Takeover - Lisa Black [31]
“Yep.”
“Don’t blows to the back of the head force someone down on their face? You’d think the last blow would be on the ground.”
As in any full autopsy, the scalp had been cut at the top of the head and flipped forward to reveal the skull. Christine moved it back into place. “When someone’s down and having their head pounded into the pavement, it usually leaves injuries to the face. He has none, which makes me think this attack was quick and brutal, with massive force applied to the skull. He died before he had time to fall.”
Jason sidled toward the door. “I’m going to—”
“Come with me.” Don led him out.
“What about time of death?” Theresa persisted.
“From the rigor I’d say four to eight hours before he arrived here. So any time between midnight and four A.M.? Of course, if he died inside and they had the air-conditioning on, the time of death could be last evening. If he stayed outside the whole time, with this heat, he could have died only an hour before you found him. I can’t be sure.”
Theresa thanked her and rejoined Don and Jason. Under the receptionist’s watchful eye, they continued through the lobby and punched the button for the elevator. The woman had come with the building and meant to stay there until the walls fell down.
The doors slid shut, and Jason asked if there was a men’s room handy.
The third floor housed the trace evidence and toxicology departments, decorated in the same worn 1950s linoleum and shabby paint as the rest of the building. At least the air-conditioning had been having a good day, and the temperature hovered around sixty-five. Theresa felt clammy in her sweat-soaked clothing but didn’t complain. If anyone tried to adjust the thermostat, it would turn off, and tomorrow they would all swelter. A happy medium could not be found.
“Oliver had something to tell you,” Don said as they stepped off the elevator. “You want to see him first?”
“Yeah.”
Jason lunged for the door labeled MEN.
Theresa knocked for admittance to the toxicology department and made her way past a row of plastic bottles—gastric contents, something she avoided whenever possible. She found Oliver, the overweight, ponytailed toxicologist, in his usual lair at the rear of the building, protected by a fortress of compressed air tanks and scarred countertops.
“I suppose you want to know about your dirt. Seems an appropriate summary of my professional life: I work with dirt.”
“Dirt is important,” Theresa told him. “It’s what the earth is made of. Can you tell me something about the stuff from the floor mat?”
“Aluminum and silicon, mostly. Clay. Clay with a little rust in it. That tell you anything?”
“Not really. Any industrial applications?”
He snorted with enough force to ruffle the papers on his desk. “About a million, from bricks to paper to toothpaste. But the grains are coarse and the sample is anything but pure, so my extremely well-educated guess would still be dirt.”
She sighed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You find anything more useful, bring it back.”
“Volunteering for work, Oliver? You’re going to ruin your reputation.”
“Good point.”
“What about the stuff from the victim’s suit jacket?”
“Again, dirt. I can’t get enough of the stuff today.” He patted the dusty beige box that housed the mass spectrometer, possibly the only physical entity in the universe to receive his affection. “It’s running as we speak. I’ll page you if it’s interesting.”
“Call me even if it isn’t, okay?”
Oliver nodded and turned back to his desk without another word, and she went to find Don and the coffeepot. En route she rang Frank for an update, which he could not provide. The robbers were pacing in front of the hostages, but their body language did not seem particularly agitated.
“Actually,” he said, “they seem to be the coolest guys in downtown Cleveland today.”
“I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but that doesn’t make any sense.