But what he had always known was that someone had murdered her.
Decker turned to the pages in the report that contained photos of the deceased’s remains. There were pictures of every organ. But Decker focused on the images of the small and large intestines and the stomach. The slices referenced in the report had not been photographed, which was why Decker was here.
He was about to do something he had never done before, something he had never even thought of doing before, but under the circumstances he could see no way around it.
After finding them in a locker, Decker put on gloves, donned a long apron, and settled a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and a pair of goggles over his eyes. He grabbed short-handled forceps off a tray and pulled out the Y-incision sutures, often called the “baseball stitch” because of its resemblance to that threading. Inside the revealed cavity the woman’s organs had been placed in bags to prevent leakage.
He took out the stomach and looked at it from every angle he could. It had been sliced open on the bottom, revealing the inside of the organ, like a slit balloon. Southern had apparently used this opening to examine the stomach’s contents because Decker could see no other incision. Whoever had made this cut had saved him the trouble. He used an overhead light to peer into the chest cavity once more and opened the bag containing the intestines. They lay coiled inside like a snake sleeping. He saw where sections of them had also been sliced open in multiple locations. He hit these spots as best he could with the light. The slits were large enough to get a hand into them. Decker knew that for sure, because he did so himself. The cuts were jagged and seemed hurried, as though the killer had either been rushed while doing it, or—
Had he gotten frustrated?
Decker took pictures of everything with his smartphone. He bagged the organs, closed the cavity, redid the sutures, covered the body once more, and slid it back into the drawer. Then he disposed of the gloves, apron, and mask in a metal container marked MEDICAL WASTE. He put the used goggles on a metal table. He then washed up in the sink. He let the warm water and soap flood his face and then stared at himself in the mirror attached to the wall above the sink.
I can’t fucking believe I just did that.
He closed his eyes. He felt like he might be sick, but he managed to keep what was in his stomach right where it was.
Too bad Irene Cramer hadn’t been able to do the same.
He left without speaking to Liz Southern. He had nothing to say to the woman and he wanted to get outside. His legs felt wobbly and he was again feeling nauseous.
The heat hit him as he opened the exterior door and, surprisingly, his sick feeling began to dissipate. His body was now probably focused on dealing with the hot environment.
He slowly and gingerly walked back to the hotel.
Decker went up to his room, pulled out his phone, and looked at the pictures he’d taken. They were far sharper with a higher res than the grainy ones provided by Walt Southern.
Decker might have just made a significant stride in the investigation, but the discovery had also led to a great many more questions.
The stomach and intestines shared an attribute that none of the other organs in the body did. If you swallowed something the object would eventually travel to those two destinations. Irene Cramer had been carrying something in her belly or intestines.
And whoever had killed her had taken it from the woman.
Chapter 17
“Oh my God. You did what?”
Jamison was sitting in the driver’s seat of their rental SUV staring at Decker like he had just told her that he’d been the one who’d murdered Irene Cramer.
“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “The killer was obviously attempting to get something back that Cramer had ingested.”
“Look, despite what you found, that theory seems a little farfetched.”
“Drug mules do that all the time. They either stuff plastic bags of drugs up their anuses, or else they swallow them.”
“And very often the bags burst and the person dies when all those drugs enter their body.” She glanced sharply at him. “Is that what you think? That she was a drug runner?”
“That would be the easy answer, but I’m not sure it would be the right one,” he replied. “And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t Walt Southern highlight this fact for us? It was literally buried in his report. And there were no pictures of the cuts to those organs. And when I asked him if there was anything out of the ordinary, he replied in the negative.”
“You think he didn’t believe it was important?”
“Any pathologist worth his or her salt knows about contraband being carried in the body.”
“I guess that is odd. So what do you think?”
“Did he intentionally not highlight it, or take pictures, thinking we would just take his word and not look too closely at the pathology report?”
“But why would he do that? Wait, do you think he killed her? That would explain the way she was cut up. He would have just performed two autopsies on her.”
“Southern cutting her up like that would be really the only way we would suspect someone like him. So why would he do it that way, unless he wants to be caught?”
“No, I don’t see that happening, either,” commented Jamison.
“So let’s go back to the question of what she might have been carrying inside her.”
“I guess we could hearken back to the days of the Cold War. She could be a spy and swallowed a microfiche dot loaded with government secrets.”
When Decker didn’t respond to this, she added, “I’m just kidding. She’s too young to have been part of the Cold War.”
“But why wouldn’t that be plausible? We have a pretty sensitive government facility right in the neighborhood.”
Jamison said slowly, “Since we don’t know her past, it could be she was a spy.”
“And maybe the reason she came here was to spy on the Douglas S. George Defense Complex. But she’s been here a year,” he added, looking puzzled.
“Meaning what took her so long?” said Jamison.
Decker nodded.
“How... was doing what... what you did?” she asked.
“I never want to do it again.”
“So what now?”
“Bogart hasn’t gotten back to me. If we can’t get at her past from the Bureau’s side, we need to try from another angle. She was here a year. Someone might have seen or heard something suspicious about the lady.”
“So, we talk to people? But we already did that.”
“I think some of the people we’ve talked to have been less than forthcoming. And Colonel Sumter was stonewalling us the whole way.”
“But how do we get him to talk? He has the DoD behind him. He has to follow orders.”
“I’m not sure. So for now we keep pushing ahead on other paths. We met one local titan with Stuart McClellan. Maybe we should meet the other.”
“Caroline’s dad? I guess he might know something useful.”
“Well, for one thing, he was the one to hire Hal Parker to get the wolf that had killed his cattle. So the body was presumably found on his property.”
“Do you think he knew Irene Cramer?”
“That’s one of the first things I’m going to ask him.”