Grave Situation Read online

He moved down the front of the torso to the legs. After finding nothing remarkable, Coulter studied the palms and fingers.

  “Signs of rigor in the extremities as well,” he noted. “Nothing to indicate the victim put up much of a fight. No defensive wounds to the hands, the flexor surface or the ulnar aspects of the forearms.

  “There are impact abrasions to the palmar surface of both hands. I attribute this to the pavement after the victim had probably put out his hands to break his fall.”

  With Sodero’s help, he turned the body over to examine the wound in the back.

  “The blade entered the body vertically on the right side of the spinal column just missing the medial border of the scapula. Both the top and bottom margins of the wound are squared off.” Coulter leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “There is also a guard mark at the top of the wound, but none at the bottom. The thrust of the weapon came at a downward angle.”

  Carefully, he measured the margins of the wound and then the depth of the track. “I can approximate the length of the blade to be about six inches. Not so sure about the shape of the blade however. The elasticity of the skin can actually distort the wound so that it doesn’t resemble the blade at all.”

  Sodero placed a scale beside the wound and photographed it several times.

  “The rest of the external investigation is unremarkable,” Coulter said. “There are no bruises, marks or other trauma anywhere else on the body.”

  He clipped the fingernails and packaged them. Then he took fingerprints. As he filled out the print cards, Sodero transferred the body to a metal gurney and covered it with a sheet. Coulter then wheeled the body into an adjacent room to be x-rayed.

  Allan took out his notepad and jotted down the details about the knife. Sodero brought him over a plastic apron.

  “You might want to wear this, Lieutenant,” he told him.

  “Thanks, Lawrence.”

  “No problem.”

  Allan put away his notepad and slipped the apron on. “You enjoy this work?”

  “Very much so.”

  “It never bothers you? The sights and smells?”

  Sodero shook his head. “Not really, Lieutenant. I find the human body very fascinating. I realized when I dissected a fetal pig back in grade ten biology class I would someday get into this type of work.”

  “A fetal pig, huh?” Allan raised his eyebrows. “In my biology class we only dissected a starfish and a frog. And I found both to be rather disgusting.”

  Sodero chuckled. “We used those for dissections too, Lieutenant. I must say the fetal pig was my favorite though. Call me weird, but during my years in university I kept one preserved in a jar in my dorm room.”

  “And I bet you had a name for him too?”

  “I did.” Sodero smiled. “I called him Fred.”

  Just then, Coulter came back with the body and the developed x-rays. He pinned the images to a view box mounted on the far wall. Allan walked over.

  “No broken pieces of blade,” Coulter said. “But the fourth posterior rib is broken and the fifth is completely severed. Both in the nonarticular portion of the tubercle.” He adjusted his glasses. “The ribs tend to deflect a blade, directing it into the intercostal spaces between them. It requires little pressure for a very sharp blade to enter the human body.” He paused and extended a forefinger, pressing it into Allan’s arm. “About that much pressure, Lieutenant. Once the tip punctures the skin, the rest of the blade glides in with relative ease. But when the blade runs into bone, we have a different story. This wound here required some force.”

  Allan scratched his chin, looking past Coulter to the x-rays. “So we’re probably dealing with a male? Perhaps one with considerable strength?”

  Coulter removed his glasses. “There’s really no way to quantitate the strength of the individual. You’re correct, the subject is probably a male. I feel the knife is of high quality. Sharp. Strong. Single-edged. But you can rarely match a knife to a wound with any certainty. You’d be better off checking a suspect knife for blood, either around the guard or beneath the handle.”

  Allan turned to him. “Do you think the suspect is left or right-handed?”

  “Based on the angle of the wound, I’d say right.” Still looking over the images, Coulter concluded, “There are no other signs of previous trauma here. No healed fractures. No prior operations. All the organs are present. Mister Hawkins was in good shape.”

  Sodero helped him transfer the body to the dissection table again. Coulter put a block under the victim’s back, allowing the chest to rise up, the head and arms to fall back.

