“Go ahead and take the call.” Sarah grabbed her coat. “We’re done here anyway.”

“I’d like to walk you back to the studio. Will you wait a minute?”

“For you, Sean?” She gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t think so.”

Chapter 10

Autopsies and hangovers were never a good way to start the day, Sean decided on Wednesday morning as he suited up in the changing room at the morgue. He shook out a couple of aspirin from the bottle he carried in his pocket and washed them down with the last sip of his lukewarm coffee.

Crime scenes he could handle, but postmortems left him queasy for hours, even on good days. Already, the coffee was churning in his stomach.

If he ever bothered to analyze his aversion, he might conclude that it was the inhumanity of the procedure that bothered him. After all that cutting and sawing, the body was, in the end, just a slab of meat not so different from what he might see at the butcher’s.

But Sean didn’t spend too much time thinking about any of that until the moment was upon him. Like now. And then he had to work very hard to convince himself that he didn’t have a good reason to skip out on this autopsy. He needed to be here. No matter how efficient the pathologist or how thorough the postmortem, certain details were almost always left out of the report.

And, as strange as it sounded, he’d found that being present for the final procedure had a way of reinforcing his bond with the deceased. That tenuous connection between investigator and victim that could sometimes get lost in the morass of cases that crossed a homicide detective’s desk every single week.

Unlike a lot of cops he’d worked with over the years, he’d never mastered the ability to use humor or indifference to inoculate himself from the more grisly aspects of the job. He felt for the victims. He remembered their faces in his sleep.

Pushing open the door with his shoulder, he stepped into the autopsy suite. The room was spotless now, but Sean had no trouble imagining what it would look like once the procedure got under way. Autopsies were messy. Blood splashing onto the floor and equipment, dripping from the pathologist’s hands and from the scales used to weigh the internal organs. In two hours’ time, the area around the table would look like something from a slasher movie.

Dr. Frank Canard, the Orleans Parish coroner, was already inside, studying an X-ray in the viewer. He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the door close and gave Sean a brief nod. “Good. You’re here. We can get started.”

Louisiana law required that all coroners be physicians, and Dr. Canard was also a forensic pathologist who had served in the position for over twenty years. He’d seen it all during his tenure as coroner in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the country. He’d performed autopsies in some of New Orleans’s most sensational cases. The grisly, sordid slaying of a beloved priest back in the eighties. The serial murders of a dozen prostitutes during the nineties. He’d once said, though, that nothing in his career had prepared him for Katrina and the hundreds of bodies that had passed through his makeshift morgue in the aftermath.

He was tall, wiry and grizzled, a once ruggedly handsome man with the nose and dogged determination of a prizefighter and the dignified demeanor of old Southern gentry. Even up to his elbows in blood and gore, he never lost that air of elegance and refinement that made him at home in some of the most fashionable salons in the state.

“Detective LeJeune should be here any minute, but we don’t need to wait,” Sean said. “I can fill him in later.” He walked over to the foot of the table, carefully averting his eyes from the corpse. He focused instead on the X-ray Dr. Canard had been studying when he first came in. “Find anything interesting?”

“In the film? Nothing surprising.”

Before he could elaborate, the door opened and Danny hurried into the room. He was gowned and gloved, but his mask still flopped around his neck. “Sorry I’m late. Kayla’s car wouldn’t start again. She had to drop me off at the motor pool and it took forever to check out a car.” Fumbling with his mask, he walked over to the foot of the table and stood beside Sean. “What’d I miss?”

Unlike his partner, Danny had no qualms about attending autopsies. Like everything else about the job, he took postmortems in stride. “Man, oh, man.” He shook his head as he stared down at the slab. “I thought she looked rough the other night, but damn.”

“The condition of the body has nothing to do with who she was as a person,” Dr. Canard gently chided him.

“I know that, Doc, and I don’t mean any disrespect. But thirty-six hours in the cooler sure didn’t do her any favors, did it?”

Sean’s gaze dropped to the table and his stomach lurched to his throat. He had to swallow very hard to keep that second cup of coffee down.

Jesus.

He looked away, drew in a gulp of filtered air, then glanced back. Danny was right. Even in death, time was never on a victim’s side. Refrigeration couldn’t stave off the inevitable bacterial decomposition forever, and the harsh overhead lighting made the gashes in her face and neck stand out even more ghoulishly against the chilled pallor of her skin.

But the natural breakdown of tissue and organs was the least of it. The killer’s alteration of his victim’s features would haunt Sean for weeks.

The corners of her mouth had been sliced in upward curls, creating a macabre imitation of a grin. Her eyelids had been removed, leaving a wide-eyed, waxy stare that sent a chill down Sean’s spine.

Whatever beauty the woman once possessed had been stolen from her. All that was left of her face was a ghastly death mask carved by a psycho’s deft hand.

“The throat wound was mortal,” Dr. Canard was saying as he pulled the magnifier toward him and bent over the body. “The cut begins at the left carotid and extends to the right, severing the left artery, the left jugular and the sternomastoid. The trachea is partly severed. The right internal and external carotid and jugular are also severed.” He glanced up. “Pretty much the only thing left intact is the spinal column.”

“In other words, he damn near cut off her head,” Danny said. “What about her face? Any chance he did that after she was dead?”

