“Lividity?” said Leo.
“Or other contusions,” O’Hagan said. “We’ll know more when we unwrap her in a few.”
With her visual external examination complete, the assistants helped O’Hagan roll the body back onto its back.
“So maybe she was involved in some kind of erotic breath-control game that went wrong,” Leo said quietly. “Or was plain old strangled, then trussed up in the plastic sheeting and dumped into the water somewhere. Then she drifted with currents and tides along the bottom, finally gassed up, refloated, was hit by a prop, went down again, and then she came up in the Gorge somehow, up under the Johnson Street Bridge.”
“Why don’t we wait to see what we find inside?” Maddocks said.
Leo eyeballed him, his mouth flattening.
“Okay, let’s open this up then,” O’Hagan said.
The cello strings clashed in angry discord, growing ever more strident.
“Wish she’d turn that fucking thing off,” Leo muttered, fishing for his gum again. “Yo-Yo Moo, or Mah, or something or other. She plays the same bloody thing every time.”
Carefully, O’Hagan sliced open the thick layers of opaque tarp, peeling it back as if a chrysalis to reveal the pupa therein. A pupa that would now never grow into the butterfly she was once destined to become. Her skin was a translucent white, blue veins evident beneath, the nipples of her breasts small and dark rose in color. A gold ring looped through the left nipple.
“Remarkably well preserved considering the extent of anthropophagy on the head,” O’Hagan said, revealing a flat stomach upon which the decedent’s hands appeared to have been folded, one atop the other. O’Hagan cut away more rope and stripped back more of the thick plastic.
The tattoo was instantly evident.
Everyone fell silent.
“Well, fuck me,” Leo whispered, coming sharply forward to the autopsy table in spite of himself.
Writhing serpents twisted across their victim’s lower abdomen—the snakes coming from a Medusa’s head, and the Medusa’s screaming, open maw with fanged teeth was positioned right over the victim’s shaved pubic area, as if the Medusa’s mouth opened to the vagina and that anything inserted into that Medusa’s throat would be swallowed alive. O’Hagan stilled, frowned. A sense of foreboding swelled into the room.
The doc bent closer, gently opening wider the labia majora with two gloved fingers, as if revealing the pink insides of the mouth of the Medusa.
The cello strings softened to barely a whisper.
She looked up, eyes clear and serious. “The clitoral hood, clitoral glans, and labia minora have been excised,” she said quietly. “She’s been circumcised.”
They stared at the doc.
The doors hissed open, and everyone jumped.
“Hey, Doc. Anyone for some supper or snacks?” Leo and Maddocks spun around to see a cherub-cheeked blonde who’d entered the morgue pushing a food trolley. The detectives stared at her as if she represented the outside world that had somehow just invaded their alien alternate reality of horror and cold and dead.
THE BAPTIST
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
—Psalms 5:15
It’s Sunday evening when he places three rolls of duct tape and a box of extra-thin blue latex gloves into his shopping cart at the Druggie Mart in James Bay. He’s run out of gloves, and he likes to keep a pair in his pocket at all times, like a detective. He once tried to become a cop. But upon application, he learned that he suffers from a red-green color vision deficiency. Normal color vision is one of the minimum requirements listed to join the Metro PD. Until his application, he hadn’t even known he was partially color blind.
But he’s learned to think like a cop nevertheless, in the same way police learn to think like criminals. He slows at the aisle with protein powders, selects a tin of his favorite complex. Expensive, but worth the cost. His body is his temple.
Self-care is a sign of self-respect, Johnny boy ...
He runs at least forty Ks per week, works out using the outdoor gym equipment in the park down the road. It keeps him sharp. Focused. Strong. He likes the way exercise makes him look. Women appreciate it, too. He sees the way they stare at him when he works shirtless in the sun.
He enters the cosmetic aisle, finds the lipstick he’s looking for—Cherry Blush Red. He takes his purchases to the checkout. The store is located on the corner just down the street from their house, and he likes to walk. The vehicle is for his more private nocturnal activities, when he needs to transport bigger things, and he keeps it safely locked away in the garage.
“How’s your mom doing?” says the store owner, Oliver Tam, beginning to ring in the purchases. The Druggie Mart is a small family-run business, and Tam often works the checkout himself. His mother likes Tam, likes to support local businesses that have not been gobbled up by major chains.
