“Anything else?” Megan said. “Greg’s gonna be pressing us soon.”
Livia took a minute to look through the evidence log, reading through the other items confiscated from her sister’s car. Nicole’s sweatshirt and purse were in the front passenger seat. The rest of the car was empty besides the trunk. Livia stopped when she read the items found there.
Megan stirred next to her, walking closer when she sensed that Livia was interested in something else. “Find something?” she asked.
Dropping the evidence log onto the table, Livia reached back into the box to retrieve the photos again. She flipped quickly through them until she found it. Documented on the log, and captured in the photos, was a rectangular wooden box of barbecue tools. She looked at Megan.
“Where do they keep this stuff? The bigger pieces of evidence? Like this.” Livia showed Megan the picture of the wooden barbecue set.
“In the property section.” She pointed to the other side the room.
“Take me there.”
Greg stuck his head in. “Wrap it up. One more minute. It’s my ass on the line.”
They stuffed Nicole’s box back onto the shelf and walked quickly to the other side of the evidence room, where large items were stored in plastic bags and meticulously logged.
It took them a long minute to find the C section and another few seconds before Livia found, wrapped and sealed in a clear plastic bag, the barbecue set taken from Nicole’s trunk. She unzipped the bag and pulled out the worn wooden box.
She opened it and stared at the contents. Cased inside, seated within the contoured velvet mold, were a spatula, tongs, and an empty outline where a long, two-pronged barbecue fork once rested.
“Son of a bitch,” Livia whispered to herself.
CHAPTER 31
Monday morning, Livia retrieved her case from the cooler with the help of two autopsy technicians who positioned the body on her table—a middle-aged woman who had died during a routine esophageal procedure when the doctor had accidentally lacerated the distal end of the esophagus and severed it from the stomach. As the doctor was unable to stop the bleeding, the woman died from blood loss. Livia and the fellows had been forewarned by Dr. Colt that when such accidental deaths—termed therapeutic complications—present themselves, the utmost diligence should be practiced since there was a very good chance the autopsy findings would be utilized in court when the family sued the physician.
This morning, Livia was thorough and patient as she performed her internal exam, not worrying about her autopsy time, only making sure she did everything that was required of her, and did it well.
Twenty minutes into the exam, she was carefully dissecting the strap muscles of the neck to obtain a view of the esophagus when Ted Kane from the ballistics lab walked into the autopsy suite. It was a typical Monday morning, with every autopsy table filled by the weekend’s carnage. Tim Schultz and Jen Tilly were busy with cases, as were the other medical examiners who made up the staff at the OCME. The only thing missing was Dr. Colt, who’d taken a long weekend to spend time with his daughter, who was home from college. Livia took advantage of her boss’s absence, arriving early and visiting Ted Kane in ballistics to ask for his help.
“Hey, Doc,” Ted said as he approached the opposite side of Livia’s table.
Livia looked up through her face shield. She stopped working briefly and raised her eyebrows. “Anything?”
“I’ve got a match.”
“On which one?”
“Both. How long will you be?”
“A while,” Livia said. “I’ll come to the lab when I’m done. No doubt?” she asked.
“Not a shred. Come see me when you’re finished.”
Livia watched Ted leave the suite, and then went back to work. Her mind wandered with possibilities, but she refused to pay them any attention, refocusing her thoughts instead on the case in front of her. She took just over an hour to complete the exam before she handed her table over to the tech who would close and return the body to the cooler for transport to the funeral home. She spent another hour completing notes on the case, confirming that the patient had indeed bled to death due to a large esophageal laceration with blood deposition into the lungs and peritoneum. Cause of death: exsanguination. Manner of death: therapeutic complication. In layman’s terms: The doctor killed her.
Livia typed the last of her notes, signed the death certificate, and hurried to the ballistics lab.
*
The ballistics lab was located on the second floor of the OCME. It was where techs analyzed everything from shoe imprints to glass shards, determining who walked through a crime scene in which type and size of shoe, to which direction a bullet penetrated a window. Ted Kane ran the ballistics department and Livia had delivered to him earlier in the morning the scrap of green cloth she had taken from Nicole’s evidence box on Friday.
Livia walked into the lab and found Ted Kane in front of his computer.
“Ah, good,” he said when Livia entered. He swiveled his chair and wheeled to a cluttered desk to his right. He handed Livia a piece of paper containing the fiber analysis completed on Casey Delevan’s clothing from weeks before. Ted poked his eye into the microscope.
“Here’s what we know. Spectral analysis tells us it’s the same material. Same twine of cotton. Same fiber thickness. Same grade. The only difference is that the analysis on the clothing that came from your body was caked in clay.” He looked up from his microscope. “This sample you gave me here is clean. Not a speck of clay on it.”
“Otherwise?” Livia asked.
“They came from the same shirt. Exact match.”
Livia had no time to contemplate the implications of this discovery. She thought briefly about the fact that a torn scrap of Casey Delevan’s shirt was found under Nicole’s car. But only fleetingly. Ted Kane was literally on a roll. He pushed himself away from the cluttered desk and his wheeled chair skated back to the glowing computer monitor.
“But this is better. Check it out,” he said as he settled in front of the computer, which depicted the three-dimensional scan of Casey Delevan’s skull that Dr. Larson—the neuropathologist—had obtained during her examination.
The image, taken by a scanning electron microscope, was one of the most impressive things Livia had witnessed during her training. Since the machine imaged the skull from both the outside and inside, it was able to extrapolate points to offer a “virtual tour” of the skull and the inner casings of the bone. Specifically, Ted Kane was interested in the twelve tunnels in Casey Delevan’s skull.