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Doc Whitmore sat on his four-legged lab stool on casters, rolling quietly from the microscope to the centrifuge whirring by the wall, using his hands to push or pull himself against the edges of the table. Next to it, a row of slides held samples treated and ready for his examination.
A trove of equipment was laid neatly on a long, tiled table that took almost the entire length of the left wall under the X-ray lightbox and wall-mounted monitor. His back was hunched, his lab coat wrinkled, and he raised his gloved hand to greet them a little shakily. His eyes still glued to the equipment he was working on, he mumbled, “That was fast.”
Kay approached the table quietly. A strand of Jenna’s silky brown hair had slipped from underneath the white sheet, hanging over the side of the cold steel table. She fought the irrational urge to tuck it under the sheet; it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore for the bodies that landed on Doc Whitmore’s table other than the truth they were willing to share, the evidence they could deliver.
Stopping by Doc’s side, she gently squeezed his shoulder. He shot her a brief glance though the thick lenses of his black-rimmed glasses.
“You’ve been in these clothes for more than a dance,” she said, noting the sweat stains on his shirt, where the lab coat was open.
“Ugh, is it that bad?” he asked, apologetic and embarrassed as he gave his armpit a disapproving glance.
“Oh, nothing like that,” Kay replied. “Just the wrinkles on your shirt.” A beat. “And around your eyes.”
“Those ones were years in the making,” he said, standing up with difficulty, a hand propped firmly against an offending left hip. A grimace of pain washed over his face as he stood. “I do my best work at night when everyone leaves, and I can focus.” He cleared his throat quietly, looking at the thin body on the table. “Some evidence is time-sensitive, as you well know.”
“Like what?” Elliot asked, taking a step closer to the table. While in the autopsy room, he always liked to keep his distance, probably counting the seconds until it was all over. Some cops got used to the cold exam room with time, while others ended up retiring without ever managing to stomach a postmortem from start to finish. A healthy dose of professional curiosity was slowly bringing her partner around.
“Like fingerprints on the skin, for example,” Doc Whitmore said, grabbing a magnifying glass from a drawer and handing it to Elliot. “Take a look there, above her right elbow. That’s the killer’s thumbprint.” He pulled the sheet lower and exposed Jenna’s arm. The sight of her skin touching the steel table made Kay shiver.
“I found a latent print and preserved it with cyanoacrylate fumes.” A quick glance at Elliot’s confused face, and Doc added, “Superglue. Otherwise, in a few more hours, it would’ve been gone.” He pointed with the blue tip of his gloved finger. “Here, and here. She was held like this,” he demonstrated, pretending to hold Kay’s arms without touching her. “She was pinned down, most likely. On the underside of her arm, her skin was lacerated in multiple places, most likely by sharp-edged rocks. You see here? On the dorsal side of the arm, you have the bruising from the perp’s hands, and on the ventral, the lacerations from the surface she was pinned against forcefully.” He pressed his lips together. “But we’re skipping ahead.”
He picked up a remote from the lab table and clicked it a few times, displaying digital X-rays in rapid succession. Then he stopped on an X-ray of Jenna’s skull. The whitish shape showed cracks and dents in various places, especially the back, the left cheekbone and temporal.
“She fell to her death, right, Doc?” Elliot asked, taking yet another step closer to the wall-mounted screen.
“Yes. Cause of death is blunt trauma consistent with the fall from a significant height, consistent with the laser distance finder results of four thousand, fifty-seven feet we measured from up on Wildfire Ridge to the bottom of the fall. Any of these skull fractures could’ve killed her on the spot.” He clicked the remote again, and X-rays of Jenna’s spine took the screen. “Her backbone was shattered in several places, also consistent with her landing on rocky terrain at terminal velocity. Broken ribs pierced her heart in several places.” Another click to display X-rays of her arms and hands. “This is where the consistencies with a free fall end. Both her humeri show spiral hairline cracks, consistent with her arms being twisted forcefully. Seeing the same here,” he tapped the screen where the image of a hand was displayed, “in her third proximal phalange, left hand. A head fracture in her second proximal, right hand.” He turned to them and demonstrated with his own hands in the air. “He twisted her hands like this, forcing her on her knees.” He looked at the screen for a moment. “Oh, and there’s a spiral fracture on her wrist too. This happened when he pinned her hand down, like this.” He held his left hand against the table surface with his right. “See the corresponding lacerations on the dorsal side of the hand.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I will rule it a fatal sexual assault. This was murder; there’s no doubt about it.”
