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“No. Nowallet and nothing in his pockets. No money either.”
“Socks and shoes are gone.”
“Yeah. Guy’s settled down for an evening, kicking back and maybe watching some T.V.”
“No rings on his fingers,” I murmured, more to myself than anyone else. “But anything like that could have come off in the water. We’ll have a hard time getting fingerprints. It’ll be better to remove the skin from the fingers completely and try to get a solid print that way rather than transferring directly. It’ll be too fragile.”
I worked my way over the exposed skin to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but it was more than obvious what the cause of death was. I reached the back of the skull and was careful as I parted matted hair.
“Two gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Execution style. The holes are nice and neat.” I retrieved a small ruler from the bag and measured the size of the holes and the distance between them.
Jack looked at the hole measurements and grunted. “Could be a couple of different handguns,” he said. “It could be a .357 Magnum or a 9mm, but you’ll have to send it off to ballistics to know for sure.”
“Those were my thoughts as well,” Colburn said. “And then I saw the front of him and now I’m leaning toward the .357 with hollow points. But like you said, ballistics will be able to tell us more.”
“Let’s turn him over,” I said, more curious than ever about the front of the body.
Colburnalready wore gloves, so he took the head and I took the feet and we carefully turned the victim over so he lay on his back.
“Damn. Martinez was right. He doesn’t have a face,” I said.I’d seen a lot of interesting things over the course of my tenure as an ER doctor and now as coroner, but I could honestly say the vacant face in front of me was something new.
The face was nothing more than spare bits of flesh and bone. The nose and mouth were empty holes, and the eye sockets were vacant—but I thought that might have more to do with the fish that had been snacking on the body for the last couple of days rather than the bullets themselves.
“High caliber weaponthrough the back of the head isn’t going to leave much of anything when it comes out the other side,” Jack said. “It’s like dropping a pumpkin off the top of a building. I can see why you’re thinking the .357 hollow points. Two shots to the back of the head will make anyone unrecognizable to their own mother.”
Colburngrunted in agreement. “I’ve got Officer Chen looking for mob related crimes in the tri-state area because of the method of killing. A hit like this seems cold and calculated. No identification and he’s dressed comfortably, so there’s a possibility he was pulled from his house. Maybe something will click in the system.”
“Who’s Officer Chen?” I asked, not recognizing the name.
“She’s only been on about a week,” Jack said. “Good cop. She’s the one talking to the kids who found the body.”
I followed Jack’s gaze toward the squad car and focused on the petite woman talking to the shaking kids. Her hair was glossy black and pulled back into a ponytail and her profile showed even features. She looked like a teenager instead of a cop.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Jack said, reading my mind. “Chen’s got multiple black belts and put Martinez on his ass the first day on the job.”
I snorted out a laugh at the mental picture. “I guess she wasn’t impressed by the Martinez charm.”
Jack smiled. “He’s been keeping his distance ever since. Martinez doesn’t meet a lot of women who don’t fall all over themselves to get his attention, but Chen looked at him like he was selling vacuum cleaners door to door and turned her back.”
“It’lldo him some good,” Colburn said. “A little humility never hurt anyone.”
“Where did Chen come from?” I asked.
“She worked the streets in Atlanta. Mostly inner city. It was her home turf and she was comfortable there.”
“King George County is a long way from inner city Atlanta. How’s she liking the slow life?”
I felt Jack’s shrug beside me. “She was one of the responding officers on the Greenwood Elementary shooting.”
“Jesus,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine.”
The Greenwood Elementary Shooting had been national news for weeks now. Five high schoolers had made a suicide pact and decided along the way they were going to take as many members of their small town that they could with them. They’d started with the elementary school. That’s where it had ended too. Sixty-two children and teachers dead.
“Yeah. Chen did the work and waded through the blood, and then when it was all over she went to her chief and turnedin her badge and gun. Chief Walker and I are friends, so he gave me a call and told me she was too good a cop to not work the job at all. That maybe she just needed a change of pace. It didn’t take much to convince her to pick up a badge again. Cop to the bone. Sometimes you just need a little break.”
I ducked my head so Jack wouldn’t see my smile. All his cops were cops to the bone, but they all had stories and pasts that haunted them. The sheriff’s office was turning into a kind of rehabilitation center, and I wondered if Jack realized what he was doing. I snuck a glance at him from the corner of my eye and saw he was watching me. Of course he knew what he was doing. Nothing much got past Jack.
I turned my attention back to the body and then looked at Colburn. “I didn’t realize we were in mob territory. We’re a long way from Jersey and Vegas.”
