CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was after five that afternoon before Noah and Lucy arrived back in Webb County. Lucy was surprised that Siobhan was waiting for them in the morgue lobby. Siobhan was naturally fair, but looked ghostly under the harsh artificial lighting. She ran over to Lucy. “It’s not Marisol.”
“They already let you view the body?”
She shook her head. “I just know. I just know. It can’t be.” Her voice cracked.
Lucy said, “Noah and I are going in first.”
“What? No, no! Don’t coddle me. Everyone coddles me—I’m not a child. I can do this.”
“I know you can,” Lucy said, “but we may be able to take some of the pressure off. Trust me on this.”
A man in scrubs walked through the swinging doors. “You must be the agents from San Antonio. I’m Dr. Greg Vasquez, the assistant medical examiner.” Vasquez was in his mid-fifties with silver hair and broad shoulders on a stout frame. He wore wire-rimmed glasses.
Noah introduced himself and Lucy. “Thank you for staying late.”
“I’m rarely out at five,” Vasquez said. “Adam called me and asked that I wait for you.”
Siobhan stared at him. Lucy said, “Siobhan, wait here. I promise, we’ll come get you in just a few minutes.”
She nodded and sat heavily in one of the plastic chairs.
Vasquez motioned for them to follow him back through the swinging doors. “That young lady has been out there for two hours, but I was told not to let anyone view the body until you arrived.”
“We appreciate that. She may know the victim,” Noah said.
“What did Adam tell you?”
“We know that she was found in an alley early this morning, that she recently gave birth, and that she’s Hispanic and approximately twenty years of age,” Noah said.
“She was in a Dumpster in an alley. Small miracle she was found so quickly. The alley services a row of small, family-owned restaurants. They all shut down before dark, it’s not a great area of town. One of the shops is a mom-and-pop bakery. They get in at four in the morning, before the garbage trucks. They were dumping trash and found her. If they hadn’t, the truck would have picked her up and it may have been next to impossible to find out where her body had been dumped. They may not have even noticed her. I had a case early in my career where a body had almost completely decomposed at the dump. Never solved it.”
“You’ve completed the autopsy?”
“Yes, Adam told me not to wait for you on that, and because he said the feds were interested, I performed the autopsy myself.” Dr. Vasquez handed them both gloves and paper booties, hats, and gowns. “Usually we prep the body in the viewing room for loved ones, but because she’s still in the main holding room, you’ll need to cover up.”
“We already ran her image through the missing persons database and sent to all law enforcement, federal and within two hundred miles,” Dr. Vasquez continued. “But it takes a while to hear back. Adam jumped on it, however, because of the baby.”
Lucy stumbled, just a step, as her heart skipped a beat. “The baby is here, too?”
“No, sorry to upset you, sweetheart,” he said. “I meant, she died in childbirth, but there is no baby. Whoever dumped her body kept the infant.”
Dr. Vasquez led them into the main crypt, where bodies were stored in two areas—drawers if they had to keep the body longer than twenty-four hours or so, and the center aisle for bodies recently transported to the facility, or about to be transported to a funeral home. Lucy had interned at the morgue in DC—this place had a similar look and feel, though smaller and much newer. She didn’t know what it said about her that she’d always been comfortable at the morgue, but there was a peace in the process of learning about the dead.
Vasquez had Jane Doe ready for them. “Because we don’t have an ID on her, I intend to put her directly into cold storage. We’ll keep the body for a year unless identified, then she will be buried in an unmarked grave in the county cemetery.” He paused. “We cleaned her up the best we could, but it’s not pretty. I can show you just her face if you would prefer.”
Lucy shook her head. “I’m a certified pathologist. I’d like the visual to put with your report.”
He nodded and pulled down the sheet.
The body was unusually presented. Generally, the ME cut the body open in a very specific pattern to autopsy the remains. This body had several areas that had been cut open and resewed, including her enlarged lower abdomen.
Lucy directed her attention to the woman’s features. She was approximately twenty years of age and looked vaguely like Marisol de la Rosa. But it wasn’t her. Marisol had a mole on her right cheek; this girl had none. And judging from her height compared with the standard table size, this girl was several inches shorter than either de la Rosa sister.