‘I’ll leave you to close,’ Molly Lewis said to an assistant, as she stepped back from the stainless steel table where Percy Quillam’s corpse lay, the torso still open.
Bill lifted his mask enough to push more wintergreen gum into his mouth and followed Molly, stripping off garb as he went and tossing it into a hamper. Like Molly, he scrubbed his hands at a deep sink. Even minus any of Quillam’s bodily fluids on him, he felt the need to scrub hard and long. No matter how many post-mortems he attended, he still felt vaguely sick at some points and his throat wanted to shut. He was glad to see how well Jillian Miller did, even if she usually disappeared once she got out of the morgue.
Miller had arrived late and with an infuriating smirk on her face. Bill had no doubt he would be hearing the reason for that shortly.
They convened in Molly’s small office where she maintained a miraculously clear desktop. She motioned for the pair of them to sit and flipped on a giant screen.
‘You understand that anything I tell you now is preliminary,’ she said without looking at them. ‘These are teaching films, not that you need them. They just make it easier for me to point out what I mean. Lungs of a suspected drowning subject who did drown.’ She indicated films on the left of the screen. ‘And here, the lungs of a suspected drowning subject who did not drown. Percy Quillam’s lungs resemble these and his films will be similar. He did not breathe underwater, breathe in water, or die under the water.
‘There are events called dry drownings but given what else we now assume, that does not apply here. There are signs of violence to the corpse – I would have expected more – but petechiae or small hemorrhages, in the eyes in this case, point to strangulation and there are signs of pressure – bruising – on the neck. I believe these are from manual constriction although they are only present at the front which could almost mean they happened during an attempt to lift or pull him back. There are numerous cuts and abrasions on the neck and arms – on the shoulders – but no defensive signs that I can see. However, the deceased had cardiac issues and almost certainly suffered cardiac arrest. Further examination will clarify that, but I think we can take this to the bank. Had the cardiac event happened under different conditions he might not have died. Compromised cardiac elements added to some extreme stress made the difference – probably. This type of thing happens all the time and is not particularly significant, but under the circumstances …’ She spread her hands.
‘He was murdered,’ Bill said. ‘By strangulation. And put in the water to make it appear he’d drowned.’
‘That fits with my conclusions – more or less,’ Molly agreed. ‘Although strangulation isn’t a positive. The abrasions are a puzzle but we’re on our way to solving that. I have to wonder if death happened before the attacker intended – or if death occurred without it being immediately noticed. Did the attacker only expect the deceased to be incapacitated enough to go under water, without much fight, and drown? Did he even realize the body had caught on those roots and remained barely submerged and coming up entirely when it rolled? It’s reasonable to set the time of death during darkness but I still doubt that theory. I’m only the forensic pathologist here but I think perhaps the attacker ran away and ran fast once he thought his deed was done. Forgive me if I sound a little Shakespearean.’
Bill studied her. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ She avoided meeting his eyes and rubbed a forefinger slowly up and down the edge of a folder.
Molly glanced at him and then away again. ‘Yes, there is. Unfortunate on our part but these things can happen in the best of times. It may not change anything substantially, other than … give me time, Bill. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’