though.'
'Asphyxiation,' said Art.
Dr. Peters looked up. 'Pardon?'
'Asphyxiation,' said Art, again. 'You think?'
'I shouldn't be betting a large amount,' said Dr. Peters. He began tugging at the bag on the closest victim. 'These aren't at all tight.'
The white bag was stiff, the way that polyethylene gets when it's really cold. It gave Dr. Peters a rough time for a few seconds, since it also appeared to be stuck to the victim's head by frozen blood. He finally tugged really hard, and as it came off, it suddenly revealed a black-haired male subject, approximately twenty-five or so, unshaven, teeth exposed in a grimace. It was sort of startling, and took us all a second or two to adjust.
There was a lot of clotted blood on the right side of the head, stiffly clumped in with the longish hair, and with a patch of frozen polyethylene adhering to the clumped strands. The right eyeball protruded a bit, with the left appearing sunken, at least in comparison. The complexion was sallow.
'Hmm,' said Dr. Peters.
'Blunt object?' asked Art.
'Not going to be your day,' said Dr. Peters, gently prodding the matted blood and hair. He tapped the protruding eyeball, producing a clicking sound. 'Frozen solid,' he said. He felt around to the other side of the head. 'I suspect a gunshot wound, I think I feel an exit here.' He leaned way over, supporting himself with one arm. 'Could someone shine a flashlight over here?'
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't necessary. Yeah? Good.' He handed the phone back to Art. 'Fuckin' attorneys, I tell ya…'
'These two gentlemen,' said Dr. Peters, 'are very thoroughly frozen. I suggest we leave them here until the lab team can see them, too. There's certainly no harm in that, as long as they get here fairly soon.'
'They should be here in a couple of hours,' said Art.
'That long,' said Dr. Peters, pulling off his gloves. 'Well, we have to defrost them before we can do much else… no matter. That'll take twenty-four to thirty-six hours.'
'Damn,' I said, pretty much to myself. 'That long?'
'Just about the same formula you'd use to thaw a frozen turkey before Thanksgiving.' He grinned. 'Don't worry, Carl,' he said. 'I'll X-ray the heads as soon as we get them to a machine. Most of the information you'll need right away should be available then.
'The heads should thaw a little quicker than the rest of them, as well,' he said.
'Freezing going to affect the tissues… the tests?' asked Lamar.
'Oh, sure. But not in an appreciable fashion. Burst cell walls won't prevent toxicology testing, for instance.' Dr. Peters smiled. He looked around. 'It's fairly obvious they weren't killed here. Any ideas?'
I told him what I'd seen in the house.
'Very good news,' said Dr. Peters. 'I'll need to take a look inside, then.' He glanced at me. 'The heat was on in there?'
'Yes.'
'Ah, excellent,' said Dr. Peters.
'Let's hurry up,' said Art, 'I'm freezing to death.'
'Next time,' said Lamar, dryly, 'maybe you could wear a real coat…'
We went into the house via the kitchen door, and were very careful not to disturb any evidence. If it had just been a burglary scene, nobody would have gone in again until the lab team got there. But it was important for the homicide investigators to see the scene in the least disturbed state possible. That outweighed the lab requirements.
I walked Dr. Peters through the path I'd taken in the house. He agreed that the carpet stain could well be a bloodstain that had been cleaned up. The hole in the wall he didn't want to speculate on, but the diameter looked about right for a.22 caliber round. The small dried puddle on top of the water cooler was, to the best of his knowledge, blood.
Dr. Peters had to leave, as he had to autopsy a questioned death victim in Manchester. He said that he'd do ours as soon as the bodies were warmed sufficiently.
'X rays first,' he said. 'And I'll be in touch with the lab team.'
We waited in the house for the mobile lab, who arrived about half an hour after Dr. Peters left. They'd made remarkable time.
We showed the lab team the area we were most interested in, and then did an initial inspection of the rest of the house, as a preliminary, and to make sure we weren't overlooking anything that could be of primary importance. We didn't find anything useful.
What we did find was a normal home, with two possible exceptions. First, there were two PCs in the back
