The Edge

Chapter 8

Jenny Silkwell had similar features to her younger sister: a long, slender nose, broad smooth forehead, classic jawline. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes because they were closed. In response to Devine’s query Guillaume said they were light blue, bordering on gray.

She said, “This was a distant gunshot wound. The abrasion collar was typical, meaning there was no deformity of the bullet before entry into the body. A contact wound would look much different, with triangular-shaped tears in the skin and evidence of searing along with soot deposits. And there was no indication of soot, seared skin, or gunpowder tattooing on the body. You’ll usually get soot with close-range wounds of half a foot or less. Now, tattooing of the skin with powder grains is pathognomonic of intermediate-range gunshot wounds. It’s burned into the skin so it can’t be removed. That’s why I ruled out an intermediate-range gunshot. There was no bullet wipe on her clothing since the bullet did not pass through any of that.” She looked up at Devine. “That’s residue from the surface of the bullet itself that ends up on the clothing.”

“I understand she was immersed in salt water,” commented Devine. “Even if there was bullet wipe it probably would not have survived. Along with any soot.”

“But there wouldn’t have been soot with a distant gunshot wound, and water would not have impacted any tattooing.” Guillaume pointed to Silkwell’s forehead. ”There you can see what’s referred to as the ‘comet tail.’ It usually shows the direction of the bullet’s flight, from left to right. The minimal presence of the tail here demonstrates the entry was pretty much straight-on.” She turned Jenny’s head to the side to show the exit wound. “People assume the exit wound is always larger than the entry,” she said. “But it’s a fallacy to determine entry and exit wounds based on the sizes of the holes. And abrasion collars, soot, and tattooing are not associated with exit wounds. As you can see, her abrasion collar clearly shows the entry came in the front. The exit wound is gaping, which speaks to the transfer of energy through the frontal bone of the skull, then passing through the soft brain tissue, and exiting out the occipital bone. Skull fragments were propelled through the wound track, which also widened the exit wound. Her death would have been instantaneous,” she added in a less professorial tone. “She would have been dead before she knew it.”

Death would have been instantaneous. She would have been dead before she knew it.

Devine had heard those phrases many times, and though he knew the physiology behind it, he had never really believed it. He had come close to death several times, and each time, it was like the brain sped up as though not to miss a second of its imminent demise.

Even for a millisecond or less, I think you know that it’s over. That it’s the end of you.

He said, “I suppose the tox screens haven’t come back yet?”

“Good Lord, no. And they won’t for a while, along with the blood workup. I know how fast they do it on TV. Get a tox and DNA report back by the second commercial break. But the real world moves a lot slower. I guess we don’t have the budget Hollywood does.”

“What else can you tell me?”

“Her stomach was empty and the prelim blood work and examination of her tissue suggested nothing unusual in her system. But the tox screens will be far more definitive. All tox screens in Maine go to a private accredited lab in Pennsylvania for analysis, but I understand these are going to a federal lab for testing. So the turnaround might be faster.”

“We also had two MDIs over from the medical examiner’s office to help in the investigation,” volunteered Harper. “They’ve gone back to Augusta now.”

“MDI?” said Devine.

“Medicolegal Death Investigator,” replied Guillaume. “They’re part of the OCME. There are only three in the entire state, but this case was important enough to get two of them here.”

“But all in all we didn’t make much progress,” said Harper. He glanced at Devine, and his look was not friendly. “Guess that’s why they sent you in.”

“I think it’ll take more than one person to solve this,” said Devine diplomatically.

Harper said, “Hell, we have fewer than thirty homicides a year in the whole damn state. And now I got two of ’em in a short period of time.”

“Two?” said Devine.

“Hit-and-run,” interjected Fuss. “Not connected to this.”

“Did you autopsy that one, too?” asked Devine, looking at Guillaume.

“The deputy ME did the actual workup, but I assisted. It was a suspicious death, and Chief Harper immediately reported it to the OCME. There was no question a full autopsy would be done under the circumstances.”

“Don’t they autopsy all of them?” asked Devine.

“Hardly. Around fifteen thousand Mainers die every year. The vast majority by accident. We’re an outdoorsy, independent people, and that comes with risks. Next-highest cause of death is natural, then suicide, underdetermined, and homicide is in last place, thank God. But the autopsy rates are going up. Six percent in 2000, eleven percent the next year, and fifteen percent of total deaths last year received the full workup.”

