Page 25 of Done Dirty

The thing about working in someone else’s space is that every time you reach for something, it’s in the wrong place.

About a week into the temporary lab at the sheriff’s department and I still reached for the wrong side of the table every single time. I’d set the instruments up on the right because that’s where the space made sense for them, but my old lab had them on the left, and apparently three years of muscle memory is not something you reprogram in a week.

It smelled in here too. My old lab had a ventilation system my parents had installed that probably belonged in a NASA clean room. I’d worked in that space so long my nose had stopped registering anything at all. Here I could smell disinfectant and underneath it something warm and organic that no amount of floor cleaner was going to fix. I kept the box fan running in the corner and aimed at the table. It helped the way a box fan always helps, which is to say not much, but enough to make you feel like you were doing something about it.

My old tables were bolted to the floor, both of them with built-in drainage. This table had wheels. It was fully certified and entirely functional and wobbled slightly when I leaned on it at the wrong angle, which I’d established on day one.

I had cold storage for two bodies. In my old lab I could hold six.

The lights ran warm. I’d put in a request for proper autopsy bulbs. I’d been told it was being processed, which I’d come to understand as county government for eventually, but don’t hold your breath.

The one thing I had going for me was Alexa.

I’d brought her from home and set her up on the shelf beside my instrument tray on day one of the temporary arrangement, and she was the single nonnegotiable. Some people have comfort objects. Mine happens to be a smart speaker that plays music and tells me the weather.

“Alexa,” I said, snapping gloves on. “Play my autopsy playlist.”

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” came through the speaker and I felt better immediately. I have no apologies for my playlist.

I pulled Wade Rivers out of cold storage. The drawer rolled out with a mechanical thud that echoed off the tile, and the cold air came with him, that particular refrigerated smell that I’d long since stopped noticing in my old lab but caught every time here. I transferred him to the table. The wheels squeaked once when I locked them.

Wade looked better dead than most people looked alive, which was its own kind of annoying. He was still a well-built man who’d spent serious time and money on his body.

I reached for the recorder and clicked it on.

“July second, fourteen hundred hours. Wade Allen Rivers, thirty-four years old, male.” I set it on the tray beside me and started the external exam. “Well-nourished, well-developed male, consistent with stated age. Six feet five, two fifteen, consistent with identification. No significant natural disease processes visible externally. Livor mortis fixed on posterior surfaces, consistent with victim dying in the position in which he was found.”

I started at his head and worked down, running gloved hands over every surface before I documented anything. Small abrasion on the right elbow—perimortem, consistent with the fall. His palms were clean, his forearms unmarked. No defensive wounds, no ligature marks, no petechiae in the eyes when I pulled the lids back and checked.

The hands came next. I’d bagged them at the scene, which meant they’d traveled clean and whatever was under those nails was still there waiting for me. I unbagged the right hand first, working carefully under the nail of each finger with the scraping tool, transferring what I collected onto the card. Wade kept his nails short and spotless—of course he did—so there wasn’t much. But not much is different from nothing, and I labeled the card, sealed it, and logged it in chain of custody.

I did the left hand the same way, then rolled his prints the old-fashioned way—ink pad and card, no digital reader. My old lab had a scanner that took thirty seconds. This took considerably longer and made me feel like I was doing forensic pathology in 1987, but the results would be the same.

From there I moved to x-ray.

The portable unit was slower than what I was used to and the resolution was a step down, but it was enough. I shot the skull from multiple angles and pulled the images up on the laptop.

“X-ray confirms three impact sites to the occipital region,” I said into the recorder. “First impact consistent with an initial blow delivered from behind while victim was in a standing position. Wound track and fracture pattern suggest a right-handed assailant. Victim was likely incapacitated after the first impact. Second and third impacts delivered after initial incapacitation.”

I paused the recorder.

“No defensive wounds,” I said, more to myself than anyone. “You didn’t fight back. Either you didn’t see it coming or you couldn’t.”

I clicked the recorder back on.

“Manner of death: homicide. Cause of death: blunt force trauma, occipital, multiple impacts. Consistent with a blunt instrument. Missing ten-pound weight from victim’s home gym is a possible weapon.”

I clicked the recorder off and set it down.

The bed had told us part of the story already—mussed, sheets that hadn’t been changed, evidence of more than one person. Daniels would have bagged the sheets for DNA already. And whoever had been there with Wade that night had left in enough of a hurry to leave their underwear behind.

I used a UV light to scan his genitals and inner thighs, looking for the fluorescent signature of seminal fluid on the skin surface. It lit up on the shaft of his penis.

Wade had had sex at some point before his death. How long before, Richmond would narrow down. I followed up with a swab, secured it in a collection tube, and labeled it. The lab would test for female epithelial cells, which would tell us something about who he’d been with. I logged the swab in chain of custody and noted the time.

“On-site screen positive for seminal fluid,” I said into the recorder. “Swab collected for epithelial cell analysis. Will be submitted to the lab in Richmond with full tox panel.”

I set the tube in the evidence tray and stood there for a moment, looking at him.