The remains of Jacob Jones were spread out before her. Aaron Holmes, the burly Chief Pathologist who’d haunted the city morgue for as long as anyone could remember, had arranged the victim’s torso and limbs in their anatomically correct positions, but even so the sight of him struck Gabrielle as deeply perverse and horribly wrong. He was more jigsaw than man now.
Swallowing down her disgust, she turned her attention to Holmes once more. The gruff, bearded South Sider fielded three, four, five bodies a day and was not prone to emotion or histrionics, outlining his findings in a steady, dispassionate monotone.
‘Small stuff first,’ he muttered, pointing to the blotchy torso in front of them. ‘Significant bruising to the torso and also the side of the neck, suggestive of strangulation.’
‘Ligature or hand?’ Gabrielle replied evenly.
‘Hard to say, but I’d guess your killer had the victim in some kind of hold. The arm would have looped round the neck and then look here …’
He pointed to a series of evenly spaced purple dots on the victim’s cheek.
‘What do they look like to you?’
Gabrielle moved in closer.
‘Judging by their size and spacing, I’d say they were the fingertips of a hand.’
‘Exactly. With an arm round the neck, perhaps your killer grasped the victim’s face to get a proper grip. The harder he or she squeezed, the quicker the oxygen supply would be cut off.’
‘Why are the fingermarks purple? Is that due to the pressure?’
Holmes shook his head.
‘If you look at them closely, you’ll see the skin is raised slightly, suggesting an allergic reaction. Your killer was probably wearing gloves – there’s no DNA or secretions on the victim – and my guess is that the victim was allergic to whatever they were made of.’
‘Leather?’
‘Leather, latex, suede … I’ll have to run more tests to know for sure.’
Gabrielle digested this, then continued:
‘Is that what killed him? The strangula—’
But Holmes was already shaking his head. He gestured to the victim’s blood-caked mouth.
‘You can see for yourself that he had his tongue cut out.’
Gabrielle shuddered as she took in the bloody stump.
‘Also, his fingers and toes were severed. From the amount of blood loss, we can tell that these amputations were carried out while the victim was still alive. The general dismemberment – the severing of the arms and legs from the torso – was done after death.’
Immediately, Gabrielle’s mind was turning. Was the dismemberment designed to aid transportation or for some darker reason? Did this brutal killing have a ritualistic element?
‘What actually killed him,’ Aaron persevered, ‘was this.’
He indicated the long, deep cut that had nearly severed the head from the body. Once more, Gabrielle moved in to get a closer look.
‘The larynx has been crushed, the windpipe severed, several major arteries compromised. The blood loss would have been catastrophic, the withdrawal of oxygen complete, so death would have occurred in under a minute.’
This was one small mercy perhaps, Gabrielle thought to herself. But how much had he suffered before this coup de grâce was delivered?
‘How was it done? Was he struck several times or –’
‘No, it was one clean chop wound. Like an execution, but from the front.’
‘Is it possible …’ Gabrielle hesitated a moment before completing her question. ‘… that a teenager could have inflicted an injury like that? A teenage girl in particular?’
‘It’s not impossible,’ Holmes replied calmly. ‘But I’d say it’s unlikely. This was a blow of considerable force. Take into account the span of the fingermarks on the victim’s face and I’d say that it’s odds on your attacker is an adult male.’
Gabrielle continued to chew on Holmes’ words as she left the morgue clutching his preliminary findings. Wojcek was their only suspect, yet it seemed unlikely that she was responsible for the inhuman brutality meted out to the unfortunate Jacob Jones. She lacked the strength, plus there was no evidence that she could drive, nor that she possessed the experience or guile to carry out such a flawless abduction and murder. She had a possible motive, however, and was clearly involved in some way, which raised an interesting question in Gabrielle’s mind.
Was it possible that the troubled teen had an accomplice?