I handed him the swabs and the vial of sterile water. Doc dampened the swab with the sterile water and then carefully wiped across the bite marks. “Whoever bit her left saliva behind,” he explained. He repeated the process in several more locations on her body, then finally switched off the ALS and pulled off his goggles while I turned the room lights on.
Doc packaged the swabs up in an evidence envelope. “Fortunately, it doesn’t matter if whoever it was wore a condom. Saliva’s just as good.” He put the envelope aside, then picked up a syringe with a wickedly long needle and jabbed it into her groin area, working it around until he was able to get into the femoral artery to draw blood. Then another syringe went into the area just above her pubic bone, drawing out urine. “I’m running a full tox screen on her,” he said, glancing at me as he filled various vials. “It still looks like an accidental asphyx, but we want to be sure she wasn’t drugged.”
I started to run my fingers through my hair, then stopped when I remembered that I was wearing gloves that had dead person on them. I sighed as my nose suddenly started itching fiercely. Never failed: As soon as I knew I couldn’t touch my face, I was overwhelmed with the need to.
If it’s not Brian’s DNA, then he probably wasn’t the one who killed her, and his murder was merely staged to look like a suicide. Which led to the question: If that’s the case, were Brian and Carol killed by the same person?
I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. First I needed to find out if it was Brian’s DNA. “This will tell us for sure if it’s Brian, right?”
“I’ll call down to the lab in Slidell to tell them I need a rush on a comparison,” Doc said. “I’ll casually drop that this is the son of a judge, but it’ll still be at least a week or two. Convenient that we have access to Brian’s DNA.” He nodded his head toward the cooler.
I watched as Doc completed the rest of the rape kit, including the vaginal, rectal, and oral swabs, the nail scrapings and clippings, blood and hair samples.
The rest of the autopsy went quickly. Carl took the completed rape kit and disappeared into the office to get it sealed and ready to take to the lab. Doc worked quietly and efficiently, opening her up and removing the organs, weighing and slicing samples, then peeling back the skin and muscles of the throat. “The hyoid bone isn’t broken, so it wasn’t a forcible strangulation—not like your Symbol Man cases.” He straightened from his close examination. “Asphyxiation held just a bit too long.” He shrugged. “Y’know, Carol had a rep for being pretty indiscriminate about who she fooled around with. I think most of the PD and half the DA’s office had slept with her.”
“I can’t believe I’m so out of the gossip loop,” I said with a laugh.
“It’s better that way, trust me. Besides, you’ve been a little preoccupied lately.” He glanced at me. “How’s your aunt doing?”
My throat tightened. “No change.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s been only, what, six, seven weeks? There’s no trauma, so she has every chance of coming out of this.”
I sighed, and once again had to resist the urge to run my fingers through my hair. “Yeah. Sure.” I wished it was as easy as that.
“Doc’s right,” Carl said from behind me, thoroughly startling me. “She’ll come out of this. But you’re too stressed out. You need to eat more. You look better with some meat on your bones.” He extended a saw to me. “Wanna cut a head open?”
I groaned. “No. And thank you for going straight from eating to cutting heads.”
He shrugged and plugged the saw in as I escaped to the viewing room.
I ALMOST DIDN’T come back out for Brian’s autopsy. Even on the other side of the wall, I could feel that there was something wrong about the body. I’d maintained a fleeting hope that I was wrong on the scene, both with Brian Roth and Davis Sharp, but the gaping void and tattered remains were still there.
I forced myself to return to the cutting room once Brian’s body was on the table. His body was a lot messier, mostly because of all the blood that had seeped out into the bag from the big holes in his head. His head had been wrapped in a sheet to try to control some of the blood, but it was still a nasty mess when Carl opened up the bag.
Doc pulled Brian’s lips back and looked down at his teeth, eyes narrowed. “Missing right front incisor. You’re right, Kara.”
I allowed myself a pleased smile. “All right, Doc,” I said. “Did he pull the trigger himself or was he murdered?”
“No fucking idea,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he picked up a scalpel and began to shave around the holes in the scalp and skull. “But I’m hoping to have an answer for you soon.” He peered at the wounds, lifting sections of skull that had been in the body bag and fitting them to the still-intact part of the skull. He put his hand out and Carl placed a long plastic rod in it without being asked—a sign of how long the two had worked together.