‘Take a seat.I’ll page Dr.Guidry.’
Ripley didn’t take a seat.She stood by the window with her arms folded and stared at the car park.Ella sat down on a plastic chair that had been bolted to the floor, which was never a good sign in any building.
‘You know what I was doing this time yesterday?’Ripley said.
‘Complaining?Like you’ve been doing all day?’
‘No.I watched Max build a tower out of cereal boxes.He got it to four high.Now I’m in a morgue in New Orleans.’
‘Life comes at you fast.’
‘Youcome at me fast.’
‘What’s gotten into you?’Ella asked.‘You’re oddly crabby, even for you.Do you have sand in your underwear?’
A door opened at the far end of the corridor.An older woman in scrubs and wire-framed glasses came through.‘You’re the FBI?’she asked.
‘Agents Dark and Ripley,’ Ella said.‘Sergeant Fields called ahead.’
‘He did.I’m Dr.Guidry.Follow me.’
They went down a corridor with grey linoleum floors and through a set of double doors into the examination room.Two steel tables occupied the centre, both with sheet-covered forms on them.Ella embraced the smell of the autopsy room with open nostrils and open lungs.Once was a time when she’d breathe through her mouth the whole time in these places, but the smell was an old friend now.
Guidry set her clipboard on a side counter and positioned herself between the two tables.‘Fields said you were consulting.You want the full rundown or just the headlines?’
‘Full rundown, please,’ Ella said.‘Please tell us you’ve found something hinky on these bodies.’
‘I found exactly what your perp wanted me to find.Which one first?’
Ripley said, ‘The most recent vic, if you’ve figured out which one that is.’
The doctor picked up a pointer and removed one of the sheets.
There she was.Rose Michaels, scrubbed clean under the light.In the alley she’d still looked like a person.Slumped and discarded, but recognisably someone who’d once had a pulse and a phone full of text messages and a favourite song.Here she’d been reduced.The brown hair was slicked back off her forehead.Her skin had a wax quality that made her look like a department store mannequin left too close to a radiator.The bruising around her throat was worse than Ella remembered — or maybe the lighting strip just made it harder to look away from.Purple fingerprints were stamped into her neck like a child pressing paint handprints onto paper.
Ella stood with it for a moment.In life, Rose had clearly been a pretty girl.Death was never kind, but it seemed especially cruel here, so the least anyone could do was look at her properly.
She asked, ‘Rose died more recently of the two?’
‘Based on liver temp and rigor, Rose Michaels here died around sixteen hours ago, so about midnight last night.She’s 26 years old.’
‘Cause of death?’
Guidry pointed to the marks around Rose’s neck.‘Bruises are consistent with manual asphyxiation, but no prints or traces on the skin.’
‘So her killer used gloves.What about defensive wounds?’
‘None.There are no scratches on her hands or forearms and no broken nails.And here-’ she moved to the foot of the table and drew the sheet lower.‘Strangulation victims typically present with fractures or micro-trauma in the feet, which comes from involuntary kicking while being choked.This woman has no damage to her feet whatsoever.’
‘He came from behind,’ Ella said.‘And if there are no defensive wounds, it means his grip was powerful enough to drain the energy out of her immediately.’
‘So he’s strong as hell,’ Ripley said.
Guidry looked at her over the top of her glasses.‘That’s your department, not mine.But from a pathology standpoint, she didn’t see it coming and she didn’t fight.’
Ella asked, ‘Hand size?’
‘Below average for an adult male.About six and a half inches from thumb tip to pinky based on the bruise spread.’
