“But what about the pipe?”
“Maybe it was too restrictive. Maybe she panicked.” Sara paused. “This is why I don’t like giving an opinion without all the facts. There could be an underlying cause, something to do with her heart. She could be diabetic. She could be anything. I just won’t know until I get her on the table- and then I might not know for certain until all the tests are back, and I might not even know then.”
Jeffrey seemed to be considering the options. “You think she panicked?”
“I know I would.”
“She had the flashlight,” he pointed out. “The batteries were working.”
“That’s a small consolation.”
“I want to get a good photo of her to send out once she’s cleaned up. There has to be someone looking for her.”
“She had provisions. I can’t imagine whoever put her in there was planning on leaving her indefinitely.”
“I called Nick,” he said, referring to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s local field agent. “He’s going into the office to see if he can pull up any matches on the computer. This could be some kind of kidnapping for ransom.”
For some reason, this made Sara feel better than thinking the girl had been snatched from her home for more sadistic purposes.
He said, “ Lena should be at the morgue within the hour.”
“You want me to call you when she gets here?”
“No,” he said. “We’re losing daylight. I’ll head over as soon as we secure the scene.” He hesitated, like there was more he wanted to say.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
“She’s just a kid.”
“I know.”
He cleared his throat. “Someone’s looking for her, Sara. We need to find out who she is.”
“We will.”
He paused again before saying, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She gently placed the receiver back in the cradle, Jeffrey’s words echoing in her mind. A little over a year ago, he had been forced to shoot a young girl in the line of duty. Sara had been there, had watched the scene play out like a nightmare, and she knew that Jeffrey had not had a choice, just like she knew that he would never forgive himself for his part in the girl’s death.
Sara walked over to the filing cabinet against the wall, gathering paperwork for the autopsy. Though the cause of death was probably asphyxiation, central blood and urine would have to be collected, labeled and sent to the state lab, where it would languish until the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s overburdened staff could get to it. Tissue would have to be processed and stored in the morgue for at least three years. Trace evidence would have to be collected, dated and sealed into paper bags. Depending on what Sara found, a rape kit might have to be performed: fingernails scraped and clipped, vagina, anus and mouth swabbed, DNA collected for processing. Organs would be weighed, arms and legs measured. Hair color, eye color, birthmarks, age, race, gender, number of teeth, scars, bruises, anatomical abnormalities- all of these would be noted on the appropriate form. In the next few hours, Sara would be able to tell Jeffrey everything there was to know about the girl except for the one thing that really mattered to him: her name.
Sara opened her logbook to assign a case number. To the coroner’s office, she would be #8472. Presently, there were only two cases of unidentified bodies found in Grant County, so the police would refer to her as Jane Doe number three. Sara felt an overwhelming sadness as she wrote this title in the log. Until a family member was found, the victim would simply be a series of numbers.
Sara pulled out another stack of forms, thumbing through them until she found the US Standard Certificate of Death. By law, Sara had forty-eight hours to submit a death certificate for the girl. The process of changing the victim from a person into a numerical sequence would be amplified at each step. After the autopsy, Sara would find the corresponding code that signified mode of death and put it in the correct box on the form. The form would be sent to the National Center for Health Statistics, which would in turn report the death to the World Health Organization. There, the girl would be catalogued and analyzed, given more codes, more numbers, which would be assimilated into other data from around the country, then around the world. The fact that she had a family, friends, perhaps lovers, would never enter into the equation.
Again, Sara thought about the girl lying in the wooden coffin, the terrified look on her face. She was someone’s daughter. When she was born, someone had looked into the infant’s face and given her a name. Someone had loved her.
The ancient gears of the elevator whirred into motion, and Sara set the paperwork aside as she stood from her desk. She waited at the elevator doors, listening to the groaning machinery as the car made its way down the shaft. Carlos was incredibly serious, and one of the few jokes Sara had ever heard him make had to do with plummeting to his death inside the ancient contraption.
The floor indicator over the doors was the old-fashioned kind, a clock with three numbers. The needle hovered between one and zero, barely moving. Sara leaned back against the wall, counting the seconds in her head. She was on thirty-eight and about to call building maintenance when a loud ding echoed in the tiled room and the doors slowly slid open.
Carlos stood behind the gurney, his eyes wide. “I thought it was stuck,” he murmured in his heavily accented English.
“Let me help,” she offered, taking the end of the gurney so that he wouldn’t have to angle it out into the room by himself. The girl’s arm was still stuck up at a shallow angle where she had tried to claw her way out of the box, and Sara had to lift the gurney into a turn so that it would not catch against the door.
She asked, “Did you get X-rays upstairs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Weight?”
“A hundred thirteen pounds,” he told her. “Five feet three inches.”
Sara made a note of this on the dry erase board bolted to the wall. She capped the marker before saying, “Let’s get her on the table.”
At the scene, Carlos had placed the girl in a black body bag, and together, they grabbed the corners of the bag and lifted her onto the table. Sara helped him with the zipper, working quietly alongside him as they prepared her for autopsy. After putting on a pair of gloves, Carlos cut through the brown paper bags that had been placed over her hands to preserve any evidence. Her long hair was tangled in places, but still managed to cascade over the side of the table. Sara gloved herself and tucked the hair around the body, aware that she was studiously avoiding the horror-stricken mask of the girl’s face. A quick glance at Carlos proved he was doing the same.
As Carlos began undressing the girl, Sara walked over to the metal cabinet by the sinks and took out a surgical gown and goggles. She laid these on a tray by the table, feeling an almost unbearable sadness as Carlos exposed the girl’s milk-white flesh to the harsh lights of the morgue. Her small breasts were covered with what looked like a training bra and she was wearing a pair of high-legged cotton briefs that Sara always associated with the elderly; Granny Earnshaw had given Sara and Tessa a ten-pair pack of the same style every year for Christmas, and Tessa had always called them granny panties.
“No label,” Carlos said, and Sara went over to see for herself. He had spread the dress on a piece of brown paper to catch any trace evidence. Sara changed her gloves before touching the material, not wanting to cross-contaminate. The dress was cut from a simple pattern, long sleeves with a stiff collar. She guessed the material to be some kind of heavy cotton blend.
Sara checked the stitching, saying, “It doesn’t look factory made,” thinking this might be a clue in its own right. Aside from an ill-fated home economics course in high school, Sara had never sewn more than a button. Whoever had sewn the dress obviously knew what they were doing.
“Looks pretty clean,” Carlos said, placing the underwear and bra on the paper. They were well-worn but spotless, the tags faded from many washings.