  That block could only mean one thing; Allan braced himself for what was to come. He watched Coulter take a scalpel from the steel tray. Starting at each shoulder, the medical examiner made an incision down across the chest to the sternum, then proceeded down the abdomen, around the navel and ended at the pubic bone.

  With the forceps, he pulled back on the corners of skin. Keeping the tension throughout, he scraped away the underlying tissue. He peeled off the top flap of skin and brought it up over Brad’s chin to expose the vessels in front of the neck. Coulter then cut the pectoral muscles from their attachments to the sternum, intercostals and clavicles and reflected them outward. When he finished, the rib cage lay bare.

  Standing close by, the faint smell that drifted to Allan was of fresh meat.

  Quick, shallow breaths, he told himself. Quick, shallow breaths.

  Pale, he watched a mound of coiled intestinal track shift to one side and then spill onto the table.

  The rib cutters Coulter took from the tray resembled gardening loppers. One at a time, he clipped the ribs from the lateral costal margins to the inner clavicles. Allan flinched at each sharp little snip.

  Coulter removed the breastplate. Blood began to flow over the table now.

  He leaned over the body, eyes intent. “The pericardial sac has been damaged,” he said. “The pleural cavity is full of blood. This is where things get messy.” He turned on a faucet hooked up at the table. “We had little blood at the scene, Lieutenant, because most of it stayed inside the body as you can see.”

  Allan swallowed as he watched waves of bloody water roll down the raised sides of the table, swirling around the drain between the feet of Brad Hawkins.

  “There’s been a stabbing down on Lower Water Street… Your son was involved.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  Allan drew a breath and turned away. The other two men didn’t seem to notice.

  Coulter cut open the pericardial sac to expose the heart. With a needle and syringe, he withdrew two vials of blood from the organ. One would be used for toxicology, the other for typing.

  “Can you take an additional blood sample, Doctor?” Allan asked.

  “I can, Lieutenant.” Coulter removed another needle and syringe from a package. “Is there a special need for it?”

  “We found a blood trail at the crime scene and at this point we don’t know who it belongs to. I’d like to have an ample supply of Mister Hawkins’ blood so we can rule out whether or not it belongs to him.”

  After Coulter withdrew another vial of blood, he proceeded to take out the heart. He weighed it, and then carried it to the sink where he rinsed it under the water. For some time, he stood there, quiet. Diligently, he examined the wound track. Then, with the bread knife, he began to dissect the heart.

  “The blade entered the posterior of the heart at a slight downward angle,” he said. “Went straight through the anterior wall and punctured the pericardial sac. There’s lethal damage to the right atrium and right ventricle. The right coronary artery had been cut. As well the superior vena cava and inferior vena cava were both damaged. Death ensued after massive hemorrhage.”

  He came back and picked up the breastplate. He turned it over and looked at the underside.

  “The tip of the blade actually nicked the posterior surface of the gladiolus.” Coulter’s normal didactic tone of
voice changed, Allan noticed. For a brief spurt, a trace of guarded amazement replaced it. The doctor’s eyes became reflective, as though trying to remember if he had seen this before. “Good thing the blade wasn’t longer. It could’ve come out the front of the chest.”

  He went back to work on the body, removing the pericardial sac. Next came the lungs. Another odor, acrid and metallic, began to overpower the smell of meat. Allan found himself staring into the thoracic cavity at a pool of blood that looked inches deep. He put a hand to his nose and stepped back a few feet.

  “You okay, Lieutenant?” Sodero asked, looking at him from the other side of the dissection table.

  “It’s just the smell. Nothing serious.”

  Coulter glanced over from the sink. “We have some VapoRub. Might help you.”

  Allan put up a hand. “No, I’m fine. Really.”

  “Suit yourself, Lieutenant,” Coulter said. “I found the root of the right lung damaged, but it wasn’t life threatening.”

  He came back over and inspected the neck for trauma. With the scalpel slicing away, he took out the larynx, trachea, carotids, and tongue. These were explored at an adjacent table.

