BEFORE HE WENT into the autopsy suite, he stepped into an empty office and closed the door. This time, there was no need for a hazmat suit or a respirator. Castelli was as fresh as they came down here. He dialed Lucy’s number. It was a landline; the only phone in the house was down in the kitchen. It rang eight times and went to voicemail. He told her where he was and that he loved her, then hung up.
She didn’t have a lesson now. She could be in the bath, or asleep upstairs where she couldn’t hear the phone. But his instinct said otherwise. She must have gone out. She was on another one of her tentative explorations out into the world she’d fled.
There was no one Cain could talk to, no one who’d understand how good it felt to see her coming back to life.
“Decedent is a white male, six foot one and a hundred and ninety pounds,” Dr. Levy said into the microphone that hung from the ceiling above the autopsy table.
Yesterday, the mayor had been tanned and muscular. Now he was like spilled candlewax. Pale and shapeless. His head was propped on a wooden block, and when Cain crouched behind him and looked up, he could see the exit wound, Castelli’s scalp peeling outward like the blooming petals of a flower.
Rachel Levy cleared her throat and continued.
“Inspector Gavin L. Cain, of the San Francisco Police Department, has identified the decedent as Mayor Harold J. Castelli—Inspector Cain knew the decedent personally. Decedent was discovered by his wife, Mona A. Castelli, at approximately three o’clock this morning. He was in his home study, on the carpet, with an apparent gunshot wound to his head. I will now begin the surface examination.”
In fact, she’d already done it.
She had done the entire external examination once before, committing nothing to the record until it had been rehearsed. There’d be no mistakes and no surprises. No attorney could trip her under cross-examination, no board of review or interim mayoral commission could question the way she’d handled herself.
“Decedent appears fit and well-nourished, and does not have any external physical deformities. Rigor mortis is fully progressed and the body is cool to the touch, having been in refrigeration since two o’clock this afternoon.”
She pointed to the dark welting of settled blood that discolored his right side.
“Livor mortis is fixed and pronounced on the right side of the body, except over pressure points—his right hip and shoulder took most of his weight,” she said.
Cain stepped between Grassley and Chun. He whispered so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the official autopsy tape.
“We found the body under the desk, curled up on his right side,” he said. “What do you make of the livor mortis?”
“He wasn’t moved,” Chun whispered back. “After he died, he stayed where he fell. The blood settled and made those bruises.”
Cain nodded and looked back at Dr. Levy, who was working up Castelli’s corpse, narrating as she went.
“—his genitalia are normally developed for an adult. He has a two-inch appendectomy scar on his abdomen. He’s wearing a gold band on his left ring finger, and has a two-tone Rolex watch on his right wrist. I’m removing both items and giving them to Inspector Cain, who is present.”
She twisted the ring off his finger, forcing it past his knuckle by wiggling it side to side. Then she unclasped the watch and squeezed the band over his stiffly splayed fingers. She put it into a property bag along with his wedding ring and set it on an empty table alongside the clothes that had been cut off of him.
“His fingernails are neatly clipped and clean. We’ve taken samples from each of them for DNA testing. He has three parallel scars on his right forearm. Each scar is approximately eight inches long, running from his elbow toward his wrist. Judging from the placement of his watch, decedent was likely left-handed—”
Cain made a mental note to find out.
“—so that these scars would be consistent with a prior incident of self-mutilation.”
“A suicide attempt?” Fischer asked.
“Or maybe just cutting,” Dr. Levy answered. She moved away from the microphone so that this would be off the record. “These scars—look at them. They’re decades old. Unless you find someone who knows the story, or luck into a medical record, it’d be hard to say.”
Cain looked at Chun, and she nodded. She was still tracking down leads in Berkeley. Maybe one of her contacts would know something about the scars. Dr. Levy picked up a clipboard, which held the notes she’d taken in her first run on the external examination. She flipped a page, then went to the microphone.
“Decedent has a tattoo on his right scapula. Greek—pi kappa kappa. Each letter’s an inch across. Dark green ink.”
“How old is it?” Cain asked.
Dr. Levy came away from the microphone again.