Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [15]
“The glue was an industrial-strength superglue of some sort. I’ve never seen this before in my career. Because the skin is a porous surface, glue would be absorbed in the skin and wouldn’t hold its strength for an extended period of time. Because the skin is constantly losing cells, eventually the glue would flake off. But the addition of the bandanna gave the glue something to adhere to.”
He directed their attention to the victim’s overall appearance. “She hadn’t been fed or given fluid in at least forty-eight hours. She has obvious signs of dehydration.” The signs weren’t obvious to Carina, but she took Chen’s word for it. “I’m certain when we get inside I can confirm that. But there’re two things that are odd.”
Odd? This could get weirder?
Chen directed the laser to her stomach. “Bruising takes several minutes to hours to form depending on the trauma. Bruising is a constantly changing process, the color and size and depth of the injury growing, then shrinking and fading. Her stomach and upper chest appear to have the beginning signs of bruising. Very faint.”
“Faint?” Will said. “I can’t see anything.”
Carina focused on the areas Chen indicated. She’d never have noticed anything unusual until he pointed out the very slight discoloration. “What can cause that?” she asked.
“Any number of things. And it happened around the time of death. Bruising stops after the heart stops beating. Something heavy was placed on her, perhaps to facilitate her death or to keep her body from convulsing.”
A horrific thought came to Carina. “Could the killer have laid on top of her?”
“Yes,” Chen said, a rare sigh coming from deep in his chest. “It’s cases like this that make me think about early retirement,” he said quietly, looking at Angie’s face.
“What’s the second odd thing?”
He pointed the laser at her navel. “She recently had a navel ring ripped out. It had begun to heal, so I’d guess it was removed twenty-four to forty-eight hours before her death.”
He turned his attention from the tear in the navel to the two detectives on the other side of the table. “Ready?”
No, Carina thought, but nodded along with Will. They silently observed Chen’s meticulous internal examination, his assistant following orders expeditiously.
By the end of the autopsy, they had learned and confirmed several important facts:
Angela Vance had been raped multiple times. There was extensive tearing and deep tissue damage in both orifices, indicating that a sharp, foreign object had penetrated. There was no biological evidence. The killer could have used a condom. If he didn’t, that evidence had probably been destroyed or contaminated when he cleaned the body.
Chen collected possible trace evidence, tissue samples, and additional blood samples to send to the lab. He confirmed that she hadn’t eaten in at least twelve hours because her stomach was void of food.
Jim Gage joined them halfway through the autopsy and confirmed that Angie had suffocated in the bag. While the tox screen was clean, the additional tissue and blood samples would be sent to the county lab, which could test for a broader array of drugs. Jim also collected hair samples to test for cocaine to determine whether Steve Thomas’s accusation that Masterson was feeding her the drug had merit. If she took cocaine more than a week earlier, it wouldn’t show up in her blood, but it would show up in her hair follicles.
Not that drug use would prove Masterson was responsible for her death, but they never knew what information was important or incidental until they closed the case.
Time of death was fixed at approximately one a.m. Monday, with an hour window on either side.
“Fucking bastard,” Will mumbled as