“ How can you be certain she was strangled more than once?” asked an interested Thorn, breaking into her thoughts, his beaked nose twitching. She frowned at first, then clicked the recording camera and audio back on before she began to explain. “Look closely here at the center of the wound. The way he did her, well, it’s certain that it was done with a direct, blunt force, and not as the result of a cord or rope about the neck. But there are two distinct circular marks as well, so he used a favored cord or rope during part of his party time-before he got to the larger, thicker rope that was the last to be tied about her neck. The wider strip, if you look closely, is actually newer, fresher than the smaller choking device used. In fact, the wider strip is the freshest mark on the entire body except for those cuts and slashes which were determined to be from the coral reef as her body drifted toward shore.”
“ We looked at those cuts carefully, yes,” agreed Powers, “and they didn’t fit the contours of any knife blade. They were all the doing of Mother Nature.”
“ I guess if there’s anything to be grateful for-and believe me, there’s not much here-it’s that this creep doesn’t get off on blood. Frankly, gentlemen, I’m sick to death of butchers who have some craving for mutilating dead bodies into unrecognizable cuts of meat.”
“ What’re you thinking?” asked Thorn. “You think this guy is some sort of gentleman killer who doesn’t want to destroy the beauty of the bodily form? If so, think again. He just lets the sea do his dirty work for him.”
Owen Powers snapped off his gloves and, nodding his agreement, added, “I think this bastard’s a momma’s boy, afraid of the sight of blood, afraid to get his hands really dirty. He probably vomits at the sight of blood. So he chokes and drowns them instead.”
“ You may be right, but I’m not so sure he doesn’t just prefer that their deaths be more lingering and painful. A single knife wound can send a victim into paralysis and shock and the fun’s over. I think this guy just likes to have long-lasting fun.” Jessica stared across at Thorn, who looked the picture of Buddy Holly minus the guitar, his studious air and overbite marking him as having been a sure whipping boy for bullies during his childhood. Powers, by comparison, was muscular and handsome, sporting a full beard and deep-set, penetrating eyes. He hadn’t totally ignored Jessica’s conjecture, although he pretended otherwise.
“ So, whoever this guy is, he likes to use his hands,” Powers now said.
“ Rather than a meat cleaver,” agreed Thorn, pushing his glasses back up on his nose with his rubbered fingers and looking away from the body, regaining his composure again.
Jessica pushed the swivel-arm magniscope out of her way and replied, “The bastard also likes rope, and plenty of it. He enjoys trussing up his victims. He likes to touch his victims, a hands-on kind of guy. And while he’s not particularly fond of blood, it’s only because it doesn’t excite his libido.”
A booming voice through a magnified electronic filter made them all jump. “Are you saying he gets off on this, sexually?” asked Dr. Andrew Coudriet from over her shoulder and above, looking down on the scene from a viewing tower where students usually gathered to watch an autopsy. He spoke through an intercom, and Jessica wondered just how eccentric the red-haired M.E. had become over the ensuing years since she’d last seen him lecturing on a stage at George Washington State University.
One thing was obvious-the world hadn’t been particularly kind to Coudriet. Besides the white-gray pallor of his skin and the thinned-out patch of red hair dusting his cranium, there was a decided limp and arthritic gait as he found the stairs and came toward her. She decided to answer the man. “What excites this bastard is the draining, the feel of death as it moves through his fingertips, as death washes over his chosen victim. In fact, he likes it so damned much that once is not enough for this SOB. He wants to feel her life drain from her once, twice, three times, maybe four before the night and the fun comes to an end. And I’ll tell you something else, Dr. Coudriet… gentlemen… this body’s been stashed in the water somehow for just about as long as this young woman has gone missing.”
“ So I gathered,” Coudriet replied, his amplified voice like that of God, his eyes daring her. “Makes you wonder where the cadaver has been all this time; you suppose our killer maintains a Davy Jones locker somewhere out there at sea?”
She’d wondered the same thing-how was this creep keeping the bodies from surfacing sooner?
Thorn muttered across at his male colleague, “I tried to tell you that, Owen.”
Powers bridled at this, as if the other man had slapped him with a pair of wet, heavy gloves, showing him up in front of a woman. “I’ve never worked with floaters before, Ted. So what do I know.”
“ There are ligature marks on each ankle where I surmise ankle weights were used, the marks having been caused by metal as you might see with handcuffs, but no such weights came in with the body-or any of the earlier bodies either, Dr. Coran,” the Miami M.E. stated.
“ And as for the ligature marks about the wrists?”
“ Well, I’m inclined to believe they’re due to rope and not metal as in cuffs.”
She hadn’t yet gotten to the marks on the ankles, but she took a cursory look and replied, “I must agree, Dr. Coudriet.”
“ Bravo!” pealed the booming voice of Dr. Coudriet. “But, still, the cuts from both the weights and the ropes are so deep, like knife wounds.” Coudriet pushed through the door now and entered the autopsy room, with Jessica wondering just how long he’d been standing overhead. The older man, sporting an Armani suit, continued speaking. “It’s as if the rope grew tighter and tighter around the skin over a period of days, weeks even. How do you account for that?”
“ Leather thongs,” she suggested. “Possibly…”
“ But you don’t think so?”
“ No more than you.” Coudriet moved closer, extending his hand to her, and they shook, with smiles all around. “Lotta pressure on those wrists and the neck, and a great deal of moisture buildup in those wounds, too. The single intact wrist was near severed as a result.”
“ Not unlike the neck,” concurred Jessica.
“ Well, it does sound as if we’re pretty much in agreement as to how this unfortunate young woman came to be in this state.”
“ We are,” she replied, liking Coudriet instantly.
“ So do you wish me to tell you, or will you tell me what we have here?”
“ I would like very much for you to tell me whatever suspicions you harbor about our killer, Dr. Coudriet. I think you’ve already heard my own theories.”Coudriet looked at each of his assistants in turn, took a deep breath and paced before her, saying, “They were all dragged.”
“ Dragged?” asked Powers.
“ Maliciously, through the water, at relatively high speeds,” Coudriet continued.
Jessica nodded her agreement, saying, “Frankly, Doctor, I was beginning to suspect as much.”
“ Wanted verification, did you? That’s quite understandable,” he said, nodding. “Intelligent, I daresay. It’s what I want, too.”
“ Thank you, Doctor.” She said it both for the compliment and for the implication that he wanted full cooperation and give-and-take to reign here. She just wasn’t certain she could trust him to actually carry through on such promises.
“ You realize that we’ve all heard about your exploits, Dr. Coran, especially with respect to one Mad Matthew Matisak, and your daring on Hawaii with the Kowona case, not to mention the heart-taker-in New Orleans, was it?” Now Coudriet went to the monitor and shut down the camera and audio.
“ Yes, well, thank you. I do my best, and I’m sure we can work together, Doctor. I have the utmost respect for your work. I’ve read every paper you’ve ever presented at the Forensics Institute for Medical Advancement and in the Medical Examiner’s Eye.”
The mention of the newsletter for the Medical Examiner’s International Association brought a smile to Andrew Coudriet’s broad, passionate lips, and well it should have. Only the top men in the field were published in the prestigious and eclectic newsletter. But the old M.E.’s smile was quickly extinguished and replaced with a grim frown when Jessica turned to Owen Powers and asked, “Dr. Powers, can you get a close-up shot of the wrist? Follow that up with a close-up of the severed wrist. I know we have some, but the lighting here is far superior to what we had in Islamorada.”