Page 24 of Jar of Hearts
“I’m going to go talk to Peebles.” Kaiser stands up and stretches. The vertebrae in his spine crack in gratitude. “Call me when they get here.”
He knocks before entering the room, though he doubts Greg Peebles hears anything when he’s in the zone, working. The bodies have been placed on examining tables a few feet apart, and the ME is leaning over the boy. The child is covered with a sheet from the waist down, the heart drawn on his chest stark and unfaded.
SEEME.
What the fuck does that mean? Donning a pair of latex-free gloves, Kaiser touches the heart gently with a gloved hand. It doesn’t smudge.
The woman has been—for lack of a better expression—pieced back together, and from a distance it might appear that she’s intact. But she’s not. Under the harsh lights of the overhead lamp, the half-inch gap separating her head, legs, feet, arms, and hands from her torso is glaringly evident.
“I hate that you brought me a kid,” Greg Peebles says to Kaiser in his slow drawl. No matter what’s going on, the medical examiner never sounds like he’s in a hurry, never sounds rushed or stressed. It’s a great quality to never be unnerved, but it can be a pain in the ass for Kaiser when he’s under pressure to find answers. Like right now. “This is my least favorite part of the job.”
“But a dismembered woman is okay?”
Peebles shrugs. “I wasn’t trying to be political, Kai. But an adult dead body shows up, part of you can’t help but think, even just for a split second, ‘What could that person have done to deserve that? What situation did they put themselves in?’ But a dead kid shows up, andnobodythinks that, ever. Children are innocent. They’re small. They can’t defend themselves against predators. They’ve done nothing to warrant any violence against them. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to kids. It goes against everything we as a civilized society think is acceptable. Your protective instincts kick in.” He pauses, then looks up, the light from his head lamp hitting Kaiser square in the eyes. “Okay, perhaps that was a bit political.”
“Can you turn that off?” Kaiser asks, putting a hand up over his face to shield himself.
“Sorry.” Peebles reaches up and switches the head lamp off. “So. The bodies are clean.”
“Come on, Greg.” Kaiser stares at the child in front of him. He doesn’t disagree with Peebles; there is something incredibly wrong with seeing a person that small on an autopsy table. He’s a homicide cop and trained to be objective, but a dead child goes straight to the heart of what makes him human. But so does a dismembered woman, and he hopes he never loses that empathy. “Don’t fucking tell me that. Give me something. Start with the child.”
“He’s almost two years old, based on his teeth. But you already know that.” Peebles switches his head lamp back on, his voice morphing back into that professional-but-mellow tone he always uses when describing his findings. “Well nourished, no signs of sexual trauma or physical abuse. No traces of bodily fluids on his clothing other than a copious amount of dried saliva on his hoodie. Probably his own; he had molars coming in.”
“Nothing under the fingernails?”
“Bits of dirt and sand, but that’s consistent with being a kid. He’s been bathed recently. You can still smell the shampoo if you lean in close.” Peebles leans over the body and inhales. If it were anyone else, it would be creepy. “Burt’s Bees, same stuff my kids used when they were little. Supposed to be all-natural. He wasn’t neglected. His parents loved him.” His head snaps up, blinding Kaiser again with his head lamp. “Wait. The parents aren’t the doers, are they?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Kaiser says, squinting. “Cause of death?”
“All signs point to asphyxiation. Pressure marks on the neck indicate someone used his or her hands. I’m guessing it was a male because the marks looks like larger fingers, but don’t take that to the bank. After my divorce, I dated this woman who had extremely large hands. It was rather disturbing. They made everything she touched seem small.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, Kaiser snickers. Peebles blinks, not sure what he said that was so funny. They move over to the next table.
“Now for our Jane Doe. Rohypnol and alcohol in her system, small traces of THC. She smoked marijuana sometime in the past two days,” Peebles says. “She also engaged in sexual activity—traces of condom lube and spermicide are present—and while there are some indications the sex was rough, I can’t confirm she was raped. Traces of skin under the fingernails. At least some of it’s her own, but I’ll test it. She was dismembered with a saw, definitely postmortem.”
“How postmortem?”
“Immediately after. It would have been messy. The unevenness of the cutting patterns suggests that the killer did it by hand. So, not a chainsaw. No tattoos, a small birthmark on her upper right thigh. Hair brown, but dyed an even darker brown. Nice manicure. She was probably around five-five, one-twenty. I’d put her age around twenty-one, maybe twenty-two years old. But don’t take that to the bank.”
“And her eyes?” Kaiser asks.
“Removed with something dull. My first thought was spoon, but now I’m thinking butter knife because there’s minute tearing consistent with that.” Peebles straightens up and removes his head lamp. It leaves an indent in his graying hair. “Fairly certain she was strangled with a foreign object, something stiffer that was placed around her neck.”
“Bungee cord?”
“Belt would be my guess. There are scratches on the side of her jaw where she would have clawed at it to get it off. There’s bruising on her back, as if someone held her down with a knee and choked her from behind. Want me to demonstrate?”
“No need,” Kaiser says. He can picture it.
“Remind you of anything?” Peebles asks. His raised eyebrow tells Kaiser he’s thinking the same thing. “Or anyone?”
“Calvin James.” He lets out a long breath, thinking of the three women the Sweetbay Strangler murdered after Angela Wong. All three were killed in a similar manner, right down to the knee in the back, but he doesn’t say anything further, and Peebles doesn’t push. Greg’s the medical examiner, Kaiser’s the detective. They don’t do each other’s jobs.
“I thought I read something about him being spotted in Brazil,” Peebles says. “Passing for a local, looking tanned and healthy. Or was it Argentina? This might have been a couple years ago now.”
Kaiser doesn’t answer. He’d read the same thing, but no police in any country had ever gotten a strong enough whiff of Calvin James to track him down. And that included the U.S.
“I’ll give you some time with them.” The ME peels off his gloves. They’ve been working together a long time, and if anyone knows what the detective’s process is during this stage of a homicide investigation, it’s Greg Peebles.
