The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [21]
In the yellowish circle of Lamar’s light, he was able to clear the left side of the victim’s head. “Yes. Appears to be our exit, and … temporal.”
Cool. I took four shots of the first victim’s face, concentrating in the first two on the clot, the second pair on the protruding eye. Establish, then zoom in. Lamar held a tape measure next to the nose for me. You should have a scale in the shots, whenever possible.
Dr. Peters gingerly removed the white bag from the head of the second victim. This one slipped right off. This fellow had a recently shaved head, and the small goatee I could see from my angle was blondish. There was blood on the second victim, too, but not nearly as much. And what appeared to be a bluish-purple spot on the back of the head, to the right of the middle, and about halfway to the top. Above it, about two inches, was a whitish squiggle of what looked like those worms kids squirt from cans. About an inch or so long, it protruded from another purplish spot.
Dr. Peters pointed to the squiggle. “Extruded brain tissue,” he said. “Shot twice.”
I was working the camera, so Lamar said, “Gunshot wound on both of them, then?”
“Two of them on this one,” said Dr. Peters. He pointed to the upper spot, with the extruded matter. “This is the first shot, this is an entrance wound.” He pointed to the lower spot. “Entrance wound, second shot. Pressure from it caused the material to squeeze out the first hole.”
Aha. Lamar held the tape again, and I got in as tight as I could, showing both wounds. “Think it was a .22?” I asked. It looked about that size.
“I should think so,” he said. “Note the facial features.”
The young man’s face was all compressed and flattened on one side, like he had his face pressed against a pane of glass. Except there was none. The simile apparently occurred to Art, too.
“World’s best mime,” he said, dryly. He surprised me so much I laughed. The DCI might have done him some good, after all.
The corpse’s tongue was protruding through his lips, and his teeth weren’t visible. There was a yellowish tinge to him, as well as a purple discoloration to the rounded portion of his face that looked like a huge bruise. Postmortem lividity. The flattened part of the face, on the other hand, was almost white.
“He was placed here a while after he died,” said Dr. Peters. “The face is flattened by this floor, but there is no lividity in the flattened area.”
Post-mortem lividity was the purplish color produced by pooling blood in a corpse. Gravity forces the blood to the lower points of the body. The process stops after a time, and if the body is moved to a different position after this time, there will be no liquid blood to pool in the new low spots.
“Affected by temperature, though,” said Art.
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Peters. “Very much. But when we defrost him, if freezing interrupted the clotting process, we may well have continued liquid seepage into low spots…”
“Do you think there are two holes in the first one?” asked Art.
Dr. Peters stood again. “Can’t say, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. I want to bag the hands.”
He reached into his kit, and pulled out a roll of transparent bags and a roll of tape. I helped him bag the hands. The first victim’s hands were easy. The second one’s required Art and me to heave the body up and onto its right shoulder, so the M.E. could get at the hands. The body was so stiff it was like tilting a statue.
Lamar asked for Art’s cell phone. He reached in his inner pocket and handed it to him. He dialed, and said, “Yeah, it’s me. Look, get Christiansen in early and have him take Fred up to the clinic and have Doc or a nurse use the gunshot residue kit on his hands. Yeah. No, he doesn’t. No. It ain’t testimonial evidence. His lawyer isn