“Really? Must have been after I left. I graduated the last year it was all women. I’m still stunned they went coed on us.”
“Too much to hope for, I guess, leaving the school single-sex. Let’s flip him and get moving.”
Sam put her hands on his shoulders. As they maneuvered the body onto its back, she felt something hard and crusty under her fingers.
She carefully brushed back his hair and saw a trail of something silvery by the man’s ear. “Hold up a sec, I want to collect this. Can you hand me a DNA swab?”
“What is it?”
“Tears. I think. It makes sense. His eyes would be burning from the chemicals. Just want to be sure we catch everything.”
She collected the sample, then they washed the body and got down to the internal exam. Sam added a second set of gloves, pleased Regina had the Marigolds she preferred, put on an eye shield and double-masked herself in case of any leftover gases from Savage’s lungs. She wasn’t too concerned, though. It had been long enough that most of the gas would have dissipated, and they were in a well-ventilated room. Just in case, she made sure Regina had taken the same precautions, then hefted the scalpel in her right hand and glanced at the girl. “Would you like to do the cut?”
“Oh, no, Dr. Owens. I’d like to watch you do it, if you don’t mind. I can probably learn a thing or two from your technique.”
Sam laughed to herself a little—her technique was rusty as hell, considering—but placed the tip of the scalpel into the flesh just below the clavicle and swept the knife downward decisively. The tough skin parted, the yellow subcutaneous fat along the edges thicker than she would have anticipated for a man in such good shape. She sliced down the other side, meeting the cut just above his groin, and stepped back to allow any gases to escape. After a few moments, she set to the task of autopsy. The rib shears made quick work of the breastplate, making little crunching noises that echoed in the quiet space, and when Regina lifted it out of place, Sam’s first view of the lungs brought her to a halt again.
They were perfect.
She was looking at the lungs of a healthy man, in his prime, who’d clearly never smoked or lived in an industrial, polluted area. Nor did they show any sign of irritation, or inflammation. No frothy blood, no edema.
“Son of a bitch.” The words were muffled behind her mask.
“What is it?”
Sam looked up at Regina. “Timothy Savage did not die from hydrogen sulfide poisoning.”
Chapter
14
SAM TOOK HER time going through the rest of the post. Savage’s body had a tale to tell, and she was listening.
His heart was normal size for a man of his age, with a nominal buildup of cholesterol plaque. The lungs: both upper and lower lobes, when dissected, proved to be clear of any indication of a chemical irritant. Liver, kidneys, stomach, intestinal tract, all were normal. He hadn’t had a recent meal before his death, though she found traces of blood he must have swallowed antemortem, and he was in decent shape.
In the examination of his throat, she found what she was looking for. Timothy Savage’s trachea had clearly been crushed. He’d been strangled, just as the bruising foretold, but by the very strong hands of another, with a towel or something soft to minimize the surface bruising. Sam had seen this sort of neck injury often, in accidental autoerotic deaths, but this was clearly murder—in those cases, the padded ropes or other devices were left in place. And in this case, the killer had been facing his victim.
With that knowledge in mind, she stepped back, looked at the body from a slightly different perspective. There was some slight internal bruising just below Savage’s lower ribs. Someone had put a knee on the man’s chest to hold him down. They’d very purposefully strangled the man, then set about making his death appear to be suicide.
Sam felt both vindicated and frightened. Savage had been correct. He had been murdered. And now she was into his case up to her eyeballs, and there was no going back.
She went through the final steps of the post. His brain was the last piece of the puzzle, and when they got his skull open, even that showed nothing irregular, just the typical undulating coils of gray matter, perhaps slightly looser than they would have been if he were younger.
Two things were bothering her. First, that Savage himself had known he was in mortal danger and had written to her directly instead of going to the police. It made her distrust June Davidson, someone she needed on her side. And two, that the law firm representing Savage’s estate had ordered him cremated without a proper autopsy. Three things, if she counted Benedict’s murder.