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8
Centered under the glass was a round black defect. A hole.
The hole lay at the level of the sternum, slightly to the left of the midline. I estimated its diameter at roughly ten millimeters.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
“I don’t want to probe until we obtain photos and X-rays. But yes. I am certain it is a gunshot wound.”
“Have you observed any evidence of a lightning strike? Any Lichtenberg figures?”
I was asking about tattoo-like marks caused by electric current forcing blood cells out of the capillaries into the epidermis, turning the skin vivid red in the pattern of the underlying vessels.
“No,” LaManche said.
I’d seen none, either.
Sonofabitch.
“Shall we have a quick look at his back?”
At LaManche’s subtle request, Lisa stepped to the table. Tucking the man’s left arm tight to his side, she grasped his left shoulder and rolled him gently.
Approximately four centimeters to the left of the midline, at the level of the ninth intercostal space, was a hole like the one on theman’s chest. This one looked slightly larger, maybe twelve millimeters in diameter.
LaManche nodded glumly.
Lisa allowed the man to settle back into his original supine position. As we all stood mute, I reviewed what I knew about gunshot wounds.
A GSW can be either penetrating or perforating. In a penetrating wound, the bullet enters the victim and stays inside. In a perforating wound, the bullet passes completely through.
In a perforating GSW, the bullet creates an exit wound as it leaves the body. An exit wound differs from an entrance wound in several ways.
An entrance wound may be surrounded by a discolored area of abraded skin, known as an abrasion ring. In this case, had one existed around either the chest or vertebral hole, time and the river had obliterated all signs.
An exit wound is typically larger and more irregular than an entrance wound and may show extruded tissue drawn outward along the bullet’s escape path. Usually, more blood is lost at an exit wound.
The blood, like the abrasion ring had there been one, was long gone. But the edges of the hole in the man’s back were more ragged than those of the wound in his chest. On close inspection, I’d noted small tendrils drooping from its borders.
“Unless deflected by bone, a bullet will travel in a straight line.” LaManche broke the silence. “That appears to be the situation here. I will, of course, do a full dissection, but I am certain I will find that the projectile passed through the lungs and heart causing a fatal hemothorax and hemopericardium.”
“The guy was shot in the chest.” I was doing the same as LaManche, voicing the thoughts spinning in my head.
“Yes.”
“Not struck by lightning.”
“No.”
“He was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“Any guess what type of firearm?”
“No.”
“Claudel is not going to be happy,” I said.
