Free 18th Abduction (Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson Page B

waiting for you. And keep the faith.”
    He hung up.
    I looked at my partner. “Ready?”
    “You go. Take notes. I’ll keep working on Koebel.”
    Fine.
    I jogged down the four flights of stairs to the lobby and out the back door, and then power walked three hundred yards to the ME’s office. I pulled open the heavy glass door.
    It was closing in on 9:00 a.m., and the waiting room was filled with several cops and civilians who were likely family members waiting for autopsy results.
    I opened my jacket, flashed my badge at the new receptionist, and told her that Dr. Washburn was waiting for me.
    The receptionist pressed the intercom button on her phone and said, “Doctor, Sergeant Boxer is here.” Then, to me, “Go ahead.”
    She buzzed open the inner door.
    Several people who were waiting their turn saw this exchange and gave me hard looks.
    Well. I was on the job.
    I headed back to the autopsy suite. It was still early in the investigation, but maybe Claire would give me one tidbit or even, God willing, a eureka that would lead us to a killer and maybe from there to the two still-missing women.
    Claire, San Francisco’s chief medical examiner and my best bud, was suited up in baby-blue gown, cap, and gloves. She said, “I’ve got you a set of clothes over there, Lindsay. See it?”
    There was a pile of blue cotton scrubs folded on a metal stool, necessary attire to prevent contamination of Carly Myers’s body.
    When I was properly dressed, I moved in.
    Claire and I bumped our gloved fists, what Claire’s little girl, Rosie, calls an elephant kiss. We grinned and then turned our attention to Carly Myers. She was draped with a sheet from her knees to her armpits.
    Claire told me, “Obviously, I haven’t begun the internal autopsy yet, but I have a few useful notes and one thing that has me completely stumped.”
    “Start there,” I said.
    “What? You want to spoil all my fun?”
    “God forbid. Start where you like. It’s your party and I’m in your house.”

CHAPTER 31
    Claire opened the victim’s mouth and shined her flashlight inside.
    She said, “Look here, Lindsay. Call this confirmation of what you suspected. In a death by hanging, you’ll usually find the tongue is cut from biting.”
    Carly’s tongue looked intact to me.
    I said, “So she was dead when she was hanged.”
    “Yes, that’s my opinion. I found petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes and bruising around the neck. The cricoid cartilage in the neck was fractured. This doesn’t happen with ligature strangulation.”
    “What then? Manual strangulation?”
    “That is correct, my dear sergeant.”
    Claire showed me the bruises around Carly’s throat that had been covered by the collar of the white shirt.
    Claire said, “And look here. Abrasions on her knees, forearms, and here, the base of her palms. This might have happened if she tried to get away from her attacker and fell when he overpowered her.”
    Those abrasions had been hidden by shirttails and pink panties around her wrists when I saw Carly’s body in the shower. If she’d been attacked in the motel room, carpet fibers might be embedded in her scraped knees. If she’d been attacked outside, she should have traces of dirt from a lawn or a road or a parking lot, or even carpet from the inside of a vehicle.
    That kind of evidence could be a break for the good guys.
    I asked, “What kind of trace did CSI find in the wounds?”
    “Linds, I hate to tell you this, but Clapper himself swabbed those abrasions last night, and it’s his opinion that the body is squeaky clean.”
    I asked, “How squeaky? You’re not saying she was washed?”
    “Clapper thinks so. When the DNA tests come back, he’ll be able to say with certainty, but from the first pass, this is what he got. They combed out her hair and found no foreign particles. No trace under her nails. They swabbed the bite mark on her neck, and that swab has gone off to the lab. The shampoo bottle that was found in the