“He is one of the ones with a sense of humor” Dan annotated, hiking his thumb towards the slowly closing door. “True story.”
* * * * *
Emma had never worn a Hazardous Materials suit before. It took her a surprisingly long time to get it on and everything situated. Of course no sooner was she fully into the thing than she got the wicked urge to pee. Where is the catheter version of this getup? She wondered.
Gross! She added as a mental afterthought.
Joining Dan back in the main room after, she felt like she was going to travel to space. Or perform a hazardous autopsy cynically. OR she thought finally with glee SPACE AUTOPSY. Okay that sounded awesome but a little too intense – she hadn’t had her shots yet. If she could still catch Malaria, Emma reasoned she wasn’t vaccinated enough to head out of the gravity well of our planet.
Dan nodded to her and pushed open the thick metal door separating them from the three bodies. Following him into the room, Emma was instantly struck by the cold. There were no billowing clouds of frosty air because the entire room was still and dry as the desert. Emma thought about this for a second and nodded to herself – it made sense as that would keep the bodies in the best condition.
Slowly Dan walked ahead of her in his awful glowing yellow suit and pushed aside the plastic, also allowing her admittance.
Looking down at the first body, Emma gave a noticeable start out of shock. The man on the slab in front of her was the taller man from the night in the park, the man whose arm she had broken and then smashed open his head.
“What is it,” asked Dan “Do you recognize him?”
“No,” replied Emma “it is just .. his head. It is so awful.”
When in doubt, pull the weak little woman card she thought, self-satisfied for a second, then back to appalled. They are onto me thought Emma wildly, thinking of ways to escape. She didn’t even have a passport, a glaring omission on Plan “No-Extradition.”
“Difficult to believe the attacker was a small woman about 5’6” isn’t it?” asked an FBI doctor in a hazmat suit of his own, pushing past the plastic from the other side of the room.
“Dr Seneca,” the FBI man added, extending a hand in greeting. “I am here as your liaison, I have all the details we are releasing and can act as a consult to the CDC.”
“Dan Wilson,” answered her professor “And this is my assistant Emma. What details can you give me about why the CDC was called in on this case?”
“Two sets of murders, in all cases the assailant gave every sign of being highly medicated or intoxicated but blood recovered from the scene came up mostly negative.”
“Mostly?” replied Dan, Emma could imagine a raised eyebrow inside the plastic suit but that was just hearsay as he was faced away from her.
“The second attacker was under the influence of alcohol but mmm a minimal amount. Certainly not enough to account for the impairment in control” the doctors studied the body in front of Emma for a second, Dan pushing the head first to one side then the other. “The most suspicious thing however – the reason my director called the CDC – is the attacker from the third homicide was gravely injured in the initial attack.”
“How do you know that?” asked Dan. Emma could just make out that his head was tilted slightly to the side inside the suit.
“Initial workups of blood taken from the two scenes. We also have video footage – of varying quality I am afraid but certain details can be made out. The video from the first attack was extremely poor but some details were pieced together.”
“There were four men initially at the first crime scene, attackers turned victims. Two dead.”
Dr Seneca pointed to corpse two and then one in order “Another had his knee broken and severe head trauma – though apparently not fatal – and the last one ran off.”
“I don’t fucking blame him,” answered her professor.
“So that explains these two bodies,” he added, putting his hands on the first two tables. “Tell me about this one,” he motioned while walking over to the last gurney.
“Attacked outside a gas station by the man from the park where the initial attack happened – “
“The one with the broken knee?” added Dan.
“Yes - we matched DNA from the blood samples at both scenes.”
“Are you sure the evidence wasn’t contaminated?” asked her professor.
“Positive,” answered the FBI Doctor, his eyes narrowing. Emma had very limited knowledge of such things but her initial guess was he had been the one to collect it.
“Hmmm I am rarely positive about anything,” Dan absently remarked, looking at the bite marks from the gas station victim. “But I am not here to question your methods,” Dan added, banging his hands against the plastic suit with an awkward motion.
Even with her complete lack of experience, Emma was getting the impression that her forensics teacher was more than just a professional academic. Inside her suit, Emma was sweating. If they connected the four people Steve had killed in the convenience store or – worse still – the two bodies outside her apartment to this fine collection it would be a very simple matter to follow the trail back to her door.
My broken front door she thought sourly to herself.
“Very well, let’s start chronologically,” he said, flipping a brake on the second gurney – Emma’s first kill - and rolled it to the slab. The harsh white light making it look like an alien was going to spirit the body away.
Finishing moving the body, Dan turned to Emma in full lecture mode again. “I find establishing a timeline helps smooth out any mental wrinkles I might have. By constraining whatever parameters I can I am less likely to encounter problems matching any other facts I discover to the model of possible infection we have before us. In this case, suppose the third corpse is infected but the blood we run from the man with the broken knee comes up negative that is an instant red flag and highlights that errors have occurred somewhere in the bagging and tagging process.”
Emma nodded mutely. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the FBI pathologist shift in his suit at the further implication that his process was in question.
