Turner added, “I spoke with her a few times. Followed up when I was sure her husband wasn’t around. I tried to convince her to press charges or at least make a plan to leave. Gave her the information for the women’s center.”
Without looking up, Anya said, “Good. That’s good.”
Heavy silence descended over them. For a moment, the only noise was the buzz of flies and rustling from outside where the ERT were packing up their equipment. The air-conditioning unit burbled and belched, working extra hard with the three of them inside giving off their own body heat. Josie took a step deeper into the tent, wincing as her damp pants chafed against her thighs. She tried not to think about the fact that she’d have to wring her clothes out when this was done.
Anya went back to photographing Maxine’s body. In the picture from Haven’s Instagram, Maxine’s face had been alight with the kind of surprised happiness Josie often saw on the faces of mothers whose teenage children had decided to willingly spend time with them. Beneath that was evidence of exhaustion—worry lines on her forehead, the corners of her mouth pinched a little too tightly. It was as though her face was trying to smile and frown at the same time. Likely a result of her tumultuous home life. From where Josie stood, it was clear that death had slackened her features entirely. Maybe she should have looked at peace but despite the lack of evidence otherwise, Josie had a feeling that Maxine Barnes’s death was anything but peaceful.
Josie studied the interior. The fairy lights above their heads were lit, though any glow they gave off was impossible to seegiven the blinding halogen lights the ERT had set up in the corners of the tent. Just as Jonathan and her other colleagues had said, there was no sign of a struggle. Everything was neatly in its place. The cubbyholes of the shelving unit were filled with clothes, shoes, toiletries, and two purses. A small, solar-powered lantern sat on top of it. Next to that was a charging station. Two phones and a Kindle were plugged into it. They’d need warrants for the phone records, to determine the last time they were used, and the last people they’d contacted.
Anya moved toward the foot of the bed, kneeling to take a photo of Maxine’s bare foot where it dangled slightly over the side of the bed. Josie tried to back up to give her some space and bumped against Turner’s chest.
He was so tall. Lean as he was, he took up what felt like an unreasonable amount of space in the tent. Josie inched away from him but seconds later, felt his breath tickle her ear. “You’re standing too close,” he stage-whispered. The man who had gone above and beyond to try to help a woman in an abusive marriage had been replaced by the douchebag Josie knew and detested.
He was mocking her. She’d given him crap for standing too close to her on dozens of occasions. Sometimes she did it solely to irritate him. Slowly, she lifted her hand so he could see it over her shoulder and flipped him her middle finger.
“Now, Quinn, that’s not appropriate workplace behavior.”
“Why don’t you help canvass the other tents? I’m sure Anya and I can handle this part ourselves.”
“Nah,” he said. Josie could already hear the drumming of his fingers against his leg again. “Why would I pass up an opportunity to watch the doc at work?”
“You can stay,” Anya said without looking away from her camera. “If you promise not to ask any icebreaker questions.”
“Why would I?” he replied, sounding almost petulant. “You didn’t answer the last five.”
Turner had long had a strange fascination with their medical examiner. From what Anya had told Josie and Gretchen, he left his sexist, inappropriate commentary at the morgue doors whenever he had cause to visit her and instead peppered her with bizarre questions. Getting-to-know-you questions, he’d told Anya. If it was his version of flirting, then it was a miracle he had a daughter at all.
“Full rigor,” Anya noted, probing Maxine’s foot. There was no give.
Rigor mortis set in anywhere between two to six hours postmortem. It usually started in the fingers, neck, eyelids and jaw before spreading through the entire body. The six- to twelve-hour range was when full rigor usually set in.
“Whatcha doing there, Doc?” Turner shuffled closer to where Anya was now contorting her body to get a look at the sole of Maxine’s foot.
She snapped a few photos and then pressed her thumb into the center of the sole. “Lividity is fixed,” she said as she got to her feet.
Lividity was when all the blood no longer circulating pooled at the lowest points in the body, turning the skin a deep purple. It usually began about two hours after death. Between four to six hours postmortem, it became fixed, meaning that the area of discoloration was permanent. A simple way to tell was to apply pressure to the discolored skin. If it didn’t blanch, lividity was fixed.
“All right,” Turner said. “Kid found these two around one thirty, one forty-five-ish. Since the girl didn’t show up at noon when they were supposed to meet, we know they were already dead then. Full rigor, fixed lividity, these two have probably been dead at least twelve hours, give or take an hour or two. Ambient temperature, heat accelerating the decomp and all that. What do you say, Doc?”
“I can give you a narrower and more accurate timetable after you’ve let me do my job.”
“Testy,” he remarked.
Officers were canvassing the other glampers to see if anyone saw the Barnes women the night before or this morning and when. Conlen was having the surveillance footage from the festival grounds pulled to see if they could catch Maxine and Haven leaving to walk back to their tent.
“Make yourself useful, Turner,” Anya said, holding out her camera.
He edged past Josie and took the camera, holding it while Anya knelt on the edge of the bed and used her gloved fingers to examine Maxine Barnes’s face more closely. Flies scattered, forming a small cloud over the bed before diving back down, seeking warm, moist orifices in which to lay their eggs. Anya tried to pull Maxine’s eyelids back but, in full rigor, they had no give. Next, she tried to peel back Maxine’s lips. Still no luck.
She held her palm out for the camera and Turner handed it back to her. She snapped more photos of Maxine’s face, zooming in on her lips. “Come here. See the bluish tinge around her mouth?”
Josie and Turner shuffled closer.
“Cyanosis,” Josie said. Not enough oxygen in the blood. “What would cause that?”
“Could be a lot of things,” Anya said. “I’ll have a better idea when I get her on the table.”
Maxine’s white T-shirt featured a faded drawing of a hedgehog holding a puffy dandelion. Anya pulled the collar down, folded the sleeves up, and, finding nothing, pushed the shirt up to expose the abdomen. She lifted the waistband of Maxine’s black sleep pants but all she found were faint stretch marks. Maxine’s right arm was flush against her side, palm turned up, a large bruise on the inside of her forearm. It wasred and angry. In the photos Haven had posted of her mother axe-throwing less than twenty-four hours earlier, she hadn’t had any bruises on her arms. Anya grimaced as she bagged Maxine’s hands. If someone had killed her, hopefully she’d had a chance to get his DNA beneath her fingernails.
