and beneath it the maroon-colored muscle. She could almost taste the distinctive smell of blood.

“Here’s my favorite line from the opera,” Moore said as he peeled back flesh to expose ribs. “‘Libre elle est née et libre elle mourra’-‘Free she was born and free she will die.’ It surprises people to know I love art in all its incarnations. There is an art to the autopsy as well. I read the color and texture of the human body. I interpret their palette.” He folded the chest flap up so that Mariah’s face was covered by a triangle of her own skin. Switching to a carpet cutter, he continued to work the flesh free from the sinew until her skin lay crinkled at her sides like an elephant hide.

“Clippers,” he said, and Ben handed Moore the pruning shears. Dr. Moore’s breathing became more labored as he cut through Mariah’s breastplate. Cameryn could tell it was hard work-he squeezed the wooden handles with increasing force until the blades snapped bone. Once it had been freed, he gave the V-shaped bone to Ben, who in turn set it on the table. Reaching inside her chest, Dr. Moore removed Mariah’s heart. “Looks healthy,” he said. Cupping it between his hands, he squeezed out blood and handed it to Ben. “I’m guessing three hundred fifteen grams.”

“Close. It’s three hundred twenty,” said Ben, and Patrick dutifully wrote it down.

Systematically, Dr. Moore began to remove the organs, handing them off to Ben to place in a hanging scale while Patrick recorded the numbers Ben called out.

“Do you see how pink the lung is, Miss Mahoney?” Dr. Moore ran his finger down the tissue and invited Cameryn to do the same. “No asthma, no chronic problems. Baby Doe was healthy and young. Here. Feel for yourself.”

With a gloved finger Cameryn touched the tissue. It felt slippery but firm, like a saturated sponge. When she pulled her hand away, she saw there was blood on her fingertip. Discreetly, she wiped it on her apron.

The small intestines, large intestine, and appendix were removed, followed by the bladder, ovaries, uterus, spleen, and liver. Finally Dr. Moore removed the stomach, which he drained into a silver bowl, examining the contents like a soothsayer reading entrails.

“The girl ate a cheeseburger and fries not too long before she died-one hour, maybe two,” Dr. Moore said, swirling the bowl. “We’ve got four hundred fifty-three milliliters here.”

“Four hundred fifty-three ML,” her father said, scribbling the numbers on a sheet while Dr. Moore removed the kidneys. Each organ he “loafed” with a bread knife so that the tissue opened against the terry cloth as though he were slicing a bun. Small samples were removed and preserved in a specimen jar, while Ben, in time with the music, dipped a kitchen ladle into the hollowed remains, rhythmically scooping up blood. He poured it into the sink with the water and Cameryn watched as it disappeared down the drain.

“We’re ready for the head,” Moore said, dropping the kidneys into a metal bin he’d set atop Mariah’s legs. Cameryn knew when the autopsy was done the contents of the bin would be dumped in a garbage bag. The Hefty bag would then be tied and placed back in the body cavity, and then Ben would stitch Mariah back up. There was nothing glamorous about a person’s guts. They ended up in a jumbled stew.

Sheriff Jacobs had put on his wire-framed glasses, which made his small eyes seem almost normal. Pointing to the hole in Mariah’s temple, he said, “My deputy thinks there may be foul play. What say you? Anything unusual so far?” he asked.

“I say no one can know anything until we’re finished. This is a medical examination and I’m not done examining yet. Miss Mahoney, I want you to stand next to me,” said Moore. Obedient, Cameryn took her place to the right of Mariah’s head. Mariah’s torso had been completely emptied. It lay open and exposed, vacant except for the vertebrae of her spine that glinted in the overhead lights like knots on a string.

Dr. Moore put a blue paper mask on, tying it behind his head in a quick knot. The thin gray hairs bristled over the line of the string. “I heard you ask Ben if we could just begin with the gunshot wound to the head, but there is never a variation in an autopsy procedure,” Moore said. His voice was muffled. “We go by the book, piece by piece. Put on a mask, Miss Mahoney,” he said, shoving a blue paper mask in her hand. “Bone dust is not something you should inhale.” She’d been unaware the men had already donned their own masks. The blue paper collapsed, then expanded with their every breath, in and out, like a bellows.

