It isn't easy to tell. Her hair is matted with dried blood, her face swollen and deformed by contusions, cuts and smashed bones, the degree of tissue reaction to injuries consistent with her having survived for a while. Scarpetta touches an arm. The body is warm as in life. Rigor mortis hasn't begun, nor has livor mortis-or the settling of the blood due to gravity once circulation stops.
Dr. Lanier removes the thermometer, reads it and says, "Body temp's ninety-six."
"She's not been dead long at all," Scarpetta says. "Yet the condition of the blood in the living room, hallway and even some in here suggests the attack occurred hours ago."
"Probably the head injury is what got her, but it took a little while," Dr. Lanier says, gently palpating the back of the head. "Fractures. You get the back of your head smashed against a masonry plaster wall, and you're talking serious injuries."
Scarpetta isn't ready to comment on the cause of death, but she does agree that the victim suffered severe blunt-force trauma to her head. If the stab wounds cut or completely severed a major artery, such as the carotid, death would have occurred in minutes. This is unlikely-impossible, really-since it appears the woman survived for a while. Scarpetta sees no arterial spatter pattern. The woman may still have been barely alive when her boyfriend found her at 12:30 p.m. and was dead by the time the rescue squad arrived.
It is several minutes past 1:30 now.
The victim is dressed in pale blue satin pajamas, the bottoms intact, the top ripped open. Her belly, breasts, chest and neck are clustered with stab wounds that measure sixteen millimeters-or approximately three-quarters of an inch-with both ends blunt, one end slightly narrower than the other. Those injuries that are superficial indicate she wasn't stabbed with an ordinary knife. Almost in the center of those shallow wounds is an area of tissue bridging that indicates the weapon had some type of gap at the tip, or perhaps was a tool that had two stabbing surfaces, each of them a slightly different thickness and length.
"Now that's strange as hell," Dr. Lanier says, his head bent close to the body as he moves a magnifying lens over wounds. "Not any normal knife I've ever seen. How about you?" He looks at Scarpetta. No.
The wounds were made at various angles, some of them V- or Y-shaped due to twisting of the blade, which is common in stab injuries. Some wounds gape, others are button-hole-like slits, depending on whether the incisions are in line with the elastic fibers of the skin or cut across them.
Scarpetta's gloved fingers gently separate the margins of a wound. Again, she puzzles over the area of uncut skin stretching almost across the middle. She looks closely through a lens, trying to imagine what sort of weapon was used. Gently gathering the pajama top together, she lines up holes in the satin with wounds, trying to get some idea where the clothing was when the woman was stabbed. Three buttons are missing from the torn pajama top. Scarpetta spots them on the floor. Two buttons dangle by threads.
When she arranges the pajama top neatly over the chest, the way it would be were the victim standing, of course the holes don't line up with the stab wounds at all, and there are more holes in the satin than there are wounds. She counts thirty-eight holes and twenty-two wounds. Overkill, to say the least-overkill that is typical in lust murders, but also typical when the assailant and victim know each other.
"Anything?" Dr. Lanier asks her.
Scarpetta is still lining up holes and is getting somewhere. "It appears that her top was bunched up above her breasts when she was stabbed. See?" She moves up the top, which is so stained with blood, very little of the satin looks blue. "Some of the holes go through three layers of fabric. That's why there are more holes than wounds."
"So he shoved up her top before he stabbed her or while he was stabbing her? And then tore it open?"
"I'm not sure," Dr. Scarpetta replies. It's always so difficult to reconstruct, and a much more precise job will require uninterrupted hours under a good light in the morgue. "Let's turn her just a bit and check her back."
She and Dr. Lanier reach across the body and hold it by the left arm. They pull her over, but not all the way, and blood runs out of wounds. There are at least six stab wounds on her upper back and a long cut to the side of her neck.
"So she's running and he's stabbing. She's in front of him, at least at some point." It is Eric who deduces this as he and Nic return with several lamps and plug them in.
"Maybe," is all Scarpetta has to say about it.
"One smear on a wall in the hallway looks like she may have been pushed up or knocked up against it. About midway in the hallway. Maybe he shoved her against it and stabbed her in the back, and then she got away and ran in here," Nic proposes.
"Maybe," Scarpetta says again, and she and Dr. Lanier gently lower the body to the floor. "This much I can tell you: Her pajama top was in disarray when some of these stab wounds to her chest and belly were inflicted."
"The pushed-up top suggests a sexual motive," Eric says.
"This is a sexual murder with tremendous rage," Scarpetta replies. "Even if she wasn't raped."
"She might not have been." Dr. Lanier bends close to the body, collecting trace evidence with forceps. "Fibers," he comments. "Could be from the pajamas. Despite what people think, rape isn't always involved. Some of these bastards can't do it, can't get it up. Or they'd rather masturbate."
Scarpetta asks Nic, "She was your neighbor. You're sure this is Rebecca and not the other woman in the photographs? The two women are very similar in appearance."
"It's Rebecca. The other woman is her sister."
"Lives with her?" Dr. Lanier asks.
"No. Rebecca lived alone."
"For now, that will be a pending identification until we can be sure with dental records or some other means," Dr. Lanier remarks as Eric takes photographs, using a six-inch plastic ruler as a scale, arranging it next to whatever he shoots.
"I'll get on it." Nic stares without blinking at the dead woman's battered, bloody face, the eyes dully staring out from swollen lids. "We weren't friends at all, never socialized, but I saw her on the street, doing yardwork, walking her dog…"
"What dog?" Scarpetta looks sharply at her.
"She has a yellow lab, a puppy, maybe eight months old. I'm not sure, but he's not fully grown and was a Christmas present. I think from her boyfriend."
"Tell Detective Clark to make sure the police go out and look for her dog," Dr. Lanier says. "And while you're at it, tell him to make sure they send everybody they've got to keep this place secure. We're going to be here a while."
Dr. Lanier hands Scarpetta a packet of cotton-tipped swabs, a small bottle of sterile water and a sterile tube. She unscrews the caps of both the bottle and the tube. Dipping a swab in the sterile water, she swabs the breasts for saliva, the cotton tips turning red with blood. Swabs of her vagina, rectum, of every orifice can wait until the body's at the morgue. She begins to collect trace evidence.
"I'm going outside," Nic says.
"Someone needs to set up more lights in here," Dr. Laniers voice rises.
"Best I can do is bring in lamps, whatever else is around the house," Eric replies.
"That would help. Photograph them in situ before you move them, Eric, or some goddamn defense attorney will say the killer carried lamps into the bedroom…"
"A lot of hairs, dog hairs maybe, maybe from her dog…" Scarpetta is saying as she gently shakes forceps inside a transparent plastic evidence bag. "What? A yellow lab?"
Nic is gone.
"That's what she said. A yellow lab puppy," Dr. Lanier replies, the two of them alone with the body.
"The dog has to be found for a number of reasons, not the least is out of decency, to make sure the poor thing is all right," Scarpetta says. "But also for hair comparison. I can't be sure, but now I think I'm seeing quite a variety of animal hairs."