Gracie Drummond’s body was draped in a white sheet, her head exposed. Her features were almost serene. She reminded Angie of a patchwork doll, with the stitched crucifix wound on her brow and the thick line of black sutures from where Barb O’Hagan had sliced and peeled back her face to remove her brain from her skull.
Angie stood beside Maddocks once again as O’Hagan ran them through her preliminary report.
“COD was drowning in freshwater,” O’Hagan said as she folded back the sheet to reveal the top of the Y-incision on Drummond’s young chest. “Note these contusions here, along the sides of her neck and on her shoulders, and this line here, across the bottom of her ribs.” The pathologist pointed to a fat line of dark blue-and-red bruising.
“She could have been forced over something, like the rim of a bathtub,” said Angie, “or a trough of some kind, while her head and shoulders were held under water and she struggled to free herself.”
O’Hagan nodded. “Drummond also presented with vaginal and anal tearing indicative of rough sexual penetration. And I found small traces of powder residue in her vaginal vault—same as with Hocking.”
“So he used a condom,” Maddocks said. “In both cases.”
“Drummond’s circumcision occurred antemortem, as we know. But Hocking was circumcised postmortem,” O’Hagan said.
Angie and Maddocks exchanged a glance. “So he switched MO?” Angie said.
“Or he’s refining it,” Maddocks replied. “Or he thought Drummond was already drowned and dead when he did it.”
“Appears that it was definitely executed by the same hand in both cases—same size blade, same direction of cuts, same parts excised.” She shook her head, staring at Drummond’s dead, calm face. “What people do to each other in the name of sexual gratification. The mind is the largest sex organ—whatever can be imagined can be enacted, and often is. And there’s nothing like an orgasm for positive reinforcement of an idea.”
Angie felt hot and overly conscious of Maddocks beside her. “And the crucifix markings on her brow?” she said.
O’Hagan led them over to a light box on the wall containing X-rays. “This is Hocking’s skull. You can see faint scoring on bone here.” The doc pointed to very thin lines in the shape of a crucifix on the brow bone. “And this is Drummond’s skull. Same scoring depth, same shape.”
“Again, looks like the same hand,” Maddocks said. “He exerted the same pressure with the blade in both cases.”
“Drummond was in otherwise healthy condition,” O’Hagan said. “Whatever other trace might have been left on her body was likely lost in the hospital.”
“Her clothing is still with the lab,” Angie said. “Maybe we’ll get something off it that could tie these two victims together in terms of location—perhaps some clue as to where they were abducted and then assaulted.”
“Her teeth?” Maddocks said.
“Very good shape. No evidence of cosmetic work there. The odontologist will be taking a look at Hocking’s dental work later this morning. There’s evidence of very poor oral hygiene and serious decay in Hocking’s past, which has been remediated by some rather high-end dental wizardry.”
“We now know that Hocking was a crystal meth user for several years,” Maddocks said. “Her tooth decay, or meth mouth, would thus be consistent with her drug use.” He paused. “It’s like she was cleaned up.”
“And had the finances to do so,” O’Hagan offered.
“Or, more likely, someone paid to have her cleaned up,” Angie said.
CHAPTER 23
“Yo, yous got some spare cash?” A rake-thin woman, scabby face, rotted and missing teeth, accosted Detectives Kjel Holgersen and Harvey Leo as they strode down the sidewalk past a thrift store with its fake Christmas tree and tangled tinsel in the window. Kjel ran his gaze quickly over the sorry creature. She wore fingerless gloves, jeans, a filthy denim jacket. Her wet hair clung in ratty, dun-colored strings against her hollowed cheeks, and her mad eyes darted up and down the street.
She grabbed at Leo’s jacket. “C’mon, gramps,yougot cash. Spare some for the season of joy, a time of giving.” She shot a paranoid glance over her shoulder, her tongue darting in and out of her mouth.
“Get your hands the hell off me, you meth-ho,” Leo snapped as he shook her off and sped up, leaving Kjel in his wake.
“Asshole!” she shrieked after Leo. “Fucking prick. Yo, man, you ... I’m talking toyou, grampa! Come back here.Lookat me. Look in my face. I seen you around. I know yous. You want some pussy, man? Merry fuckin’ Christmas!”
“She stinks,” Leo muttered as Kjel caught up to him. Rain, icy, pattered down harder on their shoulders, splashing into puddles forming between mounds of melting brown slush. “Fucking tweaker. Sky-high on crystal meth, oozing chemical scabs.”
Kjel cast him a sideways glance. But he bit his tongue. For now. He’d barely been getting a handle on Pallorino, and now he had this asshole to deal with. Harvey Leo came with a different kind of chip on his shoulder than Pallorino, but he was a bona-fide member of the old boys’ club back at the station. Kjel figured he’d do well to stay on the right side of that bunch.
“You know the difference between a crackhead and a tweaker?” Leo said as they rounded the block on their way to Harbor House. “Crackhead will steal your shit and bounce—tweaker will steal your shit and then help you look for it.” He chuckled throatily at his own joke, finishing with a rattle of a smoker’s cough. “Can bang like rabbits for hours, those tweakers.”
Kjel said nothing.
“What kind of name is Kell Holgersen, anyway? Like Scandinavian, Nordic, what?”
