“Alex Rodriguez,” he said, shaking my hand, and nodding to Charlie Riggs and Pamela Metcalf. He looked just right for a detective, which is to say he looked like your average forty-two-year-old, middle-class man who sells power tools at Sears. His dark hair was beginning to thin at the crown. He was of average height, average weight, and average demeanor, except for his nose, which, he later told me, had been head-butted one direction by a drugged-out citizen and smashed the other way by his partner’s errant nightstick while quelling a domestic dispute.
“I’m glad you’re here, Dr. Metcalf,” Rodriguez said. “You too, Charlie. Lassiter, give Nick a minute. Then he’ll talk to you. Now…”
He left it hanging there, and we all turned toward a desk in a corner of the room where a young assistant medical examiner was still snapping his photos. The ME nodded toward Charlie but kept at his work. His pale hair was parted high on his head and clipped short on the sides, a style favored by the current crop of young professionals. In rebellion, I keep mine unfashionably long and shaggy, and when in the company of callow youth, I incessantly hum Joan Baez tunes. He wore a white lab coat with a name tag. He didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, but I figured, no matter what, he couldn’t kill the patient. His little kit was open, and he had lined up his sketch pads, gloves, sponges, plastic bags, thermometer, trowel, chalk, and tape recorder.
Charlie walked straight to the body. She wore a black silk camisole and nothing else.
She was sprawled-legs akimbo-in her chair at a desk.
Her head was jammed through a computer monitor. The keyboard was pulled open.
Maybe Charlie Riggs was used to homicide scenes. Maybe it was just another day at the office for him. But not for me. The aftermath of violence chilled me. I didn’t know this woman, didn’t even know her name. I had no sense of loss for a loved one. I would not miss a laugh I had never heard. But I knew someone-a mother, a lover, a friend-would cry out her name. And somewhere, I knew, was someone who didn’t cry for anyone or anything. Someone so foreign to me as to be unfathomable.
My life has been circumscribed by rules. I tried not to hit after the whistle, and I never lied to a judge, though I’ve been tempted to take a poke at one or two. But there are games people play without rules. The hard-eyed cops know the players, stare them down every day. Could I do that? At the moment, filled with a mixture of anger and dread, I didn’t know.
I looked at Pam Metcalf, who seemed to be studying me. “Of course it’s dreadful,” she said, “but scientifically, Mr. Lassiter, it’s quite fascinating, too.”
Charlie Riggs took control. He gently pulled the body back into the chair. “Lividity of the face and lips, engorgement and petechial hemorrhages in the conjunctivae.”
He examined her neck. “No sign of a ligature. Crescentic abrasions on the skin, most likely fingernail marks. Probable cause of death, hypoxia due to throttling.”
Charlie Riggs turned to the assistant ME. “Manual strangulation. Any evidence of sexual battery?”
“Nothing… visible,” he stammered. “No contusions or lacerations other than the head and neck injuries. I swabbed the genitalia. No visible semen. However, vaginal secretions are consistent with… uh… sexual activity in close proximity to death.”
“You’ll check the smear for spermatozoa, of course.”
“Yes, sir. I thought I’d use methylene blue.”
Charlie Riggs shook his head. “You’ll never distinguish sperm cells from artifacts with that stain. Try hematoxylin and eosin for better differentiation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What else, what other tests?”
“Well… I don’t know.”
“What if the fellow’s had a vasectomy, or he’s an alcoholic with cirrhosis? Won’t find any wagging tails there, eh?”
“In that event,” the young doctor recited, as if taking his oral exams, “acid phosphatase determination will reveal the presence of seminal fluid. If the man’s a secreter, we can identify A, B, or H blood types.”
“ Verus,” Charlie said, beaming, a professor whose student had finally caught on. “Be alert to every detail. Don’t believe that old saw Mortui non mordent- ”
“I never did,” I chimed in.
“‘Dead men carry no tales.’ Hah! They can tell us stories horribile dictu, horrible to relate, but essential to our understanding of their deaths.”
The young doctor was nodding his head vigorously.
“Now, what about odor?” Charlie Riggs asked.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Vaginal odor? It’s okay to take your sweet time with the lab tests, but you’ve got one chance to work up the crime scene. Just don’t forget to use the old schnoz.”
“Tell him about the time you opened a stomach and ID’ed the restaurant by smelling the beer in the barbecue sauce,” I prompted Charlie.
“Only one ribs joint in town had sauce like that,” Charlie said. “Wasn’t hard to figure where he had his last supper, then a waiter identified his dining companion, a hired killer.”
The assistant ME bit his lip, shot an embarrassed look toward Pam Metcalf, and sank to his knees. His head disappeared between two pale, slightly chubby thighs.
“Three-to-one the kid says he smells barbecue sauce,” Detective Rodriguez whispered to me. He had been in the department twenty years and had little time for rookies in any field.
A voice without a face came from the general vicinity of the corpse’s pudendum. “What smells should I be… uh… looking for?”
“Anything, son!” Charlie boomed. “The latex of a condom or a surgical glove, maybe soap, talcum, or a douche scented with lily of the valley, even a man’s distinctive cologne. Some men splash it on their privates, you know. Maybe we find a guy who’s crazy for Aqua Velva.”
“Or Listerine,” Rodriguez suggested, “depending on his proclivities.”
There was the sound of a bloodhound sniffing, then the assistant ME picked himself up, looked sheepishly toward Charlie, and said, “Sorry, sir, but… it’s just plain pussy to me.”
“Oh, never mind. You’ll want to do a complete autopsy, of course. Take a good look at the neck. I’d advise elevating the shoulders, eviscerate the body, and remove the brain. If you want a dry field, don’t dissect the neck until the blood has stopped draining. Don’t let the homicide detectives rush you. Take your time.”
The kiddie coroner nodded, then piped up, “I’d say the assailant was right-handed, Dr. Riggs.”
From behind me I heard a snicker. “ Fantastico,” Detective Rodriguez said. “I’ll put out a BOLO for all right- handed guys.”
Doc Riggs was more diplomatic. “And how do you reach that conclusion, Doctor…?”
Charlie squinted at the name tag.
“Whitson,” the alleged doctor proclaimed. “Well, there’s a single abrasion on the right side of the neck and four on the left. So the assailant’s right thumb would have made the single abrasion, the fingers of his right hand the rest.”
“Assuming she was strangled from the front,” Charlie added politely.
“I thought of that, sir. You can tell from the concavity of the crescents that the strangulation occurred from the front.”
Charlie made a little tsk-tsking sound. He didn’t want to lecture the lad in front of spectators, but he had no choice. He examined the neck. “All I can tell is that the nail on the ring finger is jagged. In a couple of days, it will grow back, so the information is of very little use. As for the crescent, the direction of the concavity can be misleading. The crescent will be reversed, as often as not. Here, I’ll show you. Jake, roll up your sleeve.”
“Why me?” I protested. “I haven’t forgotten your electrocution experiment.”
“It was only two hundredths of an amp, Jake, and I turned it off as soon as you went into muscular paralysis. Now be a good scout.”
Everyone was watching, so the good scout rolled up his sleeve. Charlie looked around and spotted Pamela Metcalf, who was intently studying titles of the shelved books in the small apartment.
“Pamela, perhaps you can inflict some pain on Jake for a moment,” Charlie wondered cheerfully.
“Gladly,” she chimed in. She placed a cool hand on my forearm and dug five fingernails deep into my
