evidence.
Perkins came back into the room, his gloved fingers fumbling with the face shield, trying to attach it to his suit. With a heavy and theatrical sigh, Ellis darted around Casey to give Perkins a hand.
Casey paid no attention. He seemed to have dissociated himself from everyone in the room. When she reached across the body and handed the bags to Coop, the former profiler's cold blue eyes remained fixed on the body, studying it not with a sense of loss or revulsion but of opportunity.
Darby moved to the top of the table to begin her examination.
58
The body's swollen, decimated face was a mess of purple and red contusions and gnawed-off sections of flesh, some so deep she could see bone. She doubted an ordinary spider could do this kind of damage, but that screaming thing locked in the fish tank didn't seem like any run-of-the-mill arachnid. She was willing to bet its enormous finger-sized pincers could snap a stick in half.
She turned to Perkins, who stood anxiously by her side. He looked a little white in the face, his skin already beaded with sweat.
'Your first time seeing a dead body, Dr Perkins?'
He nodded, kept nodding.
'If you think you're going to be sick, either step outside or, if you don't think you can make it, use one of the trashcans.'
'And,' Coop added, 'don't forget to pull off your face shield. You don't want any blowback.'
Using her tweezers, she pointed to a section of gnawed flesh on the victim's face and said to Perkins: 'That Camel Spider, can it cause this kind of damage?'
'If the man was dead, then yes,' Perkins replied. 'They do have to eat.'
'Do these spiders generally attack people?'
'Camel Spiders? No. Oh no. That's a misconception. They're solitary, nocturnal creatures. They don't like direct light, as you can see by the way it's squirming and screaming inside the tank. They prefer darkness and shadows.'
'One of them jumped at me.'
'Well, yes, they can do that when they're trying to hide. They're not aggressive — or venomous. A Camel Spider could not have killed this man. Now this mark right here — ' Perkins leaned over the body and pointed a gloved finger at a black ulcerous blister oozing with pus. The wound covered most of the victim's right forearm. 'This is definitely a spider bite. Given the extensive tissue damage, the colour and size of the blister, I'd say this one is the culprit.'
From the shelf Perkins grabbed a specimen jar holding a furry brown spider with a body the size of a deck of playing cards. Its long, needle-like legs tapped against the glass. Darby noticed a violin-shaped mark on its cylindrical-shaped back.
'This is a Brown Recluse,' Perkins said. 'Very poisonous. It injects haemotoxin, which produces the distinctive wound you're seeing here on this man's arm. The ulcerous opening on the man's forearm occurs within twenty-four hours after the initial bite.'
Darby felt sweat gathering under her coveralls. 'Is the bite fatal?'
'A single bite? No.' Perkins, thankfully, placed the jar back on the shelf. 'The haemotoxin kills the cells and tissues at the bite and slowly spreads. That being said, the bite, if left untreated, can lead to fever and vomiting and, in rare cases, coma and death. That occurs within two or three days. Now, granted, I'm not a medical doctor, so I can't tell you when this man died. But I can tell you he was bitten multiple times by several different venomous spiders.'
Perkins traced a gloved finger above a series of red and purple welts of various sizes that started at the victim's shoulder and ran across his chest, legs and pubic area. One appeared to have bitten him on a testicle. It was black, swollen to the size of a grapefruit. She found several more bites on the soles of the man's feet.
Perkins said, 'Almost all of the spiders in these specimen jars are what you would classify as poisonous or deadly. I was surprised to find a pair of Tunnel Web Spiders — the Sydney species. Sydney as in Sydney, Australia. Their bite is extremely painful, and their venom carries atraxotoxin, which disrupts neurotransmitters. The victim experiences muscle twitching, severe nausea and vomiting.'
'Are they common in the US?'
'No, absolutely not.'
So someone smuggled them in here, she thought, and made a note on her clipboard for Sergey to check customs logs, see if anyone was caught trying to bring venomous spiders into the country.
'These spiders,' Perkins said, 'live in dry, hot climates. They wouldn't survive long in this cold.'
'In the house where I found them the heat had been cranked up to 95 degrees.'
'The one at the far end is a Black House Spider. Not toxic, but the bite causes deep pain and plenty of sweating and vomiting. Not only are those babies very quick on their feet, they're highly aggressive. If you disturb them, they go on the defensive. Dr Ellis, when you run your toxicology reports, I'm sure you'll find several different kinds of venom inside this man's system, as I said.'
'Enough to kill him?'
'Oh, yes, most definitely. And it would have been a horrible death. Once, while I was in El Salvador, I was bitten on the hand when trying to collect the Pink-Bellied Spider. Not only was the pain incredible, I couldn't stop vomiting — and this after I was administered an anti-toxin. Whoever did this used these lovely creatures to inflict an unbelievable amount of pain and suffering.'
Darby switched on her forensic light and, moving closer, started examining the face for trace evidence. The eyes had been eaten, and deep inside one of the hollow sockets of rotted and frozen meat she discovered a small black spider with a body the size of a pencil eraser.
She gripped it with the tweezers, watched the legs struggling in the air, seeking purchase. Coop had a jar ready. She dropped the spider in it, and after he closed the lid he handed the jar to Perkins.
'That's a Black Widow,' Perkins said. 'There could be more in the eye sockets, the ear and nasal cavities. They're tiny, as you can see, and they're very good at hiding. Be very careful if you find one — if you find any spider, for that matter. Dr Ellis placed the body in the refrigeration unit or whatever you call it, and I can tell you spiders don't care for the cold, puts them in an aggressive mood.'
'Excuse me.' Ellis's voice. 'I'd like to remind everyone here that I strenuously object to conducting this examination now, as we don't have the appropriate anti-venom on hand. Mr Casey assured me that vials are being collected and will be flown here and hand-delivered, courtesy of our federal tax dollars, so if one of you should happen to get bitten, the federal government will be assuming the liability. Do I have that right, Mr Casey?'
'You do.'
'Are you sure? Did I leave anything out?'
'Evidence that we collect will be sealed and given to a courier to be brought back to our lab.'
Darby thought of the man she'd seen standing next to the suitcase.
'Anything else?' Ellis prompted.
'Yes. Thank you, again, for assisting us.'
Casey's voice had that odd, detached tone again, as if he had departed his body and left someone else to pull the puppet strings.
Then, to Darby, he said: 'See the puncture wounds running along the sides of the back?'
'Yes.' Bright and red, they oozed blood.
'They cover the victim's entire back, legs and buttocks.'
Darby looked up and across the body. 'Any ideas?'
'No,' Casey said, 'but the puncture wounds all look the same, and there's… there's an order to them, as if he had been forced to sit on something sharp.'
