Despite the constant flow of people who entered and exited the building throughout the day and night, there was never a magazine out of place, nor a small piece of trash sitting on a side table. Taylor secretly thought members of the cleaning crew lurked in the hallways, ready to sneak into the foyer unseen to straighten and sanitize at a moment’s notice.
She waved to the receptionist, Kris, and entered the door leading to the autopsy suite. The odor hit her like a sour washrag that had been left in the shower too long. In contrast to the sweet, clean smell of the open foyer, the difference in atmosphere always surprised her. No amount of disinfectant could cover the lingering scent of death. The reek settled in her sinuses. Taylor tried to concentrate on other things as she walked in. She knew that within a few minutes the odor would dull, becoming sufferable.
Stopping briefly in the biovestibule, she changed into a pair of disposable scrubs and went inside.
The main autopsy suite held four fully functioning workstations, two on the wall facing Taylor, and two on the opposite wall. Sam was at the far table, the natural sunlight from the huge skylight above streaking her hair with rosy highlights.
“Sam.”
Sam turned toward Taylor with a look that said, Go away, I’m trying to work.
“Sorry, Sammy, I need to talk. We’ve got an ID. Her name’s Shelby Kincaid. Went to Vanderbilt. We’re notifying her parents right now, so I wanna see what you have.”
Sam actually looked at her this time, blinked, finally realized who was there, and said, “Oh, hey. Gear up. Vanderbilt, huh?” There was almost no inflection in her voice. She was lost in her work.
Taylor pulled on the remaining protective gear and gloves gracefully, the motions borne of too many repetitions. She donned her eye shield and joined Sam at the table. Lying on a tan plastic washable coating covering an icy, stainless steel slab were the remains of Shelby Kincaid. She didn’t look like a sleeping child anymore. The huge Y-cut, actually shaped like a deformed U, cut from her sternum to her pubis, exposing her internal organs, which Sam was in the process of weighing. She set the mud-colored liver in the scale, dictating the weight into the microphone clipped to the front of her smock. She handed it to her assistant who wandered off to busy himself with something. He knew Taylor and was more than a little afraid of her. Sam watched him go, chuckled and turned back, all business.
“Ventricular fibrillation. And something’s hinky with her liver.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Okay. Wanna expound on that? I don’t know if ‘hinky’ will stand up in court.”
Sam’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s the problem. I can’t tell you what the thing is. I sent off the tox screen, so we should get that back quick enough. But they can’t look for anything but the obvious, and the way her organs look…my gut tells me we need to look deeper. I sent a runner with all kinds of samples to Simon’s lab: blood, urine, tissue, the works. I asked them to look a little deeper than the normal drug and alcohol screen. I’m hoping they can isolate something off the standard panel.”
“Like what?”
She waggled her head casually, and shrugged, like a child with an important secret. “Oh, I’m thinking poison.”
“No way. Poison? Cyanide?”
“Not cyanide, I didn’t get an almond smell when I opened the body. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but I definitely think this poor thing may have ingested something, and it didn’t sit right with her system.”
“Ingested something like what?”
Sam gave Taylor a sweet smile. “Honey, that’s what we’re going to find out. Back to business. As I mentioned before, she was raped repeatedly. Lots of bruising and tearing, lots of semen. We’re going to have to wait for the labs on that, too.”
Taylor’s shoulders knotted up. “How long’s it gonna take?”
“Well, it won’t be overnight. I’ll try to talk Simon into dropping all his other fascinating cases and handle the toxicology right away, but I can’t promise anything. As far as the semen is concerned, I can send it up to TBI with a push and have them do the rapid DNA, or I can throw it to Simon and ask him to handle it. Though we haven’t talked in a couple of days.” She busied herself with a scalpel.
Taylor waited for a more detailed explanation, but seeing none forthcoming, decided not to voice an opinion on the rocky relationship’s latest turn. “I already ran it by Price. It won’t be a problem. Go ahead and give it all to Simon. If you don’t want to call in one of your own, tell him it’s a favor for me, and I’ll owe him one.”
“Got it. The rest is basics. Height, one hundred seventy-six centimeter, weight, forty-seven kilograms. Blond hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little anorexic. No distinguishing characteristics, no tattoos, nothing out of the ordinary. Doesn’t look like she’s had any surgeries except a tonsillectomy.” She looked up, gave a wan smile. “Sorry, Charlie. Right now we’ve got a run-of-the-mill dead girl. Little Shelby didn’t put up much of a fight, nothing under her nails, no defensive wounds. That’s about as exciting as it gets.”