“What’s driving the increase?” asked Devine.

“Drug overdoses,” replied Guillaume immediately.

“Specifically, that fentanyl shit,” growled Harper.

Guillaume nodded. “It’s blowing up the OCME’s budget. Full autopsy and full tox and blood workups are not cheap. They’re building a new OCME facility in Augusta with more capacity, but it’ll be a while before it’s online. We used to only fully autopsy for those cases necessary for criminal prosecution, or unexpected deaths in people under fifty-five or where there’s a public safety concern like an infectious disease. But now, because of the fentanyl crisis, the decision has been made to fully autopsy all decedents under age thirty if there is any question as to cause of death. But with, say, a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head, we’re not going to autopsy. Jenny was otherwise in remarkable physical shape, probably would’ve lived to be a hundred.”

“Time of death?” asked Devine as he watched Harper and Fuss watch him.

“Between nine and eleven p.m. on the night she was found.”

“You’re comfortable with that window?” asked Devine.

“The deputy ME was, and I concurred. Your ME signed off on it, too. It’s not just based on forensics, but also the time window from when she was last seen alive and then found dead.”

“I understand a military ammo casing was found at the scene?”

Harper answered. “A ‘federal’ round. You think one of her own killed her?”

When Devine looked at him, the man’s expression was mocking, and Devine had to fight back the urge to voice his displeasure at the comment.

“Early days yet,” replied Devine. “Can you describe more fully the damage you saw in the wound track?”

“It was substantial,” said Guillaume.

“Define substantial.”

She looked a bit put out by this query.

“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” said Devine. “But a .300 Norma Magnum round is a high-velocity ordnance with a heavy load. It’ll drop large game with no problem.”

“You doubt the casing we found matches the bullet that hit her?” said Harper.

“Since the actual round was not found, I’m just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.” He looked expectantly at Guillaume.

“I would say that a high-velocity round was indeed used. The kinetic energy was substantial, as was the exit wound, where, as I already showed you, there was a large amount of bone and tissue extruded from the wound. The bullet was not a dumdum, because there was no evidence of mushrooming in the wound track. It went pretty much straight through her head and out the rear.”

“Then maybe a full metal-jacketed, or ball round, as the military often refers to it?” said Devine.

“It’s certainly possible.”

“What does that matter?” asked Fuss. She looked genuinely curious.

Devine said, “Most NATO military forces only use FMJ — or full metal-jacketed — ammo because of a Hague Convention international treaty signed well over a century ago. They banned the use of expanding bullets, even though FMJs have a greater risk of hitting unintended targets. Mushrooms tend to stay in the body. That’s why cops all around the world use dumdum ammo, because they put the target down with little risk of doing damage to nontargets.”

Guillaume interjected, “But the tumbling effect does catastrophic damage to the target.”

Devine continued, “The U.S. never ratified the treaty, but they’ve followed it, mostly. However, the Army now uses hollow points in some of their ammo chains. Sidearms and the like. The Hague treaty only applies to wartime — but let’s face it, the landscape of war has changed. It’s more like urban and rural street fighting rather than big armies going at each other over far-flung, isolated ground.”

Harper looked at Guillaume. “So just to be clear, Jenny was not shot by a dumdum? But by something that would include this .300 Norma round?”

“Correct,” said Guillaume. “I believe I already said that.”

Harper looked triumphantly at Devine. “Satisfied?”

“For now. Did she see anyone while she was up here? Her sister or brother?”

“We don’t know,” said Harper. “Leastways about Alex and Dak.”

“You haven’t spoken to them after all this time?” said Devine. He might not be an experienced investigator, but he knew the importance of collecting statements from persons of interest as quickly as possible because memories rapidly faded or became distorted. Or stories could be made up, practiced, and falsely corroborated.

“They’re grieving,” replied Fuss. “We’ll talk to them at the appropriate time. It’s how we do things up here.”

Devine glanced at Guillaume, who was staring at him as though awaiting his response to this professional slap.

“Okay, did you manage to talk to anyone else who wasn’t grieving?” Devine asked, his ire rising and uncomfortably so.

Dial it back, Travis — you have to work with these folks.

“A few people saw her around, nothing more than hello,” replied Harper curtly.

“Where was she staying? Jocelyn Point?”

“No,” said Harper. “Putnam Inn. Same place as you. Didn’t you know that?”

