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“A twenty-two-caliber revolver was placed in her mouth and fired. The angle of the shot was about seventy-five degrees. The slug ended up lodged in her midbrain. I noticed some strange residue on her teeth. It wasn’t from the discharge of the gun; that would have been a dead giveaway. The killer must’ve swabbed the teeth and mouth with a cleaning fluid to eliminate the evidence. The wound inside her mouth was sealed from the hot gases emitted when the gun was fired, basically cauterizing it. However, the X rays showed the bullet. We always take X rays before making any incision, but we had problems getting the film processed, so I started the post. Once I opened her up, the wound track and slug revealed themselves. When we
got the X ray result, the bullet in the brain was there on the film.”
“Isn’t a gun in the mouth a typical method of suicide?” said Michelle.
“Not for women,” replied Sylvia. “It’s classic Mars versus Venus, testosterone versus estrogen. Men kill themselves with guns or by hanging. Women favor poison or drug overdoses, slitting their wrists or putting a plastic bag over their heads. Besides, there was no trace of gunpowder residue on her hands.”
King mused, “The person would have to know that the cause of death would be revealed eventually even if he tried to hide it.”
“Another interesting point,” said Sylvia. “The woman was not killed in the woods. She was killed elsewhere, inside some structure, and her body was later transported to the woods. Most likely in a car, and her body was wrapped in plastic.”
“How can you be so sure?” King wanted to know.
“As you know, rigor mortis is a plain vanilla chemical process occurring upon death. It starts in the small muscles of the jaw and neck and bleeds downward to the larger muscle groups, the trunk and the extremities and is usually complete within six to twelve hours. I say usually because there are various exceptions to that rule. Body types and environmental conditions can impact the timing. An obese person may not experience rigor at death, and while cold inhibits rigor’s onset, heat accelerates it. The rigidity remains anywhere from thirty hours to three days and then disappears in the same order it appeared.”
“Okay, what does that tell us?” asked Michelle.
“A lot. Jane Doe was a young woman, well developed and nourished but not overweight. Rigor on her would have fallen within the normal parameters absent extraordinary environmental forces. The ambient temperatures the night before she was found had dipped into the high forties, which would have inhibited somewhat the rigor’s progression. Well, rigor on Jane Doe was fully resolved and her body flaccid when I examined her at the crime scene. That means she had been dead for three days at most by that time, or at the very least thirty hours. Given the resolution of rigor despite the chilly weather, I’d lean more toward her being dead three days when she was found.”
“But you said rigor’s not precise. Maybe there was something else, another factor that skewed it,” suggested Michelle.
“I had another check beyond the rigor. When I examined the body in the woods, it was already discolored, and swollen with gas from the bacteria engulfing the body. The skin also was blistering, and fluids were leaking from all orifices. That almost never commences until three days after death.” She paused. “And if she’d lain in those woods for even thirty hours much less three days, the insect infestation would have been dramatically different than what I saw. I expected to see heavy infestation of bluebottle and greenbottle flies, both outdoor varieties. Flies attack a dead body almost immediately and lay their eggs. Within one to two days the eggs hatch, and the cycle keeps going. Now, when I examined the mouth, nose and eyes, I did find fly-hatched larvae, but of what turned out to be houseflies. The outdoor fly larvae hadn’t yet hatched. Also, burial and carrion beetles should have been swarming the body by the time we found it. Nothing stops insects from doing their thing. And on top of that, after three days in those woods wild animals should have attacked the body and removed large parts of the extremities. All that was missing were fingers.”
She turned the body on its side and pointed out reddish-purple patches on the front where the blood had settled postmortem. “I also had yet another way to check my theory of the body’s being moved. The position of the lividity really told me all I needed to know. As you can see, lividity gives the appearance of bruising with its darkish hues. However, here, you can also see that the discoloration is on the front of the torso and the thighs and lower legs. The white streaks you see on the abdomen, lower chest and parts of the legs are where the body was lying against something hard and the resulting pressure inhibited the process.”
She shifted the body so they could see the back of it.
“You can see that there is no such discoloration on the back or the backs of the legs. Conclusion: she was killed and then was laid facedown, and the blood-settling process commenced. Lividity usually first occurs around one hour after death and is complete within three to four hours. If the body is moved within another three to four hours, the original discoloration may partially disappear and new ones form as the blood shifts again. However, fresh lividity patterns are not produced by position changes twelve hours after death, because blood drainage becomes fixed at that time.”
She gently laid the corpse back down. “My opinion is that she was killed indoors or perhaps in a car by the shot to the head. I believe her body remained indoors for at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours and then was taken to the place where it was discovered. She couldn’t have been in the woods longer than ten to twelve hours.”
“And the transport by car? And the plastic?” asked King.
“What was he going to do, carry her in his arms down the road?” said Sylvia. “And neither I nor the police found any fibers on her clothing, the sorts of trace you would expect to see from the carpeting in a car or a car’s trunk. And I didn’t find any on the body. Plastic doesn’t leave much if any residue.”
Michelle said, “I found the body at around two-thirty in the afternoon. The boys would have seen it maybe minutes before that.”
“Counting back,” said King, “that means the body would have been dumped there, using your twelve-hour outside number, no earlier than two-thirty in the morning.”
Williams had stood in the background all this time, but now he stepped forward. “Nice work, Sylvia. Wrightsburg is lucky to have you,” he said.
She smiled thinly at his praise. “A postmortem doesn’t tell who committed the crime unless the killer left behind things like semen, saliva or urine that we can test. The post just tells us how and what.” Sylvia glanced at her notes and continued. “As I said, there was no evidence of rape, no injury to the rectum or vagina, and she’d never had a baby. I’d put her age at about mid-twenties and her health as physically sound. In life she was a well-built woman about five feet five inches tall. She’d had breast implants, and collagen injections in her lips. And she also had had her appendix removed. We’ll know more when the toxicology screens come back in a couple of weeks.” Sylvia pointed at Jane Doe’s slit-open stomach. “Todd, she was pierced on her belly button, perhaps for a belly ring, but there was none on the body. That might help you in identifying her.”
“Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
“The only helpful identifying mark I found was this.” She picked up a magnifying glass, lifted the sheet off the lower part of the body and held up one of the legs, positioning the glass at a spot toward the inside thigh very near the woman’s crotch. “It’s a little difficult to make out with the extensive discoloration of the body, but it’s a tattoo of a cat.”
Michelle looked at the tattoo of the feline and the proximity of it to the woman’s genitals and stood straight up. “I really don’t want to think about that connection.”
“Damn,” said Williams, reddening.
“I know, not very ladylike, is it?” said Sylvia.
She looked up as Kyle entered the room.
“There’s another police guy out front, wants to talk to the chief here, Doc.”
“Police guy?” Her tone was a little strident. “Try police officer.”
