“I noted that the spine was bisected cleanly,” April says as I walk in. “I presume the bear did not do that.”
“We did, and yes, it added damage, but it really was the easiest way to transport it. Otherwise, the two halves were very tenuously attached.”
“I would agree. It was a clean cut, and it likely kept you from losing some of the internal organs.”
“I thought of that, too.”
“Of course you did.”
I ignore the obvious sarcasm, and I move up alongside the body. The central portion has been covered. When I glance at that covering, April says only, “Kenneth.”
“Ah. Well, as ironclad as my stomach is, I think I’ll leave that there for now. It’ll be easier to focus on the rest without that reminder.”
“Did you know his name?”
That startles me. It isn’t an April question. When I say, “Blake, apparently,” she nods and says, “Given the condition of the corpse, would you prefer to refer to it as a body or by his name?”
I pause and give it some thought. “It doesn’t matter much for me. I didn’t know him beyond a brief meeting. But maybejust stick to the generic. Even though this was postmortem, it’s tough to look at, especially when that was my choice.”
“Your choice?”
I glance up as I run my gloved fingers over the scalp. “We saw the bear taking the body. I noticed the marks on the neck, which meant I needed to examine it, but I decided we weren’t about to try taking it from a grizzly. So we let it feed while waiting for it to leave.”
“That was the correct course of action, on both counts—taking it but waiting.”
“Still tough.” I pause my tactile examination of the skull. “There’s a contusion.”
“Yes.”
She would have already done a preliminary exam. She just isn’t telling me what she found. That’s not a test—it’s a way to get separate sets of observations.
The contusion is to the back of the head. I can palpate it and feel the softness. There’s a slight bump, which could mean either a light blow or that he died before it could fully swell.
April wordlessly hands me a pair of scissors. I cut the hair from the spot and take a closer look. It’s definitely not a “light” blow. Someone clocked him hard in the back of the head. The lack of abrasions suggests a solid object. The angle says Blake was upright when it happened.
I move to the hands and knees. There’s debris under the nails and there are abrasions, but the body was dragged, so that would be expected. I’ll take scrapings from the fingernails. Both hands have abrasions on the palms, with embedded dirt, the sort of mark you get if you fall forward. Chafing on the knees suggests falling to them while wearing trousers. Of course, none of that can be conclusive, given what the body went through afterward, but it’s a reasonable theory.
Club Blake in the back of the head. He falls to all fours. Get the cord around his neck while he’s down.
I continue examining the hands, making notes and taking pictures. With the damage from the fall and drag, it’ll be hard to tell whether he fought back, and I’m not sure how much difference it makes.
I don’t see any other damage on the arms or legs. No other bumps to the head either.
I move down to his injured ankle. April has already removed the wraps and set them aside.
“Swollen,” I say.
“Broken.”
I look up at her sharply.
“Of course, I cannot positively diagnose that without an X-ray,” she says, “but if you had brought him here, I would have said it was broken.”
“I couldn’t bring him here. You know that.”
“I wasn’t judging.”
“Yes, you were. You’re annoyed because you think I blithely examined his ankle, declared it okay, and refused him medical help.”