Fuss looked like she might start laughing.

Small town, thought Devine. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. Even the outsider’s.

“So she spoke to the owner?”

“Sure, she’s known Pat for years. Nothing of any note though, meaning their conversation. Just ‘hi, how you doing.’ Nothing about why she was up here.”

“Did she say whether Silkwell appeared nervous or out of sorts?”

“No, nothing like that. She visited up here pretty much every year,” said Fuss.

“Did you find anything relevant when you searched her room?” he asked.

Fuss said, “We haven’t searched it.” Before Devine could comment on that she added, “We secured it, taped it off, and waited for you to show up, because that’s what we were ordered to do from the get-go. By your folks.”

Harper didn’t look happy about this, and Devine could hardly blame him. And now he somewhat understood their unfriendly behavior toward him.

“So any idea why Silkwell was in town?” He was holding back what Clare Silkwell had told him — that Jenny was coming here to settle some unfinished business.

“No idea, yet. But like you said, early days,” added Fuss while Guillaume covered the body and then turned away to line up some instruments on a metal table. However, Devine could see from the woman’s tensed manner that she was intently listening to every word.

“Tell me about Earl Palmer, the man who found the body.”

Fuss and Harper exchanged a quick glance that Devine couldn’t readily interpret. And Guillaume’s shoulders had stiffened and then immediately relaxed when Palmer’s name had been mentioned.

Harper took a moment to clear his throat while Fuss looked away. Clearly she was going to let her boss handle this one. “Earl’s lived here his whole life. Retired lobsterman and a damn fine one. His wife, Alberta, died recently. And it rocked him to his core. He’s salt of the earth. And his wife was, too.”

“Okay. How did he happen to discover the body? She died between nine and eleven at night. But I understand that he called the police at one forty-five in the morning. What was he doing out at that hour?”

“Hell, lobstermen, like dairy farmers, don’t really sleep,” scoffed Fuss with a forced grin tacked on. “Even retired ones,” she hastily added when she saw Devine was about to interject.

“Granted, but how did he find the body? I was told it was in an isolated place.”

Harper said, “Earl likes to walk the shoreline. Ever since Bertie — that was what everybody called Alberta — died, he can’t sleep. Just drives around or goes out and walks. He likes to hear the ocean. He spent enough of his life on it to where it’s in his DNA.”

Devine slowly nodded and decided he was going to get no farther on this. “Did Jenny have a rental car?”

“Yep,” offered Fuss.

“Was it found near the crime scene? Did she drive it there?”

“No. It’s back at the Putnam Inn. White two-door Honda, you might have seen it. New York plates.”

Devine had seen such a car there. “So, like the room, have you not searched it yet?”

“Those were our instructions,” said Harper sharply. “Federal instructions.”

“Did anyone see her the night she died?” asked Devine. “Dr. Guillaume mentioned a time window.”

“Pat Kingman saw her walk out of the inn around seven thirty,” said Fuss. “She didn’t see which way she went.”

“How far from there was she found?”

“Three point two miles. I clocked it in the car,” answered Fuss.

“Weather that night?”

“Raining like cats and dogs,” answered Fuss.

Devine shifted his focus to Guillaume. “Anything else I should know? Signs of a struggle? Defensive wounds? Skin of an assailant under her nails? Any other forensic evidence at all?”

“No,” said Guillaume. “Just the casing.”

“Are you still looking for the round?”

Fuss said, “It was heading toward the ocean after it left Jenny’s body. Long gone by now, don’t you think?”

Devine glanced at her and noted the condescending expression. He had seen that look sometimes on superior officers of his, the ones who had been several degrees removed from the actual conditions on the ground, but thought they knew better. He hadn’t liked it then and he didn’t like it now.

“Any luck on tracking down the person she was with?”

“Whoa now, who said she was with anyone?” exclaimed Harper.

“I doubt she walked over three miles in the pouring rain to where she was killed. And she obviously didn’t drive herself.”

A wide-eyed Harper said, “Hell, you think she drove over there with someone?”

“Well, it’s our job to find that out, right? So let’s go to the crime scene.”

When Devine looked at Guillaume, she was giving him a tiny smile. He returned it.

I’ll take any support I can get right now, thought Devine.

It was like he was back in Afghanistan looking for a friendly face.

And I never found many. Let’s hope I do better on American soil.