water in the lungs, or you might not. In freezing, you might find cherry-red lividity, petechiae in the peripheral muscles, abrasions of the skin, or you might not.”
“And in Jillian?”
“Nothing. The only unusual thing about her body was a kind of weird smell to the organs. But I could have been imagining that for all I know, so unremarkable was her autopsy. Meanwhile, I’m having tox check for amylase in the vitreous humor and elevated levels of catecholamines. That might tell us something.”
“It might tell
“Those are chemical indications of hypothermia. Sometimes. Did she have a white residue around her nose and mouth when you found her? Maybe it looked like she’d eaten a mouthful of snow?”
“No. Though the temperature had warmed up some.”
“But it never went above freezing all week. I checked. Most victims will have a white rime on their faces; their respiration freezes once outside the body.”
The significance of that flooded Theresa’s brain, expanding the set of possibilities. “So she wasn’t breathing as she sat in the cold? She didn’t freeze to death?”
“I don’t know. All these indications might be present, might not be. They don’t prove or disprove either way. Human bodies vary a lot in their responses; no matter how science advances, there’s still so much that we don’t know. That’s why if you’re going to bring me victims, give me a good shooting or stabbing any day. I know what to do with that.” She stroked the twelve-inch blade of a large knife serving as a paperweight.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Supposedly she walked to this spot by the lake?”
“We found her car in the garage.”
“Two or three miles away?”
All this talk of cold made Theresa feel overwarm. “Depending on the route she took. That’s not very far, really, I jog two miles every day.”
“Ever try it in six-degree weather with no hat or gloves?”
“No.”
“Want to know what your extremities would look like if you did?”
“Something tells me I don’t.”
“I did my residency at Metro. I had a rotation on Christmas Eve-”
“Bummer,” Theresa interjected without thinking, knowing how important holidays were to someone from a big, close-knit family.
“Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. You can’t get much lower on the department totem pole than that. Anyway, this mother and her teenage daughter came in with frostbite to their hands and the tips of their noses. They had decided to make an after-dinner convenience store run in nearly zero-degree weather without gloves. Now their situation was worse-the walk was nearly two miles each way, and the freezing, then thawing when they reached the store, then freezing again on the way back, then thawing when they got home and tried to help themselves by putting their hands in warm water, definitely aggravated the situation. But their hands were blackened and the skin shrunk against the fingers. It looked as if they’d held their hands in a campfire.”
“Ew.”
“I’d been working on accident victims and homicides for three months, and it still made me want to throw up. Now here we have Jillian Perry. Perhaps she had five or six more degrees of temperature in her favor, but still. They lost fingers and toes. Her skin is unblemished.”
Theresa agreed. She had examined Jillian’s hands and face thoroughly, and seen nothing like the damage Christine described. “So you’re thinking she was already dead, and someone placed her body in the woods?”
Christine picked up the knife, wiggling it toward Theresa in a vague gesture. “Same problem. What did she die of? There are no obvious signs of hypothermia, but there are no obvious signs of anything else either. No violence. No needle marks. No pulmonary emboli or even congestion. I even looked for birefringent crystals. I had to drag the polarizing microscope out from behind Banachek’s filing cabinet.”
“You could have used mine.”
“I’ll remember that next time.”
“So she didn’t OD.”
“I don’t know yet. I’m having tox run the blood and gastric again for lower levels of narcotics, something that might have gently slowed her down until she simply stopped breathing. Was she taking anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“You went to her house, right?”
“To collect for DNA comparison only.” Theresa tried to stamp the defensive tone out of her voice. “Frank checked the kitchen and I checked the bathroom medicine cabinet. Nothing but the usual household stuff.”
“The bedroom was clear?”
“I don’t know,” Theresa said again, kicking herself. Searching a victim’s, or potential victim’s, area for drugs was standard procedure. Even if the items were perfectly legal, the information would be needed for a clear picture of the death. And a cursory search did not always suffice. Theresa had once found a twenty-one-year-old’s heroin kit neatly packed into an innocent-looking sewing kit and left in plain sight on her closet shelf. She had stumbled on it only because she had grown bored waiting for the body snatchers and had nothing else to do but poke around. Jillian Perry could have had a pharmacy in her nightstand for all Theresa knew.
“Well,” Christine comforted, “it’s hard to take enough narcotics to kill yourself without it showing.”
“What if it were a combination of the two? She took enough narcotic, say sleeping pills or something, to depress her bodily functions, but then the cold finished her off? There wouldn’t be any white residue because her breathing became shallow, with no signs of OD because she didn’t take enough drugs.”
“That leaves us in the same boat. There are no definite indications of either hypothermia or overdose, and even working together they’d leave some trace. Something had to have killed her.” She emphasized this last point with the tip of the large knife.
“Would you mind not pointing that thing at me?”
Christine glanced at the knife in her hands as if she didn’t recognize it, then tossed it into the box with a clatter. “So that’s what bothers me. What bothers you?”
Theresa collected her thoughts, and summarized: “This woman had a really weird life. Lived in a factory, worked as an escort, still best friends with a wannabe boyfriend, never touched her daughter’s huge trust fund. The new husband has a motive and an attitude. I can’t help feeling there’s more to the story even though there’s plenty to the story already. Call it a hunch.”
“You don’t get hunches.”
“Maybe it’s time to start.”
The doctor smiled for the first time since Theresa entered the room. “I’ll admit, it’s nice to see something pique your interest. That hasn’t happened in a while.”
Not since Paul died. Theresa knew the other woman spoke the absolute truth, but still resented it. “I’ve been negligent?”
“You’ve been depressed.”
“No, I haven’t.” Theresa stood, smoothing her lab coat down. “I know depressed, and this isn’t it.”
“Grieving, then.”
“Let me know if you find anything further in the Perry case.” She turned to go.
“Theresa.”
She stopped. Ridiculous, since Christine was a good dozen years younger than she was, but doctors were taught that voice-of-authority trick in med school. They were also taught that look, the one that could tell you hadn’t slept a night through, truly enjoyed a meal, been able to concentrate on a movie, or exfoliated your skin in nine months and still cried at every stupid, sentimental thing you saw, from greeting card commercials to a perfect autumn day.
“How are you doing?”
She’d come to dread that question during the past months. Every time, it felt as if she’d never been asked such a question before, one so strange and difficult. She gave the answer she always gave, also strange and difficult because it was a lie and lying didn’t come easily to her. “I’m fine.”
“I saw that hostage-negotiator guy here earlier. Is he still calling you?”
