'All right, ladies and gentlemen—' he peered over his bifocals at Frank—' and I only use the term
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Crocetti didn't mind women in law enforcement. In fact, he rather liked it, but he expected them to act like women. Frank was more like one of the guys, and this irritated the old man. He was cranky by nature, hence the nickname Crotchety, but he was getting crankier the closer he got to retirement.
As he swabbed the body, the coroner made introductions.
'Dr. Gail Lawless, Detective Noah Jantzen,' Noah extended his hand, 'and Lieutenant Franco.' Frank nodded curtly, not even looking at the woman she was being introduced to. Crocetti continued. 'Dr. Lawless is my hapless though far more attractive replacement.'
The old man swung his head from one woman to the next and remarked curiously, 'They certainly grow you girls tall these days. It must have been all that Wonder Bread.'
Frank glanced at the new ME. She was indeed tall, but flat and thin, like Modigliani's blue woman. Frank thought Bobby Taylor— one of her detectives who'd minored in art—would have been pleased with the analogy. Dr. Lawless had smiled wryly at Crocetti's comment, and Noah was grinning goofily. He had a thing for tall women. Frank could tell he was already smitten.
'Any idea what made the bruises?' Frank asked, all cool business and efficiency.
Bending intently over the body, Crocetti responded, 'Hasn't anyone ever told you, Lieutenant, that patience is a virtue?'
He poked and prodded for a moment, made a few comments to his colleague, then straightened, frowning sourly.
'It looks like this poor girl was mistaken for a bowling pin. There are so many bruises here it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins. You know,' he said toward the body, 'I have a granddaughter this age.'
A shake of his head chased the thought away, and he gruffly asked for details about the case. Noah told him what they had so far.
'Well,' the old man sighed, 'let's see what we can find here.'
Crocetti lowered his bald head over the table, enunciating carefully for the microphone.
'Victim appears to be a healthy teenage Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes, height—?'
'Sixty-four inches,' Handley responded loudly. Crocetti repeated the height and when he asked for the weight Jack called out, 'One hundred twenty-four pounds.'
'You don't have to scream,' complained the old man, then calmly continued.
'Victim has all her teeth, in good condition. No apparent scars, tattoos, or abnormalities. Right shoulder appears dislocated.'
Crocetti measured a cut on the left side of her chin and noted the associated hematoma.
He carefully examined the rest of the bruises, asking Dr. Lawless for her opinion. She outlined specific ones with a gloved finger, noting, 'The patterns appear more rounded than linear where the contusions don't overlap. The bruises are deep, but the absence of laceration suggests she was hit with something relatively flexible or soft. The varied discoloration suggests they were inflicted over time.'
'Do they look like they could be older than three days?'
'It's possible, but these are certainly consistent with that time frame...don't you think?' she asked Crocetti.
He was beaming at his replacement. 'I do indeed, my dear. Now tell me what else you see.'
'Well, there are slight adhesive traces on her wrists and ankles, along with a mild abrasion, and the skin's a little paler there, suggesting she was bound with some sort of tape.'
'Was she gagged?' Frank thought aloud.
Lawless bent closer to Agoura's face.
'Probably,' pointing to faint traces of adhesive around Agoura's mouth.
'This looks consistent with the other adhesives, and we'll see what we get back from the mouth swabs.'
'Well done,' Crocetti said, snapping his gloves off. Except for Noah, everyone waited patiently while Crocetti wrote down notes. Although he taped the autopsy proceedings he still insisted on hard copy. Frank appreciated his lack of faith in technology, even though it slowed the whole process. She looked around at four other steel gurneys, each being autopsied by one of Crocetti's staff. She knew there were plenty more bodies waiting in the cooler and was pleased the old man had gotten to Agoura as soon as he had.
'Were any of those blows enough to kill her?' Noah asked.
'I can't say for sure until I see inside,' answered the coroner without looking up. 'From the bloat on her abdomen it feels like we'll find a significant trauma of some sort.'
That told them nothing, and Noah continued his restless pacing, biting on a thumbnail. Pulling on new gloves, Crocetti turned and said, 'All right, Jack. Let's scrape the nails, and Dr. Lawless, if you would care to comb her hair out I will proceed with the rape test.'
The three whitecoats went efficiently about their tasks, wresting clues from the hidden holds of the victim's body. Frank watched Crocetti apply toluidine solution to the oral, anal, and vaginal areas, while Noah continued his pacing.
'I wonder if they've put Les in the game yet,' he said to Frank. 'We've been working on her dribble. I hope she keeps her head up like I showed her.'
He turned around when Crocetti murmured, 'There we go.'
The toluidine had showed up on the anal cavity, staining the entire area dark blue as it reacted to the polysaccharides on the abraded skin tissue. Frank found that curious. Whoever had this girl had plenty of time to rape her, in any way he wanted, yet curiously he'd only sodomized her.
With the external exam over, Crocetti was ready to cut the big coroner's
Crocetti's replacement said, 'Wow,' and as the old coroner cut away the chest plate he noted into the mike, 'Massive hemorrhage is apparent.'
The old man could probably do this with his eyes shut and one arm tied behind his back, yet he cautiously and daintily cut the thoracic organs from their moorings, another meticulous attention to detail that drove the detectives batty. After examining the right lung he put it in a weighing pan and instructed Dr. Lawless to explain what she saw. She rearranged the organ and studied it for a moment, then pointed at a tear.
'You can see where it's been punctured at the bottom here. The tissue is ripped, not cut, and the puncture doesn't extend more than,' she quickly grabbed a ruler, 'four centimeters.'
'What made it?' Noah asked, but Crocetti shook his head at him. He didn't want to commit to that yet, and Noah returned to his frustrated pacing. Chin in hand, Frank continued her impassive observation. When he was satisfied the young woman on the table hadn't been asphyxiated, Crocetti turned his attention to the abdominal cavity. He poked and prodded, then straightened, arching the stiffness out of his back.
'What do you see, doctor?'
Dr. Lawless quietly poked and prodded too, finally saying, 'There's considerable trauma to numerous organs, any of which could have been the cause of death.'
Pointing with a scalpel tip she traced the path of the injuries, starting with the grossly ruptured rectum. Perforations in the bladder and intestine followed the trajectory of perforations in the liver, stomach, and pancreas.
'Good,' Crocetti commented when she was done, then continued excising and measuring organs. Further inspection showed that the bruising continued well below the skin, involving numerous bones and organs as well. She'd been hit pretty hard, but the lack of lacerations suggested she may have had some type of padding between herself and the assailant's weapon. The doctors couldn't say what sort of weapon that might be.
With a flourish, as if he were asking her to dance, Crocetti asked his replacement if she'd like to finish the autopsy.
'Sure,' she said easily, and proceeded to excise the neck organs. Without flinching, Frank could watch the torso being slit and eviscerated, or see the skull-saw spray hot bone before the brain was lifted out with a last, small gasp, but cutting into the neck still made Frank glance down at her feet. When Dr. Lawless moved onto the
