Free Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein Page B

death.”
    “The mark is so small it looks like a bullet wound.”
    “That’s what I thought, too, at first. But it’s a single thrust, right into the heart. Someone knew what he was doing, or got very lucky.”
    “A knife did that?” I asked.
    “Not likely. Something pointed and very sharp. Something with a fine, thin tip.”
    Homicidal stab wounds usually involved some cutting as well as thrusting, the knife pulled down or up, twisted during its insertion or removal. The injury was usually longer than the widest part of the blade.
    “What then?”
    “A sharp pair of scissors, maybe. A pick of some sort.”
    “Crime Scene take any weapons off the ship?” I asked Mike.
    “Control your control freak instincts, Coop. That sloop crossed the ocean. There’s a galley with kitchen equipment to prepare food for hundreds of people and a boiler room with enough tools to keep the damn thing afloat. That’s not to mention that half the men on board had homemade shivs and all kinds of metal to protect themselves. And don’t ask me to start dragging the ocean bottom tonight, okay?”
    “We will need to see every sharp object you find,” Pomeroy said.
    “Yeah, Doc,” Mike said. “What kind of public statement will you make about her death?”
    “That’s up to the chief. To my view, Jane here was stabbed to death and disposed of to simulate drowning. Something we don’t see very often.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because, Alex, it would be fairly easy to discover the bullet hole or track the internal hemorrhaging of a stab wound at autopsy. Your killer must have counted on this body not being found for days, if at all.”
    “The vicious riptide,” Mike said. “We’re not done waiting for bodies to wash up.”
    “Far likelier for this girl to have been dragged out in the ocean. If and when she came ashore, the odds are pretty good that she would have been skeletonized. All those marine creatures would have gotten to work on her. You’ll see, if there are more deaths in the next few days.”
    “So almost the perfect crime, Doc, right? One well-placed thrust between the ribs and overboard with the mutineers. Jane just surfed the wrong way.”
    “Possibly.”
    “So I’m looking for someone who heard her squealing like a stuck pig just before the other desperate souls decided to jump.”
    “Those bruises,” I said, pointing to the marks on the young woman’s forehead, “are those—and her hands—signs of a struggle?”
    Pomeroy lifted the girl’s left hand to point out the abrasions on the wrinkled skin of her knuckles. “They’re not defensive wounds, Alex. Nothing to suggest that she struggled. She was dragged by the tide along the shallow bottom of the ocean, drifting below the water’s surface. Those scrapes here, on her forehead, and her knees are all postmortem, all superficial.”
    “I’m just thinking about Mike’s comment about her squealing. Someone certainly took advantage of all the commotion if she was killed after the ship beached itself on the reef. That should help us once we get to talk to these people.”
    “I’ll bet half the boatload was wailing and screaming,” Mike said. “You know how long she was dead before she was tossed in?”
    “The waterlogging makes it hard to determine lividity,” Pomeroy said. “There’s a loss of translucency of the upper layers of the skin, can you see? The internal organs display lividity normally, though. I’d say she wasn’t dead many hours before she was found.”
    “We’re not talking about Jane being on ice since she left home?”
    “No, we’re not.”
    “How about her clothing?” I asked. “There must have been blood all over it.”
    On a workbench in a far corner of the room, Jane Doe’s clothes had been laid out to dry. “I’m afraid they won’t be all that much help. Yes, exsanguination was the cause of death, Alex, but most of the bleeding went into the body cavities.”
    I knew that was common in stabbings that didn’t