  He systematically emptied the abdominal cavity and checked the stomach for undigested food. Once more, he didn’t find anything noteworthy. He finished up by collecting tissue samples of all the major organs for later microscopic analysis and one vial of urine through the fundus in the bladder.

  Sodero took the block from beneath the victim’s back and placed it under the head. Scalpel in hand, he started an incision behind the right ear across the crown of the head to the back of the left ear. Face straining, he pulled the front section of scalp up and over the top of the head, rolling it down over the victim’s face. The back section was pulled down to the nape of the neck. All semblance of Brad Hawkins had now disappeared, buried under a contortion of skin.

  Allan winced.

  Flesh and bone, he thought. We’re all just flesh and bone.

  Coulter took over at this point. Using the Stryker saw, he cut around the perimeter of the cranium. Before he could lift away the skullcap, he had had to remove the dura mater that adhered to the inside. He took a chisel and slid it under the edge of the cranium, gingerly prying away the thick membrane. As the top of the skull was worked free, there was a wet sucking sound.

  “No signs of epidural hematoma,” Coulter said. “Meninges are clear.”

  Next, he stripped away the white dura to reveal the convoluted surface of the brain. It glistened under the powerful overhead lights.

  “The cerebrum looks good. No subdural hematoma or signs of other hemorrhaging.”

  Gently working his fingers down the sides of the brain, he lifted on the frontal lobes. He skillfully cut through nerves, arteries and the intersection between the spinal column and brain stem. In his hands, the brain quivered like a gelatinous mass as he carried it to the scale and weighed it. Coulter then suspended the organ in a jar of formalin.

  With the autopsy over, Sodero poured the hodgepodge of organs into the body cavity and set the breastplate onto the chest. Threading heavy twine through the eye of a hagedorn needle, he began stitching up the abdomen.

  The brain would not go back with the body. Coulter positioned the cranium in place and then rolled the scalp back over the top of it. As if by magic, the face of Brad Hawkins reappeared.

  “I can have my full report to you in the morning, Lieutenant,” said Coulter, writing on his clipboard. “The lab work will be later in the week. DNA profiling will be a few weeks.”

  “If we’re lucky,” replied Allan. “The lab is backlogged with samples.”

  “Concerning the time of death. I can say it happened within two hours of the body being discovered. I can neither approve nor disprove the timeline you gave me earlier. Probably not what you wanted to hear.”

  “I understand how hard it is, Doctor. Thank you very much.” Allan removed the plastic apron and left.

  He stopped in the hallway, took out his notepad again and began to write:

  1. Right-handed male.

  2. Special skill with knives?

  3. Pickup.

  4. Cash and credit cards left in wallet.

  5. Notebook missing.

  6. No defense wounds.

  Allan put the notepad away. He checked his watch: 2:05 pm. Already eight hours into the murder and there was still much work to do.

  14

  Acresville, May 9

  2:25 p.m.

  The slamming of a door intrudes upon a dream.

  The little boy’s eyes snapped open. He was alone in his bed, rigid and frightened, scarcely able to breathe. He lifted his head off the pillow, waited, and listened. Though he heard nothing but the rapid thump of his heart, he still had the instinctive awareness of the presence of another.

  Slowly, his hand clutched the blanket to his chin. Maybe only in his dreaming mind he had imagined the slamming door. He didn’t know the time, but it was late. His bedroom was in shadows. Moonlight spilled through the window, stretching weakly to the walls. He heard the furnace switch on, felt the register near his bed release a current of warm air.

  The boy laid his head back on the pillow. He turned over, staring up at the ceiling.

  After a brief moment, it came again, as clearly as the catch in his throat—the heavy stomp of a footstep on the staircase. The house picked up the sound, gave it resonance. A second step followed, a third, a fourth, all awkward, all irregular. Then came the sound of stumbling, a pause for balance, a grunt of obscenity. A brief instant later, the footsteps resumed.

  He was coming. And he was drunk.

