He padded in his socks to the bathroom to look into the black garbage bag he’d left in the tub. A ring of blood pooled around the bottom, a pretty crimson against the white porcelain. He tugged open the plastic. The smell was no longer rancid to him. Instead, it reminded him of raw meat in various stages of spoiling.
He was always so careful, leaving the ones he wanted found and tucking away the ones he wanted to hide. How the hell had they found the girl with the orange socks? And why now, when he just happened to be back in the area? Was his bad luck already beginning?
CHAPTER 53
As soon as Maggie walked into the forensic anthropologist’s lab she remembered how much she hated the smell of boiled flesh. Not that burned or putrefied flesh smelled much better. Somehow it seemed more rancid when it was done on purpose like the scientists did here.
Several pots and one huge roasting pan sat on the industrial stove’s burners. Maggie could see the rolling boil in the roaster, and whatever was inside was producing the worst aroma.
Despite the smell, Maggie welcomed the distraction. She had been avoiding her mother’s phone calls since last night. This morning she listened to only two of her dozen or more voice messages.
“That Jeffery Cole twisted everything I said,” her mother whined. “He made me sound so awful.”
Of course she’d make it about the injustice done to her rather than admit she had been wrong. And forget about an apology. Odd as it seemed, Maggie would even trade listening to her mother’s pathetic excuses with the smell of boiling flesh.
“You must be Agent O’Dell.” A small Asian woman in a white lab coat greeted her. “I’m Mia Ling.”
She was standing over a wide stainless-steel table under a hanging fluorescent light. Her purple-gloved fingers picked at a piece of bone.
“Detective Racine is on her way. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t shake your hand. I’m almost finished with this piece.”
“No, of course. Please continue.”
Maggie glanced in one of the other boiling pots as she made her way over. Maggots squirmed and rode on the greasy film. Several made it to the wall of the pan and tried to scale the metal only to die with a sizzle and a pop. Maggots were one of the few things that truly creeped Maggie out.
During autopsies they appeared indestructible. Even freezing them only slowed them down. Once present on a corpse, they couldn’t simply be removed without also destroying valuable evidence. An autopsy with maggots became a race, the morgue’s bright lights churning them up. Sometimes they shoved each other out onto the floor, where they’d search for the closest warm, moist place, often crawling up a pant leg. She found it morbidly satisfying to see them in hot water, finally something that could destroy them.
It only then occurred to her that Gloria Dobson’s body didn’t have any maggots, even though it had been dumped in the alley.
“I would be doing that with your victim,” Ling said, indicating the boiling pot, “if you hadn’t been able to identify her. It’d certainly be easier to boil away the flesh than to pick at it.” She held up a bone in her fingers. “Funny how family members don’t really appreciate us cutting off a victim’s head just to figure out what happened. So I’m left to pick off the brain tissue from the bone by hand.”
Maggie liked Mia Ling even before she added, “And my family doesn’t understand why I won’t eat meat.”
“So this is Gloria Dobson’s?” Maggie pointed to the tray with bits of bone and what looked like several teeth.
“Yes, what pieces we have. There are a lot of bone fragments missing. They probably were left at the crime scene.” She poked at the teeth. “I found these down at the base of her skull and in her neck. Some pieces of her face were smashed into her brain.”
Maggie pulled up a stool to sit down and to get a closer look.
“I’m trying to clean these pieces and sort them before I pull her out of the refrigerator.”
Maggie could see the fragments Dr. Ling had already cleaned and processed. She arranged them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
“Will it be at all possible to guess what kind of weapon caused this damage?”
Ling’s hands stopped. She put down the bone she had been working on and picked up the biggest fragment from the tray. She turned it, found what she wanted, then leaned over to show Maggie.
“Can you see these crisscross fracture lines?” Her long index finger moved along what looked like scratches in the bone.
“Yes,” Maggie answered.
“And see how the bone is sort of warped?” She held it up to the light.
It was subtle, but Maggie nodded.
“Bone literally bends when you hit it really hard. It’ll bend before it breaks. If the warped area was dented and rounded, I’d guess something like a ball-peen hammer, which incidentally seems to be a favorite of skull bashers.