Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [32]
Step two was dried secretions.
Step three was external genital examination.
Step four was pubic combings.
There would be nine steps in all.
“Would you feel comfortable taking off the scarf?”
The girl unwound the material, revealing a necklace of watercolor bruises in wine and black.
“How did that happen?” Nancy asked without any kind of inflection, which might have indicated outrage or alarm. Obvious marks of strangulation are rare.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Can you open that sweatshirt a little and sit here, and I’ll take your vital signs?”
The ER doctor had ordered X rays to rule out fractures of the larynx and scans to check for soft tissue damage. The bruises would be photographed, and analysis would show the suspect had used a metal chain as a ligature to strangle Juliana several times to the point of unconsciousness or almost death. When she revived, he would perform sex acts and then strangle her again.
As Nancy pressed the disk of the stethoscope to Juliana’s chest she smiled tenderly and said, “You have a kind heart.”
My knees buckled.
I felt an unreasonable amount of love for Nancy Reicher, RN, NP, with the plucked eyebrows.
“Let’s come over here and take off your clothes. We’re going to need to keep them for evidence, so afterward”—Nancy opened a cabinet—“you can go home in one of these.”
Inside were shelves of royal blue sweatshirts and sweatpants and rubber thongs in ascending sizes.
“There may be evidence on your clothes. Dirt or fibers, stuff like that. We need you to undress carefully. I’m going to put down some pieces of paper on the floor to collect anything that falls out of your clothing, and then we’re going to collect everything you have on and put it in this bag. Let’s go behind the curtain.”
She drew some fabric across a track so a quarter of the room was hidden. I stood by the counter looking over the evidence packets. It would be a slow and meticulous examination. The oral cavity. The swabs for sperm. Examination of the buttocks, perianal skin and anal folds. Drawing blood to test for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The careful cataloguing, signing, dating, sealing of every piece to maintain the chain of custody.
“I need your underwear, too,” I heard Nancy say from inside the curtain. “Are you okay?”
How many times was she going to ask if Juliana was okay? I was aware that my pits were damp. I was thirsty and wanted someplace to sit down.
“Now I’m going to use a long-wave ultraviolet light called a Wood’s lamp,” came Nancy’s voice. “All kinds of stains show up that we couldn’t see under white light. We’re going to scan your body for evidence. But first I’m going to turn out the lights. Are you all right out there, Ana?”
“Fine.”
The windowless room went pitch black.
Inside the curtain a purple light went on.
“I’m just going to scan your body with this lamp.”
It was hot and close and surreal in that room. Shades of purple light danced above and below the curtain like a gruesome attraction in a carnival of perversions.
“It’s like a black light,” Nancy was explaining. “Do you know if he ejaculated outside your body?”
I could not hear Juliana’s reply.
“Well, here are some dried secretions, and you can tell they’re semen because they turn yellow under the Wood’s lamp. I’m just going to swab it. Turn around for me. Thanks.” There was a pause. Then, “Would you mind if I asked Ana to see this?”
Juliana’s voice was faint with exhaustion. “Yeah, sure, I don’t care.”
With the chill clatter of metal rollers, Nancy slowly swept the curtain aside, and I saw Juliana Meyer-Murphy standing naked in a violet column of light.
She had her father’s slope-shouldered slump, with his tendency to spread at the hips, but the long legs were her mother’s; soon the baby fat would go. They had put clean dressings over the area on her chest where the offender had cut meticulously with a fine instrument, crosshatching, like an etching, to draw a steady beading of blood. On the Tanner classification of sexual maturity, a five being a fully mature adult woman, Juliana would rate a four. She