  Desperate, the boy’s gaze darted around the room, looking for escape. His breaths came in quick shallow gasps. He tossed the blanket aside and lunged off the bed. He knew the window wouldn’t open. It took the strength of his father to do that. The frame was wedged tight against the jambs.

  Despite this, the boy ran to it. As he stared out, his breath condensed on the pane. It was deep winter and its white cloak made the landscape out back indistinguishable. A northwest gust kicked up a swirl of snow. The open sky was stippled with a profusion of stars, their brilliance diminished only by an overpowering full moon.

  Outside the bedroom door the footsteps were almost to the top of the stairs now.

  Near panic, the little boy pushed up on the window, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, arms shaking.

  A crack, nothing more.

  He turned and looked around his dark room. The closet. He ran to it. His face brushed suspended shirts and pants as he pushed his way through to the wall. Empty hangers clanged together. He winced at their sound and knelt and swept shoes aside so he could sit down. When he pulled the door shut, the darkness became absolute. Beneath him the floor felt hard, cold. The boy curled his knees to his chest and closed his eyes.

  He began to pray.

  “God Most High, have pity on me. Have mercy. I run to you for safety. In the shadows of your wings, I seek protection…”

  Abruptly, the boy’s eyes snapped open. There came the creak of a loose floorboard in the hallway, the groan of the bedroom door as it opened.

  Fear crawled over the boy’s skin. He drew a shuddering breath. All at once, the air seemed to become close and humid. In the confinement of the closet, he felt trapped, suffocated. A bead of perspiration rolled down the side of his face.

  When the bedroom light flicked on, the boy pressed a hand to his mouth, stifling a gasp.

  Someone stepped inside. Under the door, a shadow moved to the middle of the room.

  From the silence came a man’s intoxicated drawl. “Where are you?”

  The boy’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. It was his father, returning from Gary’s Tavern. Many nights had begun like this. The boy imagined the man hanging off the bar, drinking glass after glass of his favorite whiskey. Afterward, he would somehow drive home and then stumble into the house, his mind poisoned, his rage stoked to the point of bursting.


  “Answer me,” the voice spoke again, angry now. “Morceau de merde.”

  Footsteps moved toward the closet. The shadow changed shapes and then separated into two. Waiting, the boy swallowed.

  Go away.

  A rattle of the doorknob. He pressed his back into the corner of the wall.

  Then the door flung open. Blinking at the sudden brightness, the boy gazed up at his father. Terror swelled inside him. The man’s face was flushed with liquor and the blaze of temper. His mouth was an angry slash, his dark soulless eyes sharp with malevolence. Behind his head, the bedroom light was like a nimbus.

  He was a big man with a thick neck and arms like tree trunks. He wore a black and red-checkered flannel jacket that carried the odor of cigarettes.

  “You hiding from me, you piece of shit?”

  The boy’s mouth worked at words that wouldn’t come. He tried desperately not to cry.

  The man clutched the front of his son’s pajama top and yanked the little boy up toward him with a sudden tug. Faces inches apart, the boy could feel the heat of his father’s breath, the reeking stench of whiskey. That was how he knew to be afraid. At any moment, he thought he was going to vomit.

  “Why do you make me crazy, huh?” the man hissed.

  The boy didn’t understand. Too afraid to move or speak, he could only wait.

  “You disgust me.”

  Without warning, the father wrenched his son from the closet and threw him across the bedroom as though he were weightless.

  He collided with the night table, knocking over a lamp. The bulb shattered, flinging shards of glass everywhere. With a short cry, the boy toppled to the floor. He flinched at the throbbing ache in his back where it had struck the table. His eyes began to water. When he raised his head, his father was a blurred image starting toward him.

  “Look at the mess you made,” the man growled.

  The open doorway. If the boy could reach it, he could escape this. Desperately, he scrambled to his feet. In spite of his drunkenness, the man was fast. His powerful hand grabbed hold of his son’s collar and pulled him back into the room. Glaring down, the man’s eyes took on a feral glint, more animal then human.