Free Code 61 by Donald Harstad Page B

so, you think?”
    “Make it four to six.” He didn't even look up. “The fingers are stiff, the legs seem flexible … Assuming she died in here, at about this temperature…. ”
    “Okay.” Four to six. Assuming a constant, or relatively constant ambient temperature. Close enough. Assume room temperature. We were in a room, after all. Assume we had no other way to estimate the time of death, yet. Just ballpark.
    I helped him rock the body to either side, and then forward a little, so he could see all of her. Lividity was just barely apparent in her buttocks, her elbows, and on the backs of her legs. The gluteal muscles were important, because they're the largest in the body. They would be the last to go completely rigid.
    “Shouldn't there be a little more lividity?” I asked. Lividity is the purplish mottling of the skin that occurs when blood settles to the lower parts of a dead body.
    “Not if she'd experienced great blood loss,” said Doc Z. “And I'd say she has.”
    “Right.” Well, there went my little theory that she'd just bled until her heart stopped.
    Doc Z. stood up. “Do you feel certain about the suicide aspects of this?” he asked, sotto voce. “I have some suspicions about the bruises.”
    I shrugged. “Me, too, but I don't see any real evidence to the contrary. Not unless the bruises were caused at about the same time she died.”
    “Those are the sort of pronounced bruises I expect to find in the elderly,” he said.
    “Abuse?”
    “That might be consistent, but what I meant was, in the elderly who are being prescribed blood thinners to reduce the possibility of stroke.”
    “Oh. Well, there's a pillbox out on the vanity. One of those weekly ones. You could check that.”
    “Good. I suppose you've already noticed that much of the blood seems to be dried from evaporation, as opposed to being clotted.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Attaboy,” he said with a grin. “The neck cut bothers me, too.” Henry moved her head a bit to see the wound again. “No hesitation marks.”
    “Right.”
    “I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a good forensics specialist up on this one.”
    “Okay…. ”
    “I'm not comfortable with this one, Carl. No hesitation marks, no sawing motion, just puncture and pull. That's a deep wound. Very deep. I would expect it not only got the jugular, but the carotid as well.”
    “Sure. Reasonable.”
    “But if it did, there are no indications of arterial spurts. None.”
    No, there weren't. A severed jugular would give you a copious flow, to put it mildly. But a flow, nonetheless. If the carotid was cut, you'd get spurts, all right. High-pressure spurts that could splatter on a wall ten feet away. We didn't know, but the cut did look deep, and if the carotid had been cut, there sure as hell should have been spurts at the location of the event. Forensics expert prior to moving her? … You bet. Like they say, err on the side of caution.

    “I'll see who we can get for a pathologist. We may have to wait until the DCI agent gets here, to order up the forensics and crime scene analysis people, though.”
    “Fine,” said Doc Z. in a matter-of-fact tone. “I'll be a lot happier. Do you have plenty of photos?”
    I told him what I'd taken. He had me take several more as he held her head back, and then as he moved her joints to show the progress of the rigor mortis. I noticed that he had to push a bit harder to move her head up and expose the cut. After he released it, it took several seconds for it to drop back into place. Spooky.
    “Unless the lab dictates otherwise,” said Doc Z., “she can be removed anytime now.”
    “Okay.” We'd call the local funeral home, and have her taken there. That's where the autopsy would be done.
    “Uh, Henry, before we get out among 'em, I think you might want to talk to the local ME over in Conception County.”
    “Alice? Sure. Why?”
    “They had a body yesterday. Young fellow, with a really ugly neck wound. Not cause of death,