'What about the welts on the front of the torso?'
'Whip marks,' Casey said. 'Most of the wounds are pretty fresh, so this couldn't have been done too long ago. The marks along the wrists and ankles are consistent with restraints, probably leather. Whatever they did to him, they had him strapped down.'
Using the tweezers, Darby parted the hairs on the man's head. Her other hand held the forensic light. She moved it over the scalp, searching for evidence and, now, spiders. She immediately found a series of tiny welts.
'Spider bites,' Perkins said.
Darby kept searching, wondering if the spiders had been dumped on the victim to ensure immediate bites — or if he had simply been locked inside the closet with them crawling around in the dark. Both thoughts were equally disturbing.
Perkins seized the upper part of her arm, his gloved fingers digging into the meat of her bicep with a strength that surprised her.
'Stay still.'
She did, and out of the corner of her eye watched as Perkins's hand came back from underneath her right forearm, clutching a black spider the size of a matchbook. Squat, black and incredibly hairy, it squirmed in the air, its oversized fangs exposed.
'An Australian Recluse,' Perkins said, carrying it to a specimen jar. 'Very fast and very poisonous.'
Darby blinked the sweat away from her eyes and then quickly gathered herself. Coop stood across from her, on the other side of the table. She looked at him and said, 'We'll need close-ups of the wounds on the scalp.'
He nodded and grabbed the camera. She pointed to the first wound, which was a few inches beyond the hairline, then moved away to give him some room. It would take him a minute or two to set up the shot. She used the time to take a quick look around for any more stray creepy-crawlers.
There were none on the table — at least none that she could see. She checked behind the victim's head and, failing to find any, searched the ear canals with a new and brighter flashlight. Clean. Same with the man's nasal cavity. Nothing in there except a forest of fine black nasal hairs.
Now the mouth. Fortunately it hung open, frozen in place by rigor. She had to break the jaw to get a better look.
The victim's mouth, throat and the soft smooth pink cheek lining had multiple abrasions and contusions. She dipped her tweezers inside the mouth and prodded around the victim's tongue for stray spiders. She inserted her tweezers down the throat and hit something hard.
Coop said, 'What is it?'
'I don't know. Someone hand me the forceps.'
Ellis said, 'I should be the one who — '
'Sam, just give me the damn forceps.'
She needed a brighter light. She reached up and grabbed the plastic arm belonging to one of the autopsy lights. She turned it on and pivoted the circular dish with its intense, bright light near the face. It took her a moment to find the right angle to illuminate every inch inside the victim's mouth. Something was definitely lodged in the throat.
Ellis slapped the forceps against her waiting palm to make sure she knew he wasn't pleased at playing lab assistant. She caught the grin on Coop's face before turning her attention back to her work.
Grabbing the object was easy. The forceps had found purchase immediately, but dislodging the thing in question from the throat was another matter. Whatever it was, it had been shoved a good way down the victim's oesophagus. It took a few minutes of delicate, almost surgical manoeuvring before she could move the item into the intensely bright light. A USB drive and a small, severed finger, bound together with a red elastic hair-band.
59
The finger belonged to a woman. The long fingernail had chipped red polish on it.
Sarah Casey had worn the same red nail polish, the same red elastic hair-band, in the pictures tacked to the bedroom closet. The blood on her T-shirt had come from the severed finger and she hadn't been screaming in fear in those pictures; she had been screaming in pain.
Darby placed the finger and USB drive on the dish Coop had waiting.
'I want to get this printed,' the former profiler said, his voice trembling.
Coop said, 'I'll do it.'
Casey moved away from the table and she said to Coop, 'The second you're done printing that finger, put it on ice and then have one of the feds or Secret Service take it over to Mass General to give to Dr Izzo.'
'That the guy who fixed Dale Brown's finger?'
'That's him. Izzo managed to reattach it because we put it on ice.'
Coop darted away. Darby looked at Ellis and said, 'I need two buccal swabs, the ones with the brushes.'
'They're in the same place they always are,' he said, pointing across the room.
'I know. I need you to get them for me.'
Ellis gave another theatrical sigh as he moved to get the packets. He came back a moment later, ripped open one and handed her a long plastic rod with a tiny white scrub brush on the end. She stuck the brush inside the victim's mouth, scrubbed the frozen cheek lining, then removed it and placed the brush inside the sterile plastic cylinder Ellis had pinched between his fingers.
The first sample she could use for PCR-ready DNA identification. The second buccal swab she could save in case further DNA identification was needed.
The samples collected, she grabbed the kits she needed to collect fingernail scrapings. Ellis assisted without any further bitching and moaning. He had even got into the spirit of things by picking up Coop's clipboard and making notes.
Darby turned off the bright autopsy light. Switching to a forensic light with a green filter, she searched the victim's mouth for trace evidence, finding a small fibre — possibly a rug fibre, judging by its size and shape. She dropped it into the glassine envelope Ellis had waiting.
There was more. A single blond hair, which was sadly missing its DNA-packed root bulb. A black speck that could have been a piece of leather, stuck behind the back-right molar. She prised it out carefully with the tweezers.
Dr Ellis leaned over the body. 'Is that a bumblebee?'
'It's definitely a bee,' she said, 'but not an ordinary one.'
'And you know this how?'
'It doesn't have the usual yellow or red bands. The body is entirely black and the eyes are abnormally large. Dr Perkins, hand me one of those specimen jars on the shelf across from you… No, the next shelf, the bottom one. Thank you.'
She dropped the bee into a specimen jar, and then she ran her forensic light back and forth inside the victim's mouth, searching the crevices between the lip and gum line, and caught a faint glow from the corner of her eye.
Darby turned, blinking and moving the hand holding the flashlight. The glow had vanished.
Something was there. She had seen something on the soft lining behind the man's lip.
Darby moved away from the body, grabbed the UV forensic light and turned back to the victim's mouth, examining the smooth cavity between the teeth and cheek. Nothing glowed. She turned the light slowly, trying different angles and then different light sources. She had seen something, she knew she hadn't -
There, on the soft area behind the bottom lip, the labial sulcus: a bright fluorescent glowing shape now visible to the naked eye. She fumbled around for the best angle and distance, and then had to steady her head in order to see it fully:
