Close to the Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

picture that’s worth a thousand words, and Theresa did want to see it, comfort be damned.
    The two men continued to argue oh-so-politely, a stance that did not come naturally to either of them. Shephard plopped himself into one of the leather chairs without waiting for an invitation, but Theresa browsed in the less luxe and more familiar territory of the specimen jars. Some organs do not look like an anatomy diagram, and some do. A set of lungs from April 2007, for example, did not look gray and puffy but wetly, deeply red, more like a liver. A spleen removed during the second month of 2011 resembled a red amoeba. But a uterus from 9/23/04 while soaking in its formalin bath appeared as expected, a pink, rounded triangle. It had some sort of cancer on it that looked like a cigarette burn and made her wince.

    ‘Fine,’ Stone said at last. ‘CPD can process the crime scene. I trust you’ll have it wrapped up by lunchtime so we won’t have to lose the entire day. In the meantime two of my pathologists are coming in to do the autopsy. CPD won’t be able to do that , will they?’
    Shephard could have insisted that they send the body to another county, but must have assumed that immediate results trumped any possible conflict of interest.
    The conference broke up, and Theresa went to process the gurney. Assuming that Sergeant Shephard would consider the deskmen’s office the crime scene, then the gurney sat outside CPD’s purview. Fingerprint powder brought up a nice palm print.
    Before moving on to the bloody handprints on the walls she made herself a badly needed cup of coffee and checked her watch. Five a.m. – too early to call Don and go over recent events with him, especially since he had been told to stay home. Theresa would let him sleep.
    Amido black is a dark, watery liquid that turns blood to a dark purplish black color, throwing a faint fingerprint or shoe print into startling relief. The process is easy enough – just dump on the stain, wait a few seconds, then rinse gently with distilled water. However, sloshing all that liquid around on a large, immovable object such as a wall is messy and, since the stain is dissolved in methanol, smelly. A few more ridges came into view, but still not enough to be able to compare to someone’s hand. One of the CPD crime scene techs, Jen, came in while Theresa finished rinsing, gray-colored water coursing down the tile to be collected by a few soggy paper towels. Jen carried three separate metal cases and hadn’t bothered to put on make-up, either.
    Caught red-handed, Theresa said, ‘I did the amido black staining,’ as if she were being helpful instead of interfering.
    ‘Oh good. I hate working with that stuff.’
    Crime-scene techs don’t bother with jurisdictional jealousy. They leave that kind of crap to the cops.

FIVE
    B y seven thirty a.m. Theresa stood in the autopsy suite watching two doctors putter around and get their instruments in order before beginning the procedure. She had spent the previous two hours watching Jen process the crime scene. The CPD tech had collected all the samples and would write the report, but chain of custody would not be affected if Theresa watched over her shoulder, and besides, Jen did need to confer with her on what the bloodstain patterns could tell them. Their conclusion: not much.
    The struggle apparently began in one corner, where a stack of papers had fallen from the top of a desk and a stapler had been knocked off the edge of the counter – signs of activity, perhaps from the first few blows. Apparently, the blood did not start flowing until the fight had moved to the floor and stayed there. They found no sign of a weapon nor any cast-off from one, and from the splashing patterns found near the largest pools they suspected that the floor had been used to cave in Darryl’s head rather than any blunt instrument. They found patterns left by the men’s pants, sleeves, knees and hair, but not a single usable handprint.