“Whataya going to do? Corner him with a sucker punch? You know governors of state, you know they hate granting reprieves, even short ones. And look at what you've done with me. You've blown it with me.”
“How have I blown it with you?” he sounded genuinely surprised.
“Come on, Darwin. You've already prejudiced and compromised me, by-”
“-by informing you? That's all I've done.”
“You've told me your opinion and that you fully expect your opinion to be upheld by my findings. In forensics, that's putting the cart before the horse-conclusion made, now go prove it. Besides, you're lying about Hughes's level of interest in reviewing Towne's case.”
He pulled the car into an underground police crime lab facility that looked like a bank, nondescript with no indication it was FBI. Once in the lot, as he located a space and pulled into it, Darwin leaned heavily into his steering wheel and sighed. “Ail right. I'm sorry. You're right, of course, but I simply want you to review the facts and keep an open mind.”
“Who is Towne to you? Really?”
Reynolds lifted his gaze to her, his jaw set. “He's a black brother, and I'm a member of For Blacks Only. Look, Towne is just another in a long, long line of black men who've been shafted by the American judicial system.”
“Are you saying this is some sort of crusade, a cause?”
“It's as good a cause as any, Dr. Coran. An innocent life at stake.”
“And you're not clouded by the passion of the crusade?”
“Not in the least. All right… perhaps some… All the same, I'm right and Oregon is dead wrong.”
“And this guy Towne couldn't possibly be guilty? Couldn't possibly have done this to his wife, not even a chance he'd read about what happened to the Childe woman in Minnesota and-”
“I understand your skepticism, and I applaud it. Fact is, I want you to pit it all against the case files, and I am certain you'll see that Hughes and his state attorney's office are the guilty party here.”
“Towne could as well be proven guilty by my scrutiny, by DNA testing, Darwin. Are you ready to accept that possibility?”
“I am prepared for whatever verdict you decide, Dr. Coran. Will you review the material I've amassed?”
She sighed heavily now. “Tonight, I'll go over everything you want to share on the cases. But for the moment, I have an autopsy to get to.”
FOUR
Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.
The modest, claustrophobic changing area for female doctors at the Milwaukee FBI crime lab run by Dr. Ira Sands left little shoulder room between the lockers. As a result, Jessica had donned her surgical garb as quickly as possible to join Ira Sands out in the larger arena of autopsy room #1. There Joyce Olsen's now cleaned and stark white body lay awaiting her attention, lying not on its back as in any normal autopsy, but on its front atop a gleaming metal slab, built-in suction tubes running down either side, to carry away any loose or falling matter.
Overhead vents filled the room with a steady flow of humming air, clean and antiseptic, and another pair of vents worked equally hard to shoot air out in a constantly moving current.
She pushed through the double doors with sterile hands in gloves, mask in place, her eyes meeting those of Dr. Sands. In a corner of the room stood the tall, imposing Agent Reynolds. “Observing,” he announced. She nodded.
“Nothing new, really,” said Sands. “Darwin is often here… observing. He's a lifelong learner.”
“Shall we get to work then, Dr. Sands?”
“I have begun already with the preliminaries, and have examined the fingernails.”
“You mean with microscopic lens?”
“Exactly.”
“Anything?”
“Afraid there's no evidence of tissue under her nails.”
“None whatsoever?”
“No evidence of a struggle,” Sands replied. “Some material we could not readily identify is being analyzed now by our toxicology guy, Grant.”
“Grant?”
“Our go-to guy for toxins, yes.”
“Barring we find any toxins in her system, and given the nonfatal blow to the head, then Joyce Olsen expired of gross loss of blood-hemorrhagic shock,” Jessica stated for the recorder, to be transcribed later.
“A sure indicator she remained alive when he began his butchery,” added Sands, heavily sighing. “Hence the coloration around the wound itself.”
Under the bright lights of the lab, Jessica said, “A week to ten days she'd lain there in her own blood.”
Sands agreed, nodding. “It'd take at least that long for the larvae to be planted and to hatch.”
Jessica and Ira stared at the insect life phoenixing from the very womb of decay and death. “Kind of like new blades of grass wriggling amid the dead matted forest floor, wouldn't you say, Dr. Coran?”
“Almost a Hallmark card in there somewhere,” she replied. “But frankly, I hate the grubs.”
His eyes dimmed at once. She'd finally let him down. Then Sands groaned and winced with some internal pain.
“Are you all right, Dr. Sands?” “Old sciatica kicking up. Damn strange how the longest nerve in your body can be such an evil to you.”
“I am sorry to hear it. Do you have any medications, pain killers we can call for?”
“Any more and I will OD, no. Besides, they don't touch this thing* Nothing does.” Sands struggled on. “I'd say, from the position and angle of the wound over her left ear, that the killer hit her from behind,” he said.
“Yes, my guess is she turned her back on him, and she never saw it coming.”
“I agree. She was comfortable enough around him to turn her back on him.”
“And when she did, he brought the hammer down-one quick blow, so says the tattoo left behind,” Jessica said, directing a video camera to that area. “Blunt-force trauma from a rounded edge.”
“A ball peen hammer most likely.”
“The Claw in New York used a hammer to subdue his victims before he ripped them apart.”
“She was most likely unconscious when our killer ripped open her back, but the pain to the back, I suspect, would jolt anyone from an unconscious state. I fear our original diagnosis at the scene correct, Dr. Coran.”
“That she suffered greatly.”
“Most assuredly, she felt the great rent and tearing of flesh from her back, yes.”
Jessica nodded, her body rigid, braced. “Until hemorrhagic shock set in.”
“We can only pray for that small mercy,” replied Agent Reynolds, pacing before making his way to the exit, where he stopped and turned and filled the echoing room with his voice. “Creep did all that and had the presence of mind to strip away his clothes and destroy them, to use the mop to wipe out any tell-tale shoe or footprints, and to leave no trace of his DNA behind.”
“He's definitely an organized killer, one who thinks through his every move, planning for months at a time before striking,” replied Jessica, while her thoughts revisited the blood-painted, stiff and unyielding mop head. It, too, was being processed and analyzed for trace evidence.
“I gotta get outta here for now,” said Darwin. “Get some air. When you're finished here, Dr. Coran, I'll… I'd like to talk further.”
“When I get done here, I'm going to want to shower.”
“I'll see you get to your hotel. I'll be just outside.”
Jessica understood Darwin's need to get out. Back at the Olsen apartment, she herself had felt the walls
