“Hold on. If that’s all the person wanted, why kill her? Why leave a body that could come back to bite them in the butt? A true robber doesn’t want that headache.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be identified.”
“Nah, it’s too easy to steal and get away with it. An older white woman like that probably thinks all brown people look alike.”
“I’m not buying it, but please, continue,” Cavanaugh said.
Kang brought his hand back up and continued to rattle off his reasons. “She had other jewelry on her, all of it left untouched. She was also killed quickly and efficiently with a knife to the neck. I’m telling you, this person knows how to kill. The mutilation of the body is part of the ritual.”
“So you’re saying this killer is randomly targeting people and mutilating their body afterward in some weird way?”
Kang nodded his head. “Yeah, I am.”
“And what about you?” Cavanaugh looked at Sokolov. “You got anything you wanna add, or are you going to sit there and transfer your thoughts to me telepathically?”
Sokolov gritted his teeth. “I agree with everything my partner says.”
“Right. Of course.”
Cavanaugh couldn’t argue with Kang’s assessment. It was textbook profiling, and the facts actually made a case for it. He sat down behind his desk, pissed at the idea of another possible serial killer in his neck of the woods.
Kang gave his partner that I-told-you-so look. Right before they entered Cavanaugh’s office, he mentioned, “This will piss him off, but not because innocent people are in danger. He doesn’t want the attention the word ‘serial’ would bring to the case.”
He was right. Having a serial killer brought the scrutiny of the higher-ups. Plus they were harder to catch.
“The last time I suggested Chinatown had a serial killer, I was right,” Kang said, breaking the silence.
“I remember,” Cavanaugh spat. “I also remember that you had help closing the case.”
“It would have been easier if you hadn’t forced me to work the cases separately for so long,” Kang fired back. He held Cavanaugh’s gaze.
Sokolov saw that the situation was at a standstill. He stood up and clasped his hands together. “Okay. We continue working the case on our assumption, and you get us some help.”
With that said, he turned and walked out of the office.
Chapter 7
Traffic that afternoon wasn’t much of a problem. I used Polk Street to cut across town, and it rewarded me with traffic light jackpot. I smiled at the green signals until I reached Market Street. The medical examiner’s office was located on Bryant, only a couple stops farther.
I hadn’t seen Timothy Green since my last visit regarding a dead DEA agent. I received a couple of follow-up emails from him, and that was it. He was a nice man, however eccentric at times, and I did look forward to seeing him again. On my way over, I called his office to let them know I would be there shortly, hoping to avoid a long stay in their dull waiting room.
When I entered the office, Green was waiting for me with a smile. “Hello, Agent. I’m happy to see you again,” he said, a hair above a whisper. He waited until I got closer before extending his hand.
“Good to see you, too, Doctor.” His hand was soft but cold.
He looked like I remembered. Shaggy brown hair, Ben Franklin specs, earring in the left ear, and a height that I was fond of: about even with mine. His lab coat still looked two sizes too big — his hand disappeared like a turtle’s head when he lowered his arm.
“So you’re here about the hiker?”
“I am.”
We stood there a bit longer — him smiling, me wondering. “Can I see the body?” I finally asked. Quirky doesn’t even begin to describe this guy.
“Yes. Follow me, please.”
Green led me down the same corridor I remembered from my last visit. As our footsteps echoed in the sterile hallway, he was more interested in hearing about my morning than in talking about the body.
“My day’s been okay so far,” I said pleasantly. “I have no complaints.”
“Well, I hope it stays that way.” He stopped and pushed open a door, allowing me to enter first. Before I could even react to the smell, he handed me a bottle of lemon oil.
“I remembered,” he said, grinning at me like a golden retriever that had just brought the ball back.
“Thanks.” I smiled and dabbed a bit under my nose. He pointed to the first autopsy table, sparing me the walk by the other five tables, each with a corpse.
“Busy day, huh?”
He looked down the row of bodies. “Yes, it’s that time of the year.”
“What time of the year?”
“Dying time.” He smiled at me. “Medical examiner joke,” he said as he chuckled to himself.
I chuckled. “What can you tell me about the girl?”
He pulled back the green sheet, revealing a nude woman with a large gash in her chest. “I’ve only just begun my investigation, so forgive me if I can’t yet answer every one of your questions. Now, as you can see, the victim received direct, sharp force trauma to the chest area by a small axe.” He looked up at me over his glasses. “You’ve seen the picture of the weapon?”
“I have.”
He pointed at the gaping wound in Piper’s chest. “The opening is clean, and I don’t mean hygienically. Well, it is clean, because I cleaned it but that’s not what I mean. What I’m trying to say is the victim received one blow. You see, repeated blows don’t always follow the same course of trajectory; some are off to the left while others are a little off to the right. That can leave a jagged edge around the wound.” He took a large forceps and ran it along the edge of the opening. “You see how straight that is?”
“Yeah. So the attacker killed her with one chop?”
“Well, yes. But the amount of damage caused by this one-time blow needed to be enough to kill the victim quickly. Now, it is possible to survive a blow to the chest with an axe. And that reason is because most people don’t understand how hard it is to drive an axe this far into the body.” He waved his index finger at me. “Don’t believe what you see in the movies.”
Green picked up a chest spreader, which basically looked like a pair of large, stainless steel, salad tongs, and stuck it into the wound, prying it open.
“Come closer. See how deep it is?”
I leaned over for a better look, my face now inches from Green’s. When I didn’t hear more observational notes coming from the doctor, I turned my attention to him and found him looking directly into my eyes.
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” he started, “but you have a most unique green hue to your eyes.”
Green had caught me off guard, even more so since we were clearly deep into each other’s personal space. I expected an observation about the body, not my eye color. “And the victim? What do you think about her?”
Green smiled sheepishly. “Oh, yes, the entry point. The depth of the trauma is what I find interesting. Here, the axe not only penetrated the sternum, which is no small feat, but it then severed the superior vena cava and the inferior vena cava, the two large arteries that move blood in and out of the heart. It continued right through the lower two ventricles of the heart and even cut into the primary bronchus of the right lung. With this sort of damage, the victim died within seconds.”
I leaned back, having seen enough. “So what does that mean? That our killer is a guy? A big strong one?”
“No, not necessarily,” he said, removing the tongs and allowing the gap to close. “When I said it’s possible to survive an axe wound to the chest, I said that because the sternum, or breastbone, normally would have served its purpose and prevented the blade from entering the chest very far. Unlike a pointy object, an axe, even though the blade is quite thin, has a larger surface mass. The larger the object, the more force needed to penetrate.”