What the fuck ...?
Zach grabbed the remote, jacked up the sound, heart hammering. This was not good, not at all. He barely noticed the delivery guys taking leave as he glued his attention to the breaking news.
“Drummond’s cause of death is, mysteriously, drowning, according to her mother, Lorna Drummond, who was contacted by VNN reporters this morning following a disturbing leak by a crime reporter on Twitter. Metro police are not commenting other than to say their investigation is ongoing. However, Lorna Drummond has confirmed to VNN that her daughter had been immersed in water, sexually mutilated—circumcised—and that the shape of a crucifix had been carved with a blade into her forehead. A lock of hair had also been cut near her hairline.” A school photo of Gracie Drummond appeared at the top right of the screen.
Zach stared, a sick dread building in his stomach.
“Drummond was left unconscious and bleeding at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the Ross Bay graveyard, during one of the coldest snaps on record ...”
His cell phone rang. He kept staring at the television as he answered it. “Yeah?”
“You see the news?” It was Killion.
“I’m seeing it now.”
“We need to handle this. Before it handles us. Before this whole tough-on-crime thing blows up in our faces from day one. What is this leak on Twitter that they’re talking about?”
“I ... don’t know.” Zach moved to his computer, clicked on his Twitter bookmark.Shit.
“It’s her,” he said quietly. “Merry Winston from theSun. She came out with that tweet at eleven forty-five this morning.”
CHAPTER 13
Death, the great equalizer.
“Media shit-storm breaking out there,” Leo mumbled around a wad of cinnamon-scented gum as they watched the two dieners weighing the bagged body of their floater. He glanced up at Maddocks. “You heard, right?”
Maddocks nodded.
It was almost six hours since their decedent had been retrieved from the Gorge—and here they were, already in the morgue at 4:00 p.m. on a Sunday. The room was cold, windowless, with tiled walls and floors, stainless steel tables, sinks, and backsplashes. Unforgiving fluorescent lighting hummed softly overhead. Banks of glass-fronted cabinets housing tools of the trade—bone-cutting devices, disposable face shields, other equipment—lined the back wall. Lab coats, once pristine white but now soiled with brownish-red stains, hung loosely on a stand beside a pair of electronically controlled doors that hissed softly when they opened.
There lingered in the room an odor that Maddocks associated with all morgues. The scent was one of raw meat, blood, formalin, and disinfectant, and it reminded him of a butcher shop he’d once visited with his grandfather as a boy.
In this jurisdiction an autopsy was usually performed within forty-eight hours of death. But a rush had been put on this one. The coroner’s office fell under the purview of the office of the attorney general, and given the breaking news, the possibility of an internal Metro PD leak, the twitchiness of the police chief, and pressure from the new mayor and police board, word had come right from the assistant deputy attorney general herself to expedite this medico-legal autopsy stat.
If ordered by law, next of kin consent was not required for a postmortem. Besides, they had no idea who to inform yet, anyway, not until they’d opened the tarp up and unwrapped what was essentially part of a crime scene. Maddocks and Leo were present to witness that process and to take delivery of any evidence that came out of it. They did, however, already know that their DB was not Annelise Janssen, the missing student, as the newspaper had speculated.
The Janssen family had provided Metro PD copies of their daughter’s dental records along with DNA samples when she’d first been reported missing. From those records it was evident that Annelise Janssen had undergone very limited dental work in her lifetime, and nothing cosmetic. Their lipless DB with her exposed jaw, on the other hand, had clearly undergone extensive dentistry, both cosmetic and repair—a bridge, implants at the front of her mouth, ceramic fillings in nearly all her real teeth. Her mouth had once been a mess.
Dr.Barb O’Hagan put music on, and the sounds of soft cello rose in the sterile room while she checked her microphone above the stainless steel autopsy table and made notes, comparing the information on the body bag seal with the authorizing paperwork to make sure this was the right body. She wore voluminous green scrubs under a disposable plastic apron, booties over her shoes. The autopsy techs wore rebreather devices. O’Hagan did not. Maddocks knew pathologists like her—old school. They preferred to use their noses. Smell was important in a postmortem. It could tell you a lot.
“Could have been anyone, that leak,” Leo said as O’Hagan snapped on her latex gloves.
Down came the zipper on the bag. They watched the assistants lift the plastic-cocooned body with its ragged head and long strands of wet hair. They positioned her on the stainless steel table, which was slightly canted and equipped with running water to rinse fluids into the drainage holes at the bottom. Leo avoided looking at the head as he rubbed wintergreen oil under his nose. He offered the container to Maddocks.
“Thanks.” Maddocks dabbed some of the ointment under his own nostrils. O’Hagan might need to smell the corpse, but he did not. He returned the container.
The victim’s brown hair was still entangled with seaweed. Photos were taken before anything was touched.
“It could have come from one of the EMTs,” Leo said. “Or someone in ER, any one of the nurses. Even one of the docs. Christ, the mother herself might have told any number of people that her kid had been mutilated like that. It’s upsetting. It’s something people need to get out, you know?”
He was motormouthing. Maddocks suspected this was Detective Harvey Leo’s coping mechanism, his compartmentalization tool. They all had one or two such tools in their arsenals, but he wished Leo would shut the fuck up.
“Itcouldalso have been internal,” Maddocks countered coolly as he watched the assistants carefully checking the empty body bag for trace that might have shaken loose during transport to the morgue and gotten left in the bag.
“Yeah,” said Leo. “And that’sexactlythe conclusion everyone is gonna jump on. Kick at the cops. Pallorino and Holgersen’s case—I tell ya, she’s in shit street now. First there was the Hashowsky shooting five months ago, and the death of that little kid and her parents, and now this? I tell ya, if Gunnar is looking for heads to roll, if the board is looking for a fall guy, her tight little ass is a damn fine target about now. She’s toast, I reckon.”
Maddocks glanced down at him. A glint of glee actually flickered in the man’s eyes. Detective Leo clearly had a hate-on for the female cop working the cemetery case. Or he was using this as a diversion from the gruesome sight on the table in front of them. Maybe a bit of both.
