Page 13 of Identity Unknown
My answer is to push the Down button.
“We need to take the stairs,” he insists.
“Sorry, not this time. I’ve got too much to carry,” I reply, the doors slowly twitching open.
“Damn death trap,” he grouses as we board, setting down the field cases. “It’s never worked worth a damn since we’ve been here and needs to be replaced.”
“I couldn’t agree more, but that will never happen.” I press the button for the ground floor, the doors stuttering shut. “Please be mindful that the exterminator’s here, and the hornets are riled up.”
“I kept my distance while I was loading my truck,” he says as the elevator begins descending slowly with a shudder. “Damn thing better not get stuck again!”
We creep past the second floor in fits and starts. Then the lights flicker, and the elevator comes to an abrupt halt.
“Dammit! I told you so!” His index finger jackhammers the lighted button. “One of these days we’re going to die in this thing! It’s going to crash or we’ll suffocate!”
“Why is it I seem to spend so much time calming down the men in this place?” I mutter.
“And of course, no signal in here.” Marino is fuming at his phone. “Not that calling anyone would do any good.”
The elevator begins moving again. Then we stop. And startagain. Shakily reaching the morgue level. Halting abruptly. The door opening as if having a seizure.
“It was working fine when I got here this morning,” I tell him as we exit in a hurry.
Following the corridor, we near the evidence room, its observation windows offering a peek at the patients who pass through our sad clinic.
On the other side of the glass, gory personal effects labeled with case numbers are arranged on white-paper-covered exam tables. Along the back wall are multiple drying cabinets with transparent doors, everything destined for the labs upstairs.
“Those are hers.” I point out Luna Briley’s pink Barbie doll pajamas on a steel hanger. “Notice the blood pattern? In particular the blood drops on the anterior thigh area?”
Marino fogs up the window, peering at the small pajamas limp and stained reddish black.
“The drops are perfectly round,” he says. “They fell straight down, hitting her thighs at a ninety-degree angle. And that’s not possible if she was standing up like I’ve been hearing on the news. She had to be sitting.”
“And I think she was.”
“Supposedly, she was walking around in her bedroom, fooling with her father’s pistol, when it went off, explaining why her body was in the middle of the floor. The parents were outside in the yard when they heard the gunshot. Again supposedly.”
“That’s the same story they told me and probably everyone else,” I answer.
“Total bullshit, in other words.”
We’ve paused outside the x-ray room, black-and-white images illuminated on arrays of computer screens. I point out the tangential bullet hole in the frontal bone, multiple fractures radiating from it. The radiopaque shape of the small-caliber bullet is lodged at the back of the skull. I can see the gaps from missing baby teeth, and the shadows of permanent ones pushing through the gums.
“I believe when she was shot, she was in her pajamas sitting on top of the bedcovers watching TV, leaning against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her,” I explain. “I suspect that after the fact, the body was moved, the scene cleaned up and staged.”
“Any idea what might have precipitated the shooting?”
“I couldn’t tell you. We know she had lunch cooked on the grill. And she was eating something like M&M’s not long before she died, ones with peanuts,” I explain. “Her gastric contents are partially digested chicken and potato. But I also found the candy. And flecks of it were caught in her teeth, suggesting she ate it shortly before death.”
I explain that according to the parents, Luna had grilled barbecue chicken and French fries. They said she ate at oneP.M., and our office was notified of her death at around four-thirty.
“How long do you think she’d been dead by the time you got there?” Marino asks as we resume walking.
“Fabian and I pulled up close to five-fifteen, and by then she’d been dead several hours,” I reply as we reach the decomp room, the light bright red next to the windowless door.
My deputy chief, Doug Schlaefer, is autopsying what the cops call a floater, the badly decomposed body recovered fromthe Chesapeake Bay. According to witnesses, the victim fell off a boat several weeks ago while smoking crack cocaine and drinking heavily. The autopsy is being done in isolation because the stench is untenable.
“I don’t recall seeing an M&M-type candy wrapper in the bedroom or while the police were going through the kitchen trash,” I’m saying to Marino. “The question is where Luna got the candy.”