In the thick silence, only the distant humming of the cold storage shelves lining the autopsy room’s back wall could be heard.
A phrase resonated in Kay’s mind.Broken ribs pierced her heart in several places.She found herself wondering if Jenna had jumped to her death after the assault so that the pain would end. The psychological pain etched on her beautiful face and the physical pain that had found her up on Wildfire. Or did the unsub finish her off with one swift push? Either way, she’d died quickly. At least there was that.Broken ribs pierced her heart in several places.And still, the thought of that brought shivers to Kay’s spine.
Her throat had dried up; she swallowed before she spoke. “Did she fall straight down?”
“It’s difficult to say. The rib fractures here, corresponding with a deep, elongated laceration on her back,” he pointed at Jenna’s rib cage without removing the sheet, “indicate that her body hit a rocky protuberance on the vertical wall, on the way down. People don’t bounce off rocks; they roll and slide. I don’t see any evidence of that, but some rocky edge might’ve been sticking out and got her in the back. If you’d like, I can take scans of the mountain and determine—”
“It doesn’t really matter to the investigation, Doc,” she replied quickly. “Either way, it’s the same unsub we need to find. Tell me about him, if you can.”
A brief smile stretched Dr. Whitmore’s lips, not touching his eyes. “That I can, and plenty.”
He removed the sheet that covered Jenna’s body with a gentle action and folded it quickly, placing it at the side of the table, near her feet. Elliot took a step back and lowered his gaze to the floor.
“There’s evidence of sexual assault with oral, vaginal, and anal penetration. Abrasions and bruises on her cheeks, gums, palate, and lips. There are significant split-type lacerations, radially oriented at five, six, and seven o’clock, lacerations to the posterior fourchette, and bruising to the labia, which we see in forceful penetrations. There’s more than enough tissue damage to support the sexual assault finding. Trace evidence of condom lubricant was found, consistent with the two condom wrappers you recovered from the scene.” He pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose with the back of his forearm. “But this perpetrator is inexperienced, I would dare assume, because he left smears of semen on her inner thigh and on her cheek.” A flicker of that earlier sad smile returned. “DNA is running on both samples.”
“Good,” Kay replied, refraining from rubbing her hands together. DNA meant she would find this unsub and make her case watertight beyond any reasonable doubt.
Dr. Whitmore looked at her briefly, then at Elliot. “If you could turn your attention to this laceration on her face,” he said, pointing alongside a scratch several millimeters wide that ran from her right cheekbone near her temple to the tip of her nose. “There was a trace substance in this laceration, so minute I have it running in the mass spectrometer. It can analyze samples down to a molecule in size, so, whatever it is, we’ll soon find out. I nearly missed it, being so small, but it had a slight reflectivity. It glinted against the light.”
Kay frowned. “Any idea what that could be?”
“None yet.” He peeled off his gloves and sent them flying into a wastebasket, then shoved his hands into his pockets.
“All right, Doc, this is a good start. I’m guessing there will be more?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, eager to leave. The mystery of Jenna’s recent hardship kept her mind preoccupied with speculation, and there’s nothing worse in an investigation than speculation instead of fact.
“I’m not done yet,” he replied. Noticing Kay’s expression, he took the sheet and unfolded it, then covered Jenna’s body. Kay helped from her side, making sure the sheet covered every inch of her skin.
Something about her young body laid out under the strong circle of lights, bare and vulnerable, tugged at Kay’s heart. And Jenna wasn’t the first girl whose body Kay had visited in an autopsy room during her eight years in law enforcement, but this one felt different. As if Kay could still ease her pain somehow. As if she could still make things right for her, beyond catching her killer.
“I found two hair fibers, without follicles, unfortunately, that still clung to her clothes.” Doc walked over to the lab table and brought an evidence bag, sealed and signed, holding a coiled strand of hair. He held it up against the light, then lowered it next to Jenna’s head. “I didn’t have time to look at it yet, but it does seem to be a different color than Jenna’s, lighter, a bit longer too. I’ll study its characteristics a little later and compare with Jenna’s to make sure.”
