religion and violence.’
The two cops walked out of the room to wait for Crime Scene to arrive. They both headed straight for the open window in the corridor and gulped the cold air.
Chapter Twenty-Two
November 19, 2.02 p.m.
Out in East Manhattan later that day, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper were led into the blue-tiled morgue for Jessica Pascal’s autopsy. It was windowless and claustrophobic, with great banks of white and steel drawers.
Closets of the dead.
Robert Toumi, the diener, had worked for the OCME for twelve years. He pointed across to the autopsy room. ‘We’ve not even got her on the slab, gentlemen. Laura’s scrubbing up. You’re welcome to watch me work, but it ain’t pretty.’ He went across to a body bag on a gurney. ‘I’ve weighed her and she’s had an X-ray. Pretty busted up by the look of it. Gangbangers, was it?’
Kasper shook his head as Toumi wheeled the gurney through to the autopsy room. The two detectives followed silently. It was never nice being inside the morgue. Dead or alive.
In the centre of the room, the stainless steel autopsy table shone clean and bright. Kasper took a sideways glance at the instrument table and began to feel less than comfortable. Bone saws, hammers, scalpel. Kasper suddenly jumped.
‘Jesus, man, that’s a fucking pair of garden secateurs!’
Toumi laughed. ‘Gardening equipment is cheaper than surgical stuff, often better too. The ribs can be a little tough.’
‘That’s not right,’ Kasper said and took out his shades. He put them on. He would be able to close his eyes if it got too much.
Toumi rolled the gurney beside the autopsy table and unzipped the body bag. ‘Seeing as you’re so quick on the case, I’m figuring this ain’t your average murder. What’s the situation? She been cut down by the new psychopath in town?’
‘That’s what we want you guys to tell us,’ said Kasper, watching intently as Toumi lifted and dropped the corpse’s feet on to the steel and then humped the upper body half on to the slab.
‘You got to roughhouse these babies,’ the diener said, yanking the torso across and letting it drop unceremoniously. ‘This one’s only a hundred twenty-two pounds. You should see how I get the obese ones on the slab. I played football in my younger days — you ever watched a linebacker sack a corpse?’
‘I imagine it ain’t like watching the salsa,’ said Harper.
The floor, like the dissection table, was sloped slightly towards a drain. A hose in the corner indicated how they did their cleaning. The whole room smelled of disinfectant. On the gurney, Jessica’s naked pale blue corpse glowed under the strong lamps.
Harper hadn’t seen a corpse on the slab for a while. He felt a stab of anger and breathed deeply. There was nothing more liable to make you question your belief in the soul than a lifeless, mutilated corpse.
Dr Laura Pense entered dressed like someone about to do a spot of riot control. She was wearing a plastic face shield, surgical scrubs and gloves. She’d worked with Manhattan North for five years, and knew the team well.
‘How you doing, guys? You want to watch some theatre? I understand this is an important one for you.’ She looked at the corpse. ‘Is this our American Devil? I’ve had three of his girls through here already. You get to know the work. You in a hurry?’
Harper nodded. ‘We’re pushed, yeah. I was just about to go see if there’s anything like this on ViCAP. I don’t know what to input: I’ve no idea how they died. Just wondered if you could give me a sense of what happened.’
‘I will in about four hours, Detective.’
‘We’ll be back in four, Laura, but if there’s anything you can tell us now, we’d appreciate it.’
Laura Pense turned and winked at them. ‘Let’s see what I can do.’ She looked at the corpse. ‘This is quite some overkill, I can tell you that.’ Toumi handed her the X-rays in an envelope. She opened them and flicked through them quickly. ‘Someone’s been tossing this body around like a rag doll. Jesus, that would take some strength.’
Harper looked down at the red-stained corpse of Jessica Pascal. Kasper was looking at the floor, his eyes concealed by his shades.
‘What happened?’ asked Laura.
‘A nice apartment in Yorkville out near the East River. The victim was left at the door, just like a cat leaves a dead bird. You can see what the killer did to her.’ Harper looked down at the woman again. Her face was blood- splattered, her body a strange livid purple with slits the colour of eggplant. What kind of monster could do this?
‘You think it was just one killer?’ asked Laura.
‘We aren’t making any assumptions.’
Deputy CME Laura Pense was sharp and to the point. She was a first-rate forensic pathologist and destined for any job she wanted in the city.
‘Right, ready for your four-minute autopsy?’
Laura turned on her Dictaphone, checked the microphone at her lapel, then read the tag on the corpse’s toe.
‘Dr Laura Pense, November 19, OCME, New York City. Body number CNZ14135. In attendance, Robert Toumi and Detectives Harper and Kasper from the NYPD Homicide. Initial inspection of the body.’
Laura did a quick once-over, took the plastic bags off the corpse’s hands and looked closely under the fingernails. She examined the scratches, and started to mark wounds.
‘This is going to take some unravelling, gentlemen. But she’s got upward of sixty stab wounds. Deep wounds on the right side of her neck. Breasts sliced upward through the pectoral muscle and removed. He must’ve used a variety of knives. Finger-shaped bruising on the cheek. Several lacerations to the heart area with shallow striations — slash marks. Several deep wounds to the abdomen. But the majority of the wounds are shallow. Teaser wounds. And a number of torture wounds crossing the veins. He was probably cutting her for a good while. She probably died from the neck wound, but he continued. He’s getting to enjoy time with these bodies.’
She leaned in and looked closely at the corpse’s arm, then looked up at both men. ‘There’s a print of his lips here and here. Looks like he was sipping at the wounds — or kissing them. We need to get Latent Prints down here.’ She examined the woman’s lower abdomen. ‘Open her legs for me, Robert. Foreign object inserted into the vagina. He’s been working down here too. Robert, get me the forceps. Okay. Okay. Yes, I think I know what this is.’
Laura attached the forceps to the end of the object and slowly pulled it out. Harper watched closely, his face impassive. Kasper’s eyes were shut tight.
‘Petals. It’s a flower of some kind,’ said the doctor and pulled the forceps out. She placed the bloody cherry blossom on the autopsy table.
‘That’s not nice,’ she said. ‘That’s no way to give a girl flowers.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
East Harlem
November 19, 2.13 p.m.