Putting his index fingers together and bringing them to his mask in a position that Emma could only assume was in line with his bottom lip, the Professor walked around the corpse.
Turning to the FBI Doctor, Dan asked “Can I see the video footage of this homicide?”
“Afraid not,” the FBI man answered, not seeming to be deeply moved.
Dan sighed. “Looks like we will have to do this the old fashioned way then.” The Professor took a moment to rearrange and examine limbs of the naked figure.
“The break in his right arm makes little sense within context of the other cranial blunt force trauma - I presume it happened first. The break is angled outwards, which doesn’t tell us much. It could have happened with a military style hold – Punch/Grab/Break.”
He demonstrated quickly by having Emma reach out her right arm, grabbed at the wrist with his right and pretended to smash with his left. A cold part of Emma’s mind noted it for future use.
“I doubt it though. For one thing the M.O. doesn’t fit - this is a frenzied attack. Not at all calculating and military. For another I think the break is too low – almost to the wrist.”
Dan circled the body like a shark “I think the attacker was in a choke hold, submissive position. Given that she is female this makes sense to me – this victim thought himself in power.”
He demonstrated again on Emma, holding in a position not dissimilar to the one employed by the man on the table two nights before.
Feeling an acute sense of déjà vu, Emma was almost in a dream, feeling herself reach up and grab the arm just like she had a day ago.
“Yes, like that and – snap! Yes that would be just right. She exhibited a surprising amount of force from that position.” Dan nodded to himself and noticed Emma still had him in a hold. “Could you let go of m
y arm please?” he asked pleasantly.
It took a second for the cordial request to reach through the sudden haze clouding Emma’s mind. When it did though she instantly spread her fingers wide.
“Quite a grip,” said Dan smiling. “That first break has little bearing though so let’s move on. Obviously the man” he indicated their silent visitor on the autopsy table. “Let go at that point. He was bought to the ground soon after. There is a complete lack of cuts or bruising on the legs though so my guess is the mess of bruises on his chest conceal how or with what that contact happened.
Let’s look at the main cranial trauma, the line goes right down his body – The attacker was either above him or standing on him.”
The professor looked back at Emma who nodded, internally disturbed to see the scene calculated piece by piece like a jigsaw.
“Now look with me at the damage,” Dan requested, drawing Emma back to the present. Peering into the skull she felt momentarily queasy – the remains of the brain looked more like a thick soup than anything else.
“It is hard so see with subsequent hits but the most of the force seems to point towards the top of his head. I think the woman who did this was standing on him. And yet the angle is shallow – if this was say a baseball bat it would smash in at a heavy angle because of distance but this is sloping in. Close up. Like … this” he said, clasping his fists together and bringing them down in front of him with a chopping motion.”
“Hardcore,” Emma breathed, astounded that he had worked all of this out from a few observations.
“I know!” answered Dan, a fire behind his eyes. “This is one of the bloodiest struggles I have ever fantasized about witnessing!” Looking down again he frowned once more “It doesn’t quite make sense yet though. If the hits were done with fists, why all these cuts towards the side of the wound?”
“Maybe they were done before?” Emma offered, not wanting to give anything away but needing to appear clued in.
“I think so!” he replied. “But… she had nothing in her hands. What would she have used to cut his face?” he asked, bending down before receiving a look of surprised intuition. The Professor surprised Emma by grabbing a swab with a swift motion from the table and started applying it to the cuts to the left side of the main chasm.
“They’re bites!” He said, his excitement muffled slightly by his facemask. “She bit him!” he added, peering closely at the clammy flesh.
“I’m right aren’t I!” he said, turning back to the FBI pathologist.
Emma could see through the facemask the pathologist’s lips become a tight line. “It’s possible,” he finally admitted.
“Damn straight,” replied Dan, going back to swabbing.
* * * * *
Dan moved on to the second body she had created – the man whose face she had pulled off. It didn’t take long for him to get into the scene and again his take was too close to reality. Pantomiming the action, Dan noted the semi-crushed windpipe and moved swiftly past it, discounting it as trivial.
The Professor was soon looking for stress points to see where the force had been applied to pull away the front of the skull - Emma noted from the corner of her eye that the FBI pathologist was now looking on with interest. Quite a different attitude than when Dan had started.
Just my luck thought Emma sourly. My professor turns out to be some kind of forensics Rembrandt.
Waking from her musing, Emma saw the canny man studying the victim’s upper jaw – what was left of it. When the front of his head had separated it had taken half his mouth along for the ride but the back molars were still in place.
“There is a lot of blood around the teeth,” Dan commented, thoughtfully drumming a staccato rhythm on the metal table while he thought.
“There is a lot of blood everywhere,” the FBI home team countered.
“You are right, most all of it his own,” Dan agreed. “However see how it worked around the gums? I bet he bit whoever did this and that is why they smashed his lower jaw.”
“It was an aggravated attack!” exclaimed the FBI man in exasperation.
“True, but even in such an attack there is still purpose isn’t there?” Dan answered “Someone has lost their mind, they attack the first target possible.”