“No, I’m afraid not. But she suffered a severe blow to the head. It’s entirely possible she was unconscious before he started cutting.” Dr. Canard picked up a marker and pointed to an area on the skull X-ray that looked like a small spiderweb. “You can see the fracture here on the film. The depression in the skull is a little bigger than a quarter. About the size of a hammer, I’d say. The bone directly under the impact point is driven in, toward the brain, leaving an imprint of the weapon.” He demonstrated an air blow with an invisible hammer.

“And you think the blow was hard enough to render her unconscious?”

“I’d say so, but we won’t know the extent of brain damage until we open up the skull.”

“Is there anything about the pattern or position of the wounds to suggest there was more than one attacker?” he asked.

Danny turned to stare in surprise at the question.

Sean shrugged. “Doc?”

He was looking through the magnifier again. “The cuts appear to have been made by the same knife. I don’t see any unusual striations or marks in the tissue and cartilage so I think the weapon had a smooth blade. A very sharp one.” He glanced up. “Is there a particular reason you think there may have been more than one attacker?”

“The tattoos on her back and palm are both fresh, but I think they were made by two different artists. The needle didn’t go in deep enough in her hand, which caused that scratchy, feathery appearance. I’m told that’s the mark of an amateur. The one on her back was put there by a pro. Or at least someone who knew what he was doing.” Sean could still feel Danny’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn.

“I don’t see anything in the cuts to substantiate multiple attackers, but I’ve found something on the torso that has me a bit puzzled.” Dr. Canard moved the light down the body. “The purplish discoloration on the lower abdomen is postmortem lividity. The victim was found lying on her stomach so that’s where the blood pooled. But notice the fainter discoloration on her upper abdomen and chest.” He used the marker to point to an area just under the right breast and another on the left side of her chest, just below the shoulder blade.

“It looks greenish,” Sean said. “Putrification?”

“No, it’s bruising,” Dr. Canard said. “As you know, bruises on a corpse, especially when they don’t show up at first, can be tricky. The first thing we have to do is determine whether they were made before or after death. Size, color change, the presence of swelling and coagulation are all indications of antemortem bruises, which is what we have here.”

“Can you tell what made them?” Sean asked.

“We can make an educated guess. Bruises are caused by blunt trauma that damages blood vessels beneath the skin surface, allowing blood to leak out into the surrounding tissue. The characteristics of the object causing the bruise are usually obscured because blood tends to spread out or diffuse from the point of impact. That’s why scalp injuries can sometimes result in black eyes. But if the injuries are inflicted immediately prior to death, the loss of circulatory blood pressure can limit diffusion and the pattern of the causative object may be retained. A hard kick, for example, might reproduce the pattern of the sole.”

“So is that what we’re looking at here?” Danny asked. “The imprint of a shoe?”

“Not exactly. The shapes appear more defined in the photographs we took, but let me see if I can show you.” He leaned over the body, one gloved hand carefully tracing the outline of the bruises with the marker. When he was finished, he pushed the light away and glanced up. “Now do you see?”

Danny walked over to the side of the table to get a better view. Sean stayed where he was, his gaze riveted on the roundish shapes Dr. Canard had traced. Each bruise was about three inches in diameter and had a wedge cut out of the top.

Danny drew back. “What the hell...?”

The realization of what they were looking at dawned on Sean at the same time and his blood went cold with shock.

“I’d say they look a bit like cloven footprints,” Dr. Canard said.

Danny moved back to the end of the table where he could eye the bruises from another angle. “Are you saying...? What the hell are you saying? The victim was trampled by some kind of animal?”

Sean’s mind flew back to the crime scene, to Sarah’s question about unusual prints. How had she known? How the hell had she known?

Suddenly short of breath, he had an overpowering urge to rip off his mask and head for the nearest exit. But running away from the questions storming his head wasn’t an option, and besides, peculiar behavior in front of Dr. Canard wasn’t a good idea. Coroners in Louisiana had the authority to determine mental illness in the living.

Already Danny was looking at him curiously. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just...” Sean drew a quick breath. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Who was? What the fuck are we dealing with here?” Danny sounded as unnerved as Sean felt, and when his phone rang, they both jumped.

Danny grabbed the phone from his pocket and walked quickly away from the table to answer. Sean turned back to Dr. Canard. “Did you find any unusual hair or fibers in the wounds or on the body?”

“Animal hair, you mean?”

“I’ve read goats are sometimes used in sacrificial ceremonies. That could explain the imprints.”

“I haven’t found anything like that. Which could indicate the killer is somewhat familiar with forensic evidence.”

“Bastard knew enough to clean up behind himself,” Sean muttered.

Danny came back up to the table. He didn’t bother to put his mask back on as he slipped the phone into his pocket. “That was Lapierre. She wants us to make another scene ASAP. Says there’s something we need to see.”

“She didn’t say what it was?”

Danny’s gaze had gone back to the table and Sean saw him shudder. “They’ve found another body.”

* * *

“Did you tell Lapierre we’re in the middle of an autopsy?” Sean asked irritably as he and Danny peeled off their gloves and gowns in the changing room a few minutes later.

“I did, Sean, but you know the lieutenant. When she tells you to jump, the only thing she wants to hear you ask is how high.”

“She didn’t at least give you a heads-up on what we’re walking into?”

“All I know is that Mosley and Grimes were first up this morning and they took the call. Something at the scene must have made them nervous because they called in requesting that we come out and have a look. That’s it. That’s all Lapierre said.” Danny staggered a bit as he pulled off his shoe protectors. “Just between you and me, though, she sounded weird.”