I laughed. “Alexa, play Bon Jovi.”
The opening riff of “Wanted Dead or Alive” filled the lab, and Lily’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Though we’re going to revisit this conversation later.”
“We absolutely are not.”
“I want to know what else is on the playlist.”
“Very funny.”
I moved to the autopsy table, where Andre Tyrell Washington waited in the black body bag. Lily fell into step beside me, camera in hand, ready to document every step of the process.
I picked up my digital recorder and felt its familiar weight settle into my palm. Some coroners relied entirely on digital transcription these days, but I preferred the old ways. The recorder backed up my handwritten notes, my sketches, my photographs. Technology failed. Paper endured. And I’d learned the hard way to always have redundancy.
“Recorder on.” My voice shifted into clinical mode, steady and precise. “Dr. J.J. Graves performing the autopsy of Andre Tyrell Washington, case number 2024-0547, on May twenty-eighth. Assisting is Lily Jacobs.”
I unzipped the bag.
The moving blanket we’d documented at the scene was gone now, sent to the state lab in Richmond for fiber analysis. What remained was the man himself—or what was left of him after days of brutality.
“Let’s get his clothes off first,” I said. “Document everything as we go.”
I’d learned the hard way to remove clothing while the body was still in the bag—any fibers or trace evidence would be caught in the plastic rather than lost to the floor. Lily photographed each item as I cut it away—jeans, worn soft at the knees and stained with blood. A T-shirt, once white, now a roadmap of violence. No shoes, no socks. His feet were still bare, still covered in the residue I’d noted at the scene.
“Victim is clothed in blue denim jeans, size thirty-four waist, thirty-four inseam. White cotton T-shirt, size extra large, with extensive blood staining on the anterior surface.” I went through his pockets methodically—empty, all of them. No wallet, no phone, no keys. Nothing to identify him beyond the name we’d already learned. “No personal effects recovered from clothing.”
With the clothes bagged and labeled, we lifted him from the body bag and onto the table using the electronic pulley system—a strap beneath his torso, a switch, and the mechanical whir of the lift doing the work that would have wrecked my back.
“Victim is an African American male, well developed, well nourished.” I pulled the measuring tape from my pocket, stretching it along the length of his body. “Height is one hundred eighty-eight centimeters.”
The table’s built-in scale gave me the rest. “Weight is ninety-nine point eight kilograms.”
I began the external examination at his head and worked my way down, documenting every wound, every scar, every mark that told the story of who this man had been.
“Severe facial trauma,” I recorded, leaning close to study the damage. “Left orbital fracture with significant depression. Nasal fracture with lateral displacement—this is at least the third fracture to this area based on the scarring pattern and bone remodeling. Mandibular fractures, bilateral. Extensive bruising and swelling throughout the facial region.”
I tilted his head to examine the entry wound I’d documented at the scene. Under the surgical lights, with the blood cleaned away, I could see more than I’d been able to in the field.
“Single penetrating gunshot wound to the posterior cranium,” I recorded, measuring carefully. “Wound diameter is six millimeters—consistent with a .22 caliber round. Soot deposits visible within the wound track.” That was new. At the scene I’d noted the stippling, but the soot told me the muzzle had been even closer than I’d initially thought. Near contact. Inches away.
Whoever pulled the trigger had been close enough to feel his breath.
“I’ll confirm the bullet’s position and trajectory on x-ray,” I said.
His head was shaved clean, the scalp smooth except for a small scar near his left temple—old and faded—the kind of mark that came from stitches long since removed.
“Let’s get a better look at that tattoo,” I said.
At the scene, I’d only been able to see part of it through the blood and grime. Now, with better light and a damp cloth to clean the area, the full design emerged on the back of his neck, just below the hairline.
It was an eagle—wings spread wide, talons extended, rendered in stark black ink with military precision. Beneath it, in small block letters—USMC. And below that, a series of numbers that looked like a unit designation.
“Tattoo on posterior neck,” I recorded. “Eagle design with USMC text and numerical designation, possibly unit identification. Professional quality, approximately five centimeters in height, well healed.”
A Marine. Andre Tyrell Washington had been a Marine before he’d been a construction worker, before he’d been a fighter, before he’d ended up on my table. I filed that away, another piece of the puzzle that Jack and Cole would need to chase down.
I continued down his body, cataloging the evidence of years spent in combat—not the military kind, but the kind that happened in rings or on the street.
