Huizinga raised an eyebrow in silent query.
“You know, Angelo Hays? Buried alive in the 1930s?”
“Well, he certainly won’t be alive after the autopsy I’ll be performing.”
Typical Huizinga humor, Romanski thought.
Resuming his inspection, Huizinga nudged his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose with one gloved finger. “I note,” he said, “that the victim was shaved postmortem. There are razor nicks that did not bleed. They must have cleaned up the hair and taken it with them. How odd.”
Reno now appeared, surgical mask covering up his big handlebar mustache, swabbing samples around the body.
“It looks like the eyes might be missing,” Romanski said. “Can you, ah, lift the coins to check?”
Huizinga lifted a silver dollar with his gloved fingers. “Yes, this one is indeed gone.” He gently lowered the coin back in place.
“And the foot?” Romanski asked. “You see that?”
“Indeed I do,” said Huizinga. “We shall certainly be looking at that with a CAT scan back in the lab.”
Romanski rubbed his hands together. This crime scene was getting interesting. The curiously bloodless wounds—aside from the foot—the missing eyes, the posed and dressed corpse, and the postmortem shaving. It had the markings of a serial killer, and a demented one at that. He couldn’t wait to get this stuff back to the lab and start putting the puzzle together.
“Think this could have been the Neanders?” Cash asked from the doorway, arms crossed.
“Very unlikely,” said Huizinga. “The modus operandi is too different. I hesitate to draw conclusions until I perform an autopsy. But…” Instead of finishing the thought, he grasped the hem of the lace garment Willy was dressed in, drawing it up to expose the old man’s naked body.
Romanski winced. “I didnotneed the full monty.”
Huizinga ignored Romanski and leaned in and sniffed at two strange holes, one above, and the other to the right of Willy’s belly button.
“Any idea of cause of death?” Cash asked.
Huizinga didn’t answer right away. He took out a magnifying loupe and examined two odd lacerations at the base of the corpse’s neck and the two marks near the belly button. Then he straightened up and tuckedaway the loupe and looked around, an odd expression on his face. “This corpse has been embalmed,” he said.
Romanski stared. Of course—that’swhy the smell had been familiar: It was formalin.
“You can see,” Huizinga went on, “these two incisions in the neck. One is to the carotid artery, where the embalming fluid was pumped in, and the other to the jugular vein, where the drain tube carried the blood out.”
Romanski peered more closely, fascinated.
“Now I would direct your attention to the hemorrhaging and ecchymosis evident around those incisions, as well as the petechiae here, around the umbilicus, where a trocar was used to pump out the cavity fluid and replace it with preservative.”
Huizinga now had everyone’s undivided attention.
“This indicates the victim was alive when this commenced. If he were conscious—and I believe he was, due to abrasions on the wrists that suggest restraint—it must have been terrifying.Andpainful.” He paused. “What I believe we are dealing with here is murder… by embalmment.”
