"Two kids out fishing," Callie said. "Coroner's on the way."
Noah crouched beside her and studied the remains. The lake was still behind them, the surface flat and gray, reflecting the sky like a mirror that had been left outside too long. A light breeze moved across the water and brought the smell with it.
"Any ID?" he asked.
"Nothing on the body that we can see. ME's going to have to do the work on this one."
Noah nodded. He stood and looked out across the lake. The water was quiet. A place you'd have to know about to find, and one you’d only visit with a reason.
He took a sip of his coffee and waited for the coroner.
37
The basement of Adirondack Medical Center smelled the way it always did. Disinfectant and cold air and the faint metallic undertone that never quite went away no matter how many times the ventilation system cycled. Noah and Callie stood on opposite sides of the examination table while the medical examiner worked under the overhead lights, her gloves on, her voice steady, her focus absolute.
The body lay between them. The sheet was pulled to the shoulders. The face, what was left of it, was turned slightly to the right.
"So what can you tell us?” Noah asked.
"Still early. But from what I can tell the victim died yesterday." Adelaide adjusted the light and continued. "Internally, there's minimal decomposition. Core temperature, rigor progression, stomach contents, vitreous potassium levels in the eyes. All of it points to death within the last twenty-four hours." She paused. "The disfigurement wasn't water damage. It was deliberate. Someone killed this woman, destroyed her face and hands to prevent identification, and dumped her in the lake. Recently."
She pulled the sheet down to the collarbone and angled the overhead light lower.
"Cause of death is asphyxia due to manual strangulation. Not a ligature. Hands." She pointed to the throat without touching it. "You can see faint contusion marks here and here on the anterior neck. Easy to miss with the skin in this condition, but once I opened her up it was clear. There's hemorrhaging in the strap muscles, which are these thin muscles running along the front of the throat. They bleed when compressed. Water doesn't wash that away. The hyoid bone is fractured." She looked at them. "That's the small bone above the larynx. It takes sustained pressure to break it. This wasn't a grab. This was someone who held on until it was over."
"What about the face?" Noah asked.
"Post-mortem. All of it. The facial trauma, the damage to the hands. There's no vital response in any of the injuries. No bleeding into the tissue. No inflammatory reaction. Her heart had already stopped when someone did that to her." Adelaide straightened up. "Someone killed this woman by strangulation, then deliberately destroyed her face and fingertips to prevent identification, and put her in the water."
“How old is she?”
“I’m unsure about the age, so I'll have to get back to you on that."
"So no prints. What about dental?"
"I'm working on it."
The room hummed. The fluorescent lights above them cast the same shadowless glare they always did. Noah had stood in this room more times than he cared to count and it never got easier and it never got harder. It just was. The dead were the dead and the work was the work and the questions were always the same.
Callie was standing at the side of the table while Adelaide made notes on her clipboard. She wasn't looking at the face anymore. She'd trained herself not to, not because it bothered her but because it told her nothing in its current state. She was looking at the hands. The damage there. The deliberateness of it. And then her eyes moved down to the wrist.
Something was there. Underneath the sleeve of the shirt, where the fabric had bunched and tightened from the water. A thin band of plastic, warped and discolored, pressed flat against the skin. Partially covered by sloughed tissue.
"Noah."
He came over. Callie pushed the sodden sleeve up carefully, exposing the wrist. The plastic band was still clipped in place, its surface clouded and buckled from the water, the printed text faded to near nothing.
"What does that look like to you?" Callie said.
He squinted. "A plastic band."
Noah pulled on a pair of latex gloves and leaned in closer, using a pair of forceps to try to separate the band from the skin beneath it. Adelaide brought the overhead light down so it angled directly across the wrist. The plastic caught the light and for a second the faded text sharpened just enough to make out fragments. Letters. Numbers. A partial date.
"I hadn't gotten around to removing all the clothing yet," Adelaide said.
"Maybe that's why our killer didn't see it," Noah said.
He turned the band gently with his thumb, trying to find the clearest section of print. Adelaide was already beside him, reading over his shoulder.