As the opera hit a crescendo, Dr. Moore gave a crisp nod to Ben, who pulled down the flap of skin from Mariah’s face, once again exposing her features. The flattened eyes had become even cloudier, as though a storm had rolled in. Looking at that face snapped Cameryn back to reality. What had she been playing at? Before, she’d allowed herself to get lost in the science, but the face brought her back again. This had been a human being. The freckles began at the bridge of Mariah ’s nose and spread across her cheeks in a nebula that spiraled into her hairline. Someone had loved those freckles. A mother… a father… They needed to know what their daughter had done to herself, and Cameryn was withholding the answer. She was torn. Her need to tell was so strong the words rushed up her throat, but she held back, wary. You’ll think of a way. But not now.

“All right, let’s see what we can see,” said Ben. Balancing Mariah’s neck on a block that raised the head five inches, Ben took his own scalpel and made a slice from the top of the right ear to the top of her left. With an expert motion, he peeled the scalp from the bone while Mariah’s head jiggled softly. Then, with strong fingers pushing beneath the loosened skin, he pulled Mariah’s scalp all the way forward, far enough to tuck beneath her chin. Strawberry hair puffed at her jawline and swirled past her collarbone. Blue veins branched out like rivers on a map. The back of the scalp was then folded toward the nape of the neck, exposing skull that was as white as mother-of-pearl.

The Stryker saw whirred as Ben cut through Mariah’s skull in a line that went first across her brow bone all the way to the back of her head. When Ben put in the skull chisel and turned it hard, Cameryn heard a strange thwack as skull pulled from the durum. Another twist at the base, and the skull cap popped free.

“I knew it,” said Ben. “You were right, Dr. Moore. We do need a brain bucket. This has gone to mush.”

“The formalin will harden the brain so we can test bullet trajectory,” Dr. Moore translated. “Watch his technique, Miss Mahoney. There’s a trick to all this.”

Ben said, “I got to slice it free. See? Now I’m cutting the spinal cord. And if I pull it just right”-he gently tugged at Mariah’s brain-“you get a brain out all in one piece. It’s just like birthin’ a baby.”

“Now, hand the brain to Miss Mahoney,” instructed Moore.

Cameryn felt her throat tighten. “What?”

“I want you to take the brain from Ben. Hold it carefully and come to the bucket. And for Pete’s sake, don’t drop it.”

Ben’s eyebrows shot into his hairline as he asked, “You sure about this?”

“Yes. She wants to learn, and I want to teach.”

Cameryn looked at her father, who seemed as surprised as she was. Without speaking he gave her a nod. She understood it to mean the choice was hers. Trembling, Cameryn cupped her palms together as Ben carefully released Mariah’s brain into her waiting hands. It was much heavier than she had anticipated, and her arms briefly sagged from the weight of it, but she quickly raised them as she took a step forward.

It was hard for Cameryn to comprehend what was happening. The essence of Mariah was in her hands, wrinkled and flanged, its whirls and grooves tinged by marbles of blood. Mariah’s thoughts, her dreams, her memories had been stored in the gray-white matter. Cameryn felt what seemed like an electrical jolt passing between the organ and her own soul. If there was any spark left of Mariah, the ember would be there. I’m so sorry, Cameryn thought at the brain, not caring how stupid it might seem. I’m so sorry, Mariah. For the very first time, she meant it.

“Come here and turn it upside down,” Dr. Moore instructed. “See this string?” He held it taut across the bucket’s rim. “I want you to balance that canal between the two hemispheres right along the line. That’s the way.”

Carefully, she did. The brain floated in the clear liquid before gently sinking.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I want to see that bullet’s trajectory. Before you arrived, Miss Mahoney, I studied the barrel of the gun. There was no blowback that I could see, none whatsoever. The gunpowder residue around the bullet hole is suggestive as well. Since you lawmen come from a small town, you might not know that in suicides involving handguns, the victim usually drops the weapon or throws it up to several feet away when his or her arm flings outward. Sometimes, of course, a weapon stays in the decedent’s hand, but not often. For now, we wait. Come back when the brain has hardened and we’ll see what we can see.”

“So… you think-” Cameryn stammered. She could feel her body go rigid.

Dr. Moore pulled off his mask. His bullfrog neck seemed to swell with air as he said, “I want to get a report on what is underneath Baby Doe’s nails. I’d like to see if there is any gunshot residue or any fingerprints on those scissors. It could all come up clean and that will be that. But it’s possible your deputy’s right.” His thick white brows came together, and while he frowned, Cameryn focused on the mark his mask had made over the bridge of his nose, wanting to escape the words she knew were coming next. They came anyway.

“This could be a homicide.”