‘Her heart was bruised, too.’ He frowned, disturbed by the findings. ‘Somebody whooped the hell out of her.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Sara explained, ‘The skull fractures are evenly distributed. The ribs and cervical vertebrae are fractured, as you said, but the thoracic vertebrae and long bones aren’t. She’s not really bruised except on one side. Did you notice that?’
‘Yeah, what’s that mean?’
‘That it’s very likely that she either fell or was pushed from a great height. The cervical fractures are a tip-off. You don’t get those from being beaten. She fell from at least twenty feet up. She hit the ground on her side. Her skull fractured, the artery tore, and then a few hours later, she died from the brain hemorrhage.’
‘That balcony inside the club was about thirty feet up.’ Gary looked at Sara with a sense of awe. ‘Wow, Dr Linton. That’s pretty cool how you scienced that out.’ He handed her the report. ‘Thank you for sharing all this with me. I really want to learn.’
‘I’m glad Amanda assigned you to my division.’
‘Yeah, she got me to slick up my look.’ He patted his tie. ‘I gotta represent, you know? The focus should be on the victims, not on me.’
Sara supposed this was reasonable advice. ‘I should track them down to let them know about the findings. Do you have any more questions?’
‘Yeah, she’s just, like, out here in the hallway. You think it’s okay if I put her back in the freezer?’
‘I think that would be very nice.’ Sara patted him on the shoulder as she walked toward the stairs. The ICU was six floors up, but the elevators at Grady worked on their own time and she needed to find Amanda sooner rather than later.
Of course, finding Amanda meant she would also find Will. Sara was shaken by an unwelcome reticence. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about last night. Will hadn’t wanted to talk in the car, but then he wouldn’t shut up once they got home. He hadn’t slept. He had been almost manic, spouting theories that were the equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. He was furious with Angie. He was deeply hurt, whether he would admit it or not. Everything that came out of his mouth was either talking around Angie or talking about her. Sara looked at him as a doctor and wanted to medicate him, and this time make sure he didn’t palm the pill. She looked at him as his girlfriend and wanted to wrap her arms around him and make everything better. Then she had looked at him as a woman who’d been married, who knew how to be in a healthy relationship, and wondered what the hell she had signed up for.
Sara pulled open the door to the ICU just as a man was yelling, ‘So fucking what?’
Holden Collier threw his hands into the air. His boyish affability was gone. It was no wonder why. Amanda, Faith and Will were crowding in on him. Two of the Grady security guards were standing close by, their hands resting on their guns.
Collier demanded, ‘Why would I report a domestic when we’re looking for an unexplained stabbing?’ He threw up his hands again. ‘It’s explained. The boyfriend did it. She won’t name him. What am I going to do?’
‘Tell me again.’ Amanda’s tone was hard as steel. ‘From the beginning.’
‘Unbelievable.’ Collier threw up his hands a third time.
Sara had no idea what he was being accused of, but his innocent act was filled with textbook overreaction.
He said, ‘I was already at the ER with a perp. I took the domestic. She was bleeding out, but I got her story. Boyfriend came after her with a knife. She won’t tell me his name. Where she lives, whatever. Same bullshit as usual. She went into surgery. I wrote the report. I told them to call me if her status changed. That’s my job.’ He wasn’t finished. ‘You’re so fucking hell-bent on jamming me up, you don’t even see what this case is really about.’
‘Tell me what it’s about.’
‘Rippy’s club is a shooting gallery. Gang tags are everywhere. Harding has a shit bucket in his closet. He was running drug mules up from Mexico and it got him killed, end of story.’
Amanda asked, ‘What about your relationship with Angie Polaski?’
Sara bit her lip. Angie. She would give her entire life savings to never, ever have to hear the woman’s name again.
Amanda said, ‘Sunday night into Monday morning, you had three calls back and forth with a burner phone. One of them lasted twelve minutes.’
‘I was talking to an informant. He uses a burner. They all use burners.’
‘Who’s the informant? I want his name.’
‘I’m not doing this here.’ Collier had finally realized he couldn’t bluster his way out of the problem. ‘If you want to question me, I’ve got a right to have my union rep in the room.’
‘Give him a call, Denny. This is happening.’
‘Can I go?’
‘We’ll be in touch.’
He stomped off, barely acknowledging Sara as he bumped open the door to the stairs.
Faith had her hands on her hips. She was furious. Amanda was furious. Will looked the same as he had for the last twenty-four hours, like a deer caught in the headlights.
Amanda said, ‘Dr Linton. What do you have?’
‘Nothing you’re going to like.’ Sara felt sorry to again be the bearer of bad news. ‘According to the preliminary autopsy report, Josephine Figaroa died of a brain bleed. The stab wounds in her chest were very shallow, post mortem, so there wasn’t any bleeding. The cut on her cheek was post mortem, so no bleeding. Her fingertips didn’t crack from the heat. Someone sliced them with a razor, probably to hide her identity, which doesn’t make sense, but that’s your department. Speaking from my department, I can tell you the finger cuts were post mortem too, because there was no bleeding.’
Amanda clarified, ‘You’re saying that the blood at the crime scene did not come from the woman who was autopsied downstairs.’
‘Exactly. All of her bleeding was internal. My guess is that she fell, probably from the balcony. Charlie said there was some blood on the ground floor. I’m assuming it came from her nose. She was alive for several hours, probably paralyzed, before the bleed killed her.’
Amanda didn’t seem surprised, which was not unusual, because she had a good poker face. What was puzzling was that neither Faith nor Will seemed surprised either.
Amanda asked, ‘Could it be possible that there was a second victim at the crime scene?’
‘Absolutely. The club was heavily trafficked over the last few months. Someone with even a rudimentary knowledge of crime scene investigation could temporarily pull the wool over our eyes. At least until the labs, fingerprints and analysis came back, which could take weeks, maybe months.’
‘Did you see any signs of a child?’
‘A child?’ Sara was confused. ‘You mean a toddler? Infant?’
‘Six years old,’ Faith said. ‘We have a missing kid. We think Angie took him.’
Sara’s hand went to her chest. She looked at Will, expecting him to be staring at the floor, but instead he looked back at her. There was a hardness to his expression that she had never seen before. His manicness was gone. Anger had enveloped him body and soul.
He said, ‘We think Angie had a blackmail plan going with Jo. Jo ended up dead, so Angie thought she could leverage the grandson.’
‘But she told you that Jo was dead. You had no idea that Jo even existed, let alone that she was Angie’s daughter. Why would she tell you anything?’
‘Something went wrong with the plan.’ Will had to be guessing, but he sounded certain that Angie had yet again risked someone else’s life for her own reward.
Amanda said, ‘Come with me.’ She took Sara into a room with a cop standing outside. The lights were low. Sara scanned the equipment by the bed: cardiac monitor, central line, catheter, NG tube, test tube. The patient’s right arm was elevated, propped on pillows—not too low so that the blood rushed into her fingers, not too high so that there wasn’t enough circulation. Surgical gauze and drains ballooned around the hand. O2 sat measures were on the tips of her fingers.
Sara said, ‘Her hand was reattached.’
‘Yes.’