'Someone strong or very angry or both,' said Lindsay. 'Both wounds. I'll get a package of pencils on the way back to the lab.'
'Two packages,' said Danny.
'Right,' agreed Lindsay.
Two different kinds of red pencil had been plunged into Alvin Havel. One, a normal #2 into his eye, the other an extra thick #4 into his neck.
She didn't have to say more on this issue. She would take the pencils, get a dead pig from the refrigerator and determine exactly how much pressure it had taken to plunge the pencils in as deeply as they had gone. The body density of a pig was remarkably close to that of a human.
'What else?' Danny asked, arms folded.
'Wound to the neck was first. That's what killed him. He was standing. The blow is straight across. If he were sitting, it would be downward. To strike straight across while he was sitting would mean the killer would have to be on his- '
'Or her- '
'Knees or squatting. Not much leverage and judging by the depth of the pencil, the blow was hard.'
'That it?' asked Danny, looking at the dead man.
'Blood splatter from the neck wound supports what I just said.'
'And the pencil in the eye?'
'Not as deep,' she said. 'We've got a puzzle with that wound. He was already dead when the eye trauma happened. No blood splatter. No beating heart.'
'Someone stabbed a dead man?' asked Danny.
'Maybe they didn't know he was dead?'
'Pencil plunged into his neck, eyes open. Hard to miss.'
'Puzzle,' Lindsay agreed. 'Two different attackers?'
'Maybe.'
'The killer had blood, lots of it, on him- '
'Or her.'
'Security tapes,' she said.
The security cameras in the Wallen School halls were not concealed, nor were they obvious. Their purpose was to let students know they were being watched at all times. Danny knew schools all over the city that had dummy cameras mounted on the walls. Real working ones were too expensive. Wallen School, however, would have the money to have working surveillance.
'None in this room,' said Lindsay.
'Teachers don't like them in the classrooms,' said Danny.
'Academic freedom,' she said.
'Something like that. We look at the tape, but first we talk to the teacher who discovered the body and the students who were in the class when Havel was killed. Maybe we get lucky and get a Perry Mason.'
A Perry Mason was a confession out of the blue by a distraught, angry or vindictive killer. Perry seldom relied on forensics. He counted on courtroom confessions and he was inevitably rewarded. No mess. Danny wondered what it would be like with no mess. He wouldn't like it. No challenge. He loved his job.
'We wish,' Lindsay said.
'He was a popular guy,' said Danny.
'Not with everyone,' said Lindsay.
4
DR. SID HAMMERBECK PURSED out his lower lip and looked over the top of his glasses at the corpse of Patricia Mycrant on the autopsy table. Mac stood at his side as the medical examiner probed with gloved hands and tools.
'Interesting,' he said, pausing to bite his lower lip.
'What?' asked Mac.
'Eleven discernible wounds and some vaginal damage so extensive that I'm not sure yet how many cuts and tears there are. Your killer was very angry or very crazy or both. Blade of the knife is three inches. Fold up. Carry it in a pocket. It's sharp. Very sharp. As sharp as one of my scalpels. The owner of this knife has treated it lovingly.'
Sid washed down the naked body with a stream of water from the hose next to the table.
There are generally three types of wounds caused by a knife: a beveled wound made by a blade entering the flesh at less than a right angle; a scrimmage wound caused by a twisting motion of the blade after it is in the flesh; and an oval-shaped wound made by a blade entering the flesh at a right angle. Patricia Mycrant's body bore all three types of wounds.
'What else can you tell me about the knife?' Mac asked.
'The blade nicked the pelvic bone three times,' said Hammerbeck. 'Punctured the spleen and liver. Impressions taken from the bones and organs should help identify the size and shape of the blade. I think I can give you enough to identify the specific knife from small indentations on the blade. Almost as good as a fingerprint.'
'You've got something else,' said Mac.
The ME looked down at the body and said, 'Residue in the wounds, not much, but enough. I've bagged and sealed it for you. What it is I do not know.'
Mac had already taken blood samples and the Starbucks cup to Jane Parsons in the DNA lab. The lab had been busy. It was always busy. The lab and the City of New York had resisted what so many other crime scene units across the country had done, sending their evidence to private labs. Time was a factor, but so was money.
Jane had promised to do the DNA testing as soon as possible and to run it through CODIS, the national DNA matching system, but first the DNA had to be extracted and analyzed. Television had created the illusion that testing could be done in a few hours or overnight. The truth was that even three days on a high-profile case was pushing the clock, depending on how many tests were scheduled and the availability of scientists. Mac also knew that it was possible, just possible and seldom done, to do a DNA test in as little as three or four hours. The use of a genetic analyzer had sped up the actual DNA test time.
But before the DNA is run through the analyzer, it has to be extracted by placing the evidence material in a vial and adding a chemical to separate the DNA from the surrounding material. Then the DNA is replicated so the scientist has more than one piece to test. The DNA is then placed into the genetic analyzer, which has ninety-six tiny wells into which scientists inject the DNA. The wells are in a rectangular block of plastic, twelve rows of eight wells. Positioned just above the wells is a row of needle-size capillaries. When the wells are filled, the scientist closes the machine and turns it on. The capillaries are then dipped into the first row of wells, where they draw up the DNA and send it into the machine. A laser light then picks out the different-size DNA particles as they pass by. The smaller pieces shoot by first, followed by the heavier, larger pieces. The result, an electropherogram, is recorded in a series of peaks, or alleles, which look like the readout on an electrocardiogram.
Jane had a lot of work to do before Mac could get any DNA results.
'Lunch in my office?' Jane had asked.
'If I can get away,' he said.
'Can I lure you with pastrami on a kaiser with mustard and a pickle? On me?'
'Who could resist,' he had said with a smile.
But now Mac watched Patricia Mycrant's blood wash away on the autopsy table in front of the medical examiner. Stubborn clots clung to the steel.
'Have you ever eaten Festivo Pollo Con Carne Dolce?' asked Sid.
Sid had been a successful chef for years after giving up his medical practice. No one, perhaps not even Dr. Sid Hammerbeck, knew why he had returned to medicine, why he had chosen to become a medical examiner.
'Can't say that I have,' said Mac.
