Predators were drawn to the blood in organ meat and muscle. There wasn’t a lot of reward in the axilla. The nerves, veins and arteries of the brachial plexus extend from the spinal cord, through the neck, over the first rib and into the armpit. There were more complicated ways to describe the structures, but basically, the brachial plexus controlled the muscles of the arms. The various strands were distinguishable by their color. Veins and arteries were red. Nerves were pearly white to yellow.
Under the magnifying glass, Sara could see that the veins and arteries had been ripped open by teeth drawn to the blood.
By contrast, the nerves looked as if they had been cleanly sliced by a blade.
“Sara?” Amanda was finally looking up from her phone.
Sara shook her head, asking Ingle, “What about the scrape on her back?”
“The wound?”
“You called it a scrape in your notes.”
“Wound. Cut,” he said. “I guess she scratched the back of her neck on something? Perhaps a rock? The clothes weren’t torn, but I’ve seen it happen. Basic friction.”
He was using wound, cut and scratch interchangeably, which was like saying a dog was a chicken was an apple. Sara asked, “Can we turn her onto her side?”
Ingle replaced the plastic over the abdomen before rolling the shoulders. Sara rotated the hips and legs. She used the narrow beam of the penlight to examine the woman’s back. Livor mortis blackened the area like a bruise slashing down the spine. The skin had stretched and cracked from decomposition.
Sara counted the cervical vertebrae down from the base of the skull. She remembered a mnemonic from medical school—
C 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive.
The phrenic nerve, which controls the rise and fall of the diaphragm, branches off from spinal nerves at the third, fourth and fifth cervical vertebra. When assessing spinal cord injuries, if those nerves are left intact, then the patient did not need a ventilator. Any damage below C5 would paralyze the legs. Damage above C5 would paralyze the legs and the arms, but it would also cut off the ability of the patient to breathe on her own.
Sara found the injury from Ingle’s notes directly below C5.
The scrape, because the skin had been scraped, was roughly the size of a thumbnail, deeper at one end, trailing off like a comet at the other. She understood why Ingle had dismissed the mark. It looked like the sort of accidental injury that happened all of the time. You rubbed your neck against something sharp. You scratched an itch a little too deeply. There would be pain, but not much. Later on, you would ask your husband or wife to look at it because you had no idea why your neck was hurting.
But there was more to this particular injury than an itch. The scrape was clearly meant to obscure a wound. And not just a wound, but a puncture. The circumference of the hole was roughly a quarter the size of a drinking straw. Sara immediately thought of the awl in a Swiss army knife. The round, pointed tool was ideal for punching holes in leather. Her father used a similar device called a counterpunch to sink the heads of nails in fine carpentry work.
When Sara pressed against the puncture, a watery, dark brown liquid wept out.
Ingle asked, “Is that fat?”
“Fat would be more rubbery and white. This is cerebrospinal fluid,” Sara said. “If I’m right, the killer used a metal tool to rupture her spinal cord. He sliced the nerves of the brachial plexus to immobilize the arms.”
“Hold on a minute.” The practiced calm had left Ingle’s tone. “Why would anybody wanna paralyze this poor little girl?”
Sara knew exactly why, because she had seen this kind of damage before. “So she couldn’t fight back while he raped her.”
Grant County—Tuesday
5
Jeffrey walked down the main college drive toward the front gates. Rain blew sideways under his umbrella. The sky had broken open while he was in the dean’s office receiving a lecture on optics. Kevin Blake was a walking encyclopedia of corporate double-speak, whether he was taking a 10,000-foot view, steering the ship, thinking outside the box, or advocating a holistic approach.
Translated into English, the dean wanted to release a rah-rah, go-team statement about moving past the tragic accident in the woods and helping the student body embark on a healing journey. Jeffrey had made it clear that he wasn’t yet prepared to make that journey. He had asked for the week. Blake had given him until the end of the day. There was not much else to say after that. Jeffrey’s choices were limited. He could walk in the rain to cool down or he could throw Blake out the window.
Walking had narrowly won out, despite the deluge that had started pouring down while they were back in the woods waiting for the ambulance. Now, Jeffrey was halfway to the gates and his socks were already soaked through. The heavy police-issue umbrella was wearing a divot into his shoulder. He gripped tight to the handle. Four hours had passed since that moment in the woods, and his hands still could not shake the jarring memory of bone breaking inside the girl’s chest. Jeffrey wasn’t used to taking orders, but everything Sara had told him to do, everything they had done together, had saved a life.
Whether that lifespan was counted down in hours, days or decades remained to be seen.
The girl’s name was Rebecca “Beckey” Caterino. She was nineteen years old. She was the single child of a widowed father. She was majoring in Environmental Chemistry. She might never wake up from surgery after what was to all appearances a tragic accident.
The accident part was the source of Jeffrey’s disagreement with Blake. No matter Sara’s SLFs, TBIs or BLTs, Jeffrey wasn’t
