“How does it do all that?”
“Hormones. It secretes hundreds of regulatory hormones into the brain and bloodstream.”
“Yeah,” D’Agosta replied. He stepped back. The baseball soaring deep into center field, the center fielder dropping back, glove raised ...
“Fred come over here and look at this,” Ziewicz said sharply.
Fred bent over the pan. “It looks like ... Well, I don’t know ...”
“Come on, Fred,” Ziewicz coaxed.
“Well, it looks almost like—“ Fred paused. “Like a bite was taken out.”
“Exactly. Photographer!” Delbert rushed forward. [63] “Get this. Looks just like when one of my kids takes a bite out of a cake.”
D’Agosta leaned forward, but he could see nothing special in the gray, bloody mess.
“It’s semicircular, like a human’s, but it appears larger, more ragged than you’d expect. We’ll take sections. Let’s test for the presence of salivase enzymes, Fred, just in case. Take this to the lab, tell them to flashfreeze it and microsection here, here, and here. Five sections each. Stain at least one with eosinophil. Stain one with salivase activating enzyme. Anything else you or they can think of.”
As Fred left, Ziewicz continued. “I am now bisecting the cerebrum. The posterior lobe is bruised, consistent with removal from the cranium. Photograph. The surface shows three parallel lacerations or incisions, approximately four millimeters apart, about half an inch deep. I am parting the first incision. Photograph. Lieutenant, see how these lacerations start wide and then converge? What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” D’Agosta said, peering a little closer.
“Long fingernails, maybe? Sharpened fingernails? I mean, do we have a homicidal psychopath on our hands?”
Fred returned from the lab, and they continued working on the brain for what seemed an eternity to D’Agosta. Finally, Ziewicz told Fred to put it in the refrigerator.
“I will now examine the hands,” she spoke into the microphone. She removed a plastic bag from the right hand and carefully resealed it. Then she lifted the hand, rotated it, examined the fingernails. “There is foreign matter under the thumb, index, and ring fingers. Fred, three well slides.”
“He’s just a kid,” D’Agosta said. “You’d expect his fingernails to be dirty.”
“Perhaps, Lieutenant,” Ziewicz replied. She scraped [64] the material into small depressions in the slides, one finger at a time. “Fred, the stereozoom? I want to look at this.”
Ziewicz placed the slide on the stage, peered down, and adjusted the instrument.
“Normal fingernail dirt under the thumb, from the looks of it. Same with the others. Fred, full analysis, just in case.”
There was nothing of interest on the left hand.
“I will now,” Ziewicz continued, “examine the longitudinal trauma to the anterior portion of the body. Del, photographs, here, here, and here, and whatever else you think will show the wound best. Close-ups of the areas of penetration. It looks like the killer has done our Y-incision for us, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah,” D’Agosta said, swallowing hard.
There were a series of rapid flashes.
“Forceps,” Ziewicz continued. “Three ragged lacerations begin just above the left nipple in the greater pectoral, penetrating and eventually separating the muscle. I am opening and probing the first laceration at the point of entry. Clamp there, Fred.
“I am now probing the wound. There is unidentified foreign matter here. Fred, a glassine? It looks like clothing material, perhaps from the victim’s shirt. Photograph.”
The flash popped, and then she held up a small piece of what looked like bloody lint, dropping it into the glassine envelope. She continued probing in silence for a few moments.
“There is another piece of foreign material deep in the muscle, about four centimeters directly below the right nipple. It is lodged on a rib. It appears to be hard. Photograph. Stick a flag in there, Fred.”
She extracted it and held it up, a bloody lump poised at the end of the long forceps.
D’Agosta ventured forward. “What is it? Rinse it off, maybe, and see?”
[65] She glanced at him with a slight smile. “Fred, bring me a beaker of sterile water.”
As she dipped the object in and stirred, the water turned brownish red.
“Keep the water, we’ll see if there’s anything else in it,” she said, holding her find to the light.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said D’Agosta. “It’s a claw. A fucking claw.”
Ziewicz turned to her assistant. “That will be a charming snippet of monologue for our tape, won’t it, Fred?”
= 11 =