Within seconds he had a scalpel in hand and was cutting open the esophagus. Sure enough, blood lined it – Emma’s blood.
“Couldn’t it be his as well?” asked Emma, trying to derail this train just a little.
“I doubt it,” Dan answered as he turning towards her, the mask over the lower half of his face making him look positively apocalyptic “The first hit took his lower jaw clean off - that’s a lot of blood for someone to swallow with only half a mouth.”
Dan looked around at the bodies again “I hope to god that mystery woman was just high as hell on PCP,” he said. “Somehow though, I doubt it.”
Dan turned to the pathologist “What do you think it would take to pull apart a human skull like that?” he asked.
“Assuming no skull defects? 150lbs of pull I would guess,” answered the FBI Doctor, being drawn almost against his will into the energy of the scene Dan was painting “And digging their fingertips into the soft pallet would mean they did the whole thing without a firm grip – they would have to use just their fingertips.”
“But don’t mountain climbers pull themselves up by just their fingertips?” answered Emma, still playing the role of devil’s advocate to curb their enthusiasm.
“Yes, I grant you it is within peak human capability but a mountain climber certainly doesn’t fit my profile of someone hopped up on glorified horse tranquilizers,” replied her professor, the man who would be exposing her as a monster.
“Anyway,” he added “we will know for sure when we examine the fluids.”
Moving on to the next body – the first of Steve’s kills – Emma managed to temporarily push back her misgivings about her fate. Right now the focus wasn’t on her but instead on Steve, maybe the two pathologists would be able to turn their spotlight on him, giving her vital information or at least a little insight.
Looking over the body, Emma noted the first bite she had seen on the news a couple of days ago – to the old man’s right shoulder from behind. He had been completely oblivious to the danger until too late. Strangely he seemed fairly untouched apart from the chunk torn from his shoulder though, a fact that Emma didn’t understand.
Taking liberties she walked over to the head and turned the corpse slightly, a yawning hole greeted her inspection. While there was massive trauma to the brain inside, Emma could easily see some was missing. Looks like Steve got his CSF Emma thought, noting the chunks of scalp caught into the jagged skull edges, their meaty underpinnings looking like worms struggling out of sodden earth. Despite her experiences in the last week, Emma felt her stomach turn.
“Go on,” prompted her teacher, prompting momentary confusion – did he mean she should vomit?
“Go on… what?” asked Emma surprised “I didn’t say anything.”
“I know, I am inviting you to run through the events preceding this man’s death, like I did the others. You are looking particularly for any sites of fluid or tissue samples from the attacker” he reminded.
Emma’s first reaction was to be annoyed, here she was hoping to get a profile of Steve’s movements and instead – just her luck – she was the schmuck doing the assessment. The petulance eroded though, maybe she could learn something while doing the inspection – she might even be able to keep key details to herself.
“Well… “ replied Emma, gulping. She felt like a kid again. Scanning the corpse she decided to start with the familiar and work outwards.
“That,” she pointed to the shoulder “is a bite - although I saw that happen on the news yesterday. He had his back turned as the attacker ran in, didn’t see it coming.”
“Okay, so that’s what you know,” answered Dan “and what t
hen?”
“If you look at the back of the head it is caved in cleanly.”
She turned the corpse on the side and looked again at the hole in the back of his head, the hole almost seemed to come to a point.
“I am guessing that isn’t a gun wound … if it was I would imagine a hole of that size wouldn’t leave him with much of a face. So… he hit him with something,” she mused for a second remembering the 5 second clip – he didn’t look like he was carrying anything.
“Or hit his head against something,” she added quietly. She turned the head to look at the hole again, it had an almost teardrop shape, pointing towards the crown of his head.
“Maybe after biting his shoulder, the attacker grabbed his face and smashed his head into an edge? It was at a gas station so … a curb maybe? Or the edge of a square pillar – those are normally concrete.”
Emma turned to look at Dr. Seneca, almost pleadingly. He had seen video footage, presumably the gas station camera could confirm her take on events. After a moment he nodded.
“He left a fingerprint on the victim’s glasses arm which was used to identify him” the FBI pathologist replied.
An emboldened Emma turned back to the body.
“So where did all the brain go?” asked Emma idly, taking a move that her mind screamed was too risky. Sometimes though she reasoned with herself the only way forward is through.
“Three head injuries, I mean what’s the chances of that? Did anyone weigh the grey matter left in the other two?” she asked the FBI pathologist innocently and was both gratified and horrified when he shook his head no.
Sure hope this doesn’t come back to haunt me she thought to herself.
“Honestly, the other body had bites to the face - I think that if I swab the sides of this hole, I will find saliva,” she continued.
“Only one way to find out” answered Dan, picking up another vial and opening it. Emma took it from him and began swabbing the jagged scalp edges that had made her stomach turn earlier. Prolonged proximity was doing nothing to further endear them to her digestive system.
Almost done, Emma looked into the cavity in the poor old man’s head and narrowly stopped herself from doing a double take. Visible from around the side of the Parietal Lobe was the sharp corner of a business card.