“You don’t have to do this,” he reminded her, as if sensing her doubts.
“Yes, I do,” she said. He shook his head, but he led her inside.
For some reason, she had expected more ceremony around the viewing of a body. The unidentified dead were kept in a basement room, their bodies lying on tables and covered with sheets. The place reeked of chemicals and death. She fought an urge to put her handkerchief over her nose. She didn’t want to betray any weakness before Malloy.
The attendant was a scrawny young man with a pockmarked face who acted annoyed at being disturbed.
“This is the one,” he said, leading them to one of the tables after consulting his list. “Came in this morning.” Sarah followed him and stood beside the table holding the shrouded body he’d indicated. He went to the other side of the table and casually drew back the sheet, revealing the dead woman’s face and bare shoulders. They had already removed her clothing, the last indignity of death.
Someone had closed her eyes, but no one would imagine she slept. Her skin was blue, her lips almost purple. Still, Sarah recognized her instantly, and the sadness was like a weight in her chest. “It’s Emilia,” she informed Malloy who stood off a ways, waiting for her verdict. “How did she die?” she asked the attendant.
He shrugged.
“Her cheek is all red. Did someone beat her?” she asked.
“No, that’s from the blood,” he explained importantly. “She was laying on her face when they found her. The blood settles to the lowest point.” Sarah looked more closely and realized he was right.
“She’s blue,” she told Malloy this time. “That means she must have suffocated.”
“Coroner says not,” the attendant said, now with an air of superiority. “Her eyes ain’t bloodshot, like she would be if somebody smothered her.”
To the attendant’s surprise, Sarah reached out and raised the dead girl’s eyelid. He was right. Then she leaned closer, examining the girl’s neck for signs she was choked. “There aren’t any bruises on her throat, either.”
“What are you, lady, some kind of doctor?” the attendant asked, giving Malloy a questioning glance.
“I’m a trained nurse,” she informed him. A nurse who had seen death many times and witnessed dying far too often. She turned to Malloy. “What does the coroner think killed her?”
“He don’t know,” the attendant replied, obviously taking great pleasure in knowing more than either of them. “There ain’t a mark on her anyplace.”
“Well, something made her stop breathing against her will,” Sarah said impatiently. “Maybe she was poisoned.”
“You know of a poison makes people stop breathing like that?” he replied in challenge.
Sarah supposed there could be, but she wasn’t exactly an expert on poisons. She turned to Malloy, who was looking even more annoyed than he had before. “Could I examine her myself? Maybe I can find something they missed.”
“They ain’t done an autopsy yet,” the attendant said with a small smirk, “but if you think you can save ’em the trouble, go ahead.” With a flick of his wrist, he jerked the sheet off the body, leaving the poor girl lying there naked and completely exposed.
“You ghoul!” Sarah shouted in outrage, but Malloy was faster. He slammed the attendant against the wall.
“You jackass!” Malloy was saying, his forearm pressed against the fellow’s throat in a very threatening way. “Haynes will hear about this. Now get out of here, before I put you on one of these slabs.”
The attendant had undergone a complete transformation. Stricken with terror over what Malloy might do to him, he’d suddenly found his manners. “I… I’m sorry, ma’am,” he stammered when Malloy released him and gave him a shove toward the door. “I didn’t mean no harm. Please don’t say nothing to Doc Haynes,” he added as he backed out of the room.
Sarah was too busy gathering up the sheet and spreading it over Emilia again to respond. Malloy made a move, as if to go after the fellow, and he scampered away, slamming the door behind him.
“I’m sorry for that,” Malloy said when he was gone. “This kind of work… Well, the best people don’t choose a job like this.”
Sarah could imagine. “This poor girl had little enough dignity in life. I hate the thought of that… that creature looking at her now.”
“He won’t be looking at anything around here anymore. I’ll see to that.”
She looked up from arranging the sheet and gave Malloy a grateful smile. “Do you think it would be all right if I examined her?”
“You don’t have to. Haynes will be doing an autopsy, like that idiot said. He’ll figure it out.”
Sarah sighed. “It’s just… I feel responsible somehow.”
“Because she was wearing your clothes?” he asked with a frown.
“I don’t know why. I just do. Please, I’ll only need a minute.”
He sighed in resignation. “Take as long as you need.” He walked to the other side of the room and sat down in the attendant’s chair. She noticed he carefully turned his back, giving the girl some privacy even in death, and she smiled at his consideration.
Without really knowing what she was doing, Sarah carefully examined every inch of Emilia’s body. Except for more of the red marks on her arm and hip and knee, from where the blood had pooled when she’d been lying dead in the park, she found nothing unusual. Covering her with the sheet again, she called, “Malloy, could you help me turn her over?”
He wasn’t happy about it, but he did, lifting the slight girl as if she’d been a straw dummy and placing her gently on her stomach. “You’re wasting your time,” he said as she pulled the sheet down to check the skin of the girl’s back. “Haynes will probably find out she had some disease and just picked this morning to drop dead.”
“She didn’t look sick when I saw her,” Sarah argued.
The girl’s hair had come undone and was in a hopeless tangle around her shoulders, bits of dead leaves clinging to it. From this angle, Sarah realized with a start why Malloy had thought Sarah’s was the dead body lying in the park. Emilia’s hair was almost the same color as hers.
A wave of pity washed over her, bringing tears to her eyes. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to change things so that Emilia would still be alive, a young girl full of hope, perhaps for the first time in her life.
Tenderly, she touched the tangle of golden hair in a feeble attempt to smooth it. She found a stray hairpin and pulled it out. As if of their own accord, her fingers began searching for others, combing through the silken locks and pulling out the bits of leaf and dead grass, the way she would have if it had been her own hair.
When she’d done what she could, she twisted the mass back into the semblance of a bun and began securing it with the pins she’d salvaged. She didn’t realize she was crying until a tear dropped onto Emilia’s shoulder, but she didn’t bother to wipe her eyes until she’d finished with her futile task.
Only when Emilia’s hair was tidy again – or as tidy as it could be under the circumstances, did Sarah reach for the handkerchief that all well-bred ladies carried tucked into their sleeves. Emilia’s image blurred, but Sarah resolutely blotted away her tears, until she could see the girl clearly again.
“You can leave her for Dr. Haynes now,” Malloy said quietly, gently. She couldn’t remember ever hearing that tone in his voice. She wanted to look up and see the expression on his face, but something else had caught her attention.
“What’s that?” she asked of no one in particular, leaning down to peer more closely at the hollow on the back of the girl’s neck that was now exposed.
“What’s what?” Malloy asked, but she didn’t answer. She was tracing the small mark with her finger.
“Look, there’s a little dried blood here,” she said, pointing at a spot just at the base of the girl’s skull, where her hair almost hid it.
Malloy examined the spot she’d found. He wasn’t impressed. “You don’t die from a scratch on the neck.”
“It’s more than a scratch,” she insisted. “It looks as if someone stuck something in there. See, the skin closed over it because the wound is so small.”
He looked again. “Could a wound like that kill someone?”
Sarah tried to remember her anatomy classes, and what she remembered alarmed her. “The brain is just inches from this spot. If the knife or whatever it was went straight in, it would sever the spinal cord. If it went upward at an angle, it would plunge right into the brain.”
Malloy still wasn’t convinced. “I thought you said she suffocated.”
“I said she stopped breathing against her will. We don’t know much about how the brain works, but we do
