Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [96]
Chen cleared his throat to indicate that he was getting started, then he cut open her chest.
Carina never felt the need to “be strong” and watch something that thoroughly disturbed her, so she turned her head and took a deep breath. The smell she could handle. She’d smelled far worse—her second homicide was a week-dead decomposing prostitute in a Dumpster in the heart of the Gaslight area. In general she could handle dead bodies in various states of murder.
But watching an autopsy seemed too clinical. Scientists dispassionately documenting injuries, weighing organs, as if the human body was a thing. It made her feel vulnerable, mortal. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her own body after she died.
Jim walked over to the table. “Just what I suspected.”
“What?” Carina couldn’t help but ask, turning her attention back to the autopsy.
“Asphyxiation,” Jim said, “from anaphylactic shock.”
“Why didn’t Angie die the same way?”
“She wasn’t allergic to latex,” Jim explained. “In this victim, her airways became clogged with hives. With no medication to reduce the swelling, she suffocated.”
Carina pictured Jodi tied to a bed, struggling for her last breath, alone and scared. Her stomach flipped and she turned away from the dead girl’s corpse.
Nick touched her lightly on the small of her back, cleared his throat. “He came in and found her dead. Became enraged and punched her.”
“Repeatedly,” Chen said. “Two broken ribs, the nose, severe postmortem damage.”
“Her abdomen looks like pulp,” Jim said, disgusted. “She’d been dead about four to five hours before he found her.”
“Did he use his bare hands?” Carina asked.
“Absolutely. He may have had on gloves of some sort, but I don’t see any latex or fiber residue under the microscope. And if he’d used a hammer or another object the wounds would have a smaller center. These are fist-size impressions.”
“But if he didn’t use latex gloves, how could she have died from a latex allergy?”
“Some glues have latex in them. I’m going to check for latex on the glue samples when I get back to the lab.”
“His hands would be damaged, wouldn’t you say?” Carina asked. She couldn’t rid her mind of the image of Jodi fighting for breath as her body swelled up.
“Very likely. Bruised. Possibly split, especially on the knuckles.”
“He’s like a kid with a bug jar,” Nick said.
“Excuse me?” Jim looked over his shoulder. Nick had even attracted Chen’s attention.
“Essentially, he has a woman in a jar. She’s restrained, trapped. He can watch her if he wants. Prod her. Attack her. He touches her to see how she reacts. Rapes her for the sensation, then uses convenient items so he can watch. Like pulling the wings off a fly. It can’t go anywhere, can’t escape. When the bug finally dies, sometimes a kid gets mad. How dare the bug die on him. Stomps on it. Shows it how powerful he really is, though he really feels small and helpless because he couldn’t keep the bug alive long enough to do everything he wanted.”
No one said anything for a long minute.
“Sheriff, I think you’re right,” Dillon said. “She died before he wanted her dead. She shattered his fantasy. The ultimate high for him is sex and death.”
Dillon looked at everyone in the room. “He’s going to act again, and soon. Jodi cheated him and he’s angry. But because he’s angry, he has a greater chance of slipping up.”
Carina prayed they caught a break before another woman died.
His skin prickled, as if a spider were crawling on him. He batted it away, and it was replaced by another phantom spider.
It was Jodi’s fault. She’d ruined everything. She wasn’t supposed to just die like that. She wasn’t playing her part. In the back of his mind he kept thinking that somehow he’d forgotten something, that maybe he’d made a mistake. So he kept replaying everything in his mind. From going in through her window