“Pilot” Episode
*Based on the interview with Claude Pierre
It was approaching 6:00 p.m. when Pierre left Sugar Beach. It was another hour before he reached Victoria Hospital in Castries, where he entered the mortuary and found Dr. Mundi standing next to the autopsy table that held Julian Crist.
“How far have you gotten?” Pierre asked from the doorway.
“Finishing up now. Sorry to call you over so late, but I thought you’d want to have a look,” Dr. Mundi said as he pulled a long thread through the incision to close Julian Crist’s chest. He tied it off quickly and cut the excess.
Pierre approached the table. He could see that Julian Crist’s body had been recently tugged back together after Dr. Mundi’s examination. The sight of a tormented body, limp and helpless to protest the search for clues it left behind, was always disturbing to Pierre. He was no stranger to autopsies. He stomached them because they were part of his job, but he much preferred to read reports than to see the results in person. In this case, though, he could not wait for Mundi’s written summary. The American girl was lying to him, and he wanted to know as soon as possible what had killed Mr. Crist.
“What have you found?”
“Typical injuries seen in a long-distance fall,”Dr. Mundi said. “From the bluff to the water is nearly thirty meters. Broken bones—tibia and fibula, humerus and two ribs. All on the right side. There was damage to the spleen as the result of one of the broken ribs lacerating it. No other internal organ injuries. No severing or shearing of vessels that would lead me to believe the patient bled to death internally. And no collections of blood other than from the spleen.”
“So the fall didn’t kill him?”
“No.”
“What did?”
With a bit of effort, Dr. Mundi turned Julian’s body over so that he rested facedown on the stainless steel. He pointed to the back of Julian’s head.
“I discovered a large, deep skull fracture here.” Dr. Mundi ran his gloved finger in a circle around the upper-right portion of Julian’s freshly shaved scalp. “Excuse me, I know you consider such things unpleasant.”
Dr. Mundi placed his fingertips in the crowning incision at the top of Julian’s hairline and peeled back the scalp to expose the naked bone of his skull. Pierre swallowed hard at the crude procedure.
“Thisis what killed him,” Dr. Mundi said, pointing to the undressed cranium. “This fracture was the result of blunt-force trauma caused by an object swung at medium speed. Other fractures,” Dr. Mundi said, tracing the break lines in the bone, “were suffered during the fall, but this was the primary insult.”
“How can you tell that?” Pierre asked, studying the jagged spiderweb of fractured bone, which looked to his untrained eyes like a mess of total destruction.
“The secondary fractures produced during the fall approach this initial fissure, but do not, and cannot,cross it. They all stop at the outer edge of this principal fracture. From the nucleus of this break, I can map radiation lines through all the other fault lines. Once the bone is broken, a second fracture cannot bridge the original breach. This is why I’m still here so late, Inspector. Mapping the fracture took me hours. But it is with certainty that this injury is what killed him. It caused a large subdural hematoma that spread around the skull and likely concussed the brain to render him unconscious, or possibly semiconscious but not functionally alert. He was not dead when he fell from the bluff. Based on salt water in his lungs, he was still breathing when he hit the ocean.”
Dr. Mundi pulled Julian Crist’s scalp back over his skull and began to sew shut the crowning incision.
“And this.” Dr. Mundi pointed to the back of Julian’s skull, where he had shaved away the hair to leave a circular patch of bare skin that looked like a burnt-out spot on a grassy knoll. Within the clearing was a gaping wound. Devoid of blood this long after death, the gash reminded Pierre of a split in a leather sofa. “This scalp laceration is the source of the blood splattering you found on the bluff.”
“How can we be sure he didn’t suffer this fracture and laceration when he fell? Perhaps he struck a rock on the side of the cliff.”
Dr. Mundi shook his head. “Because of the location. Essentially on the top, back side of the head, it is impossible that this fracture was caused from the fall. For that to be the case, the victim would have had to land headfirst on a hard, blunt object. And for this to be true, from an estimated height of thirty meters, there would certainly be neck and spinal cord trauma, which there is not. And such a fall would certainly have caused a muchmore substantial fracture than this localized one. Finally my forensic team found no blood anywhere on the face of the Piton, or its base.”
Pierre nodded at the explanation while he watched Dr. Mundi pierce the scalp with the suture and pull the thread.
“I believe,” Dr. Mundi continued, “the patient was struck in the back of the head from a downward angle with a blunt object. The object caused a seven-centimeter stellate fracture, three centimeters deep.”
“Any idea what this object was?” Pierre asked.
“Impossible to tell from the examination. But it was likely something with some weight to it.”
Dr. Mundi finished suturing Julian Crist’s scalp, clipped the excess, and snapped off his glove.
“The blow to his head sent him off the bluff, where he sustained the right-sided injuries when he hit the water. Either the initial trauma to his head, or the impact from the landing, rendered him unconscious, but still breathing, which filled his lungs with water and asphyxiated him.”
Pierre studied the body for a moment. “Someone struck him in the head, he fell into the water, and then he drowned. Do I have your hypothesis correct?”
“That’s correct, Inspector. Cause of death—blunt-force trauma leading to asphyxiation. The manner of death will be listed as homicide. I suspect this is no surprise to you?”
“It is not.”
