The main building at the LA County Department of Coroner was, in every sense, an impressive piece of architecture, clearly influenced by the Renaissance style. The façade of the old hospital turned morgue was a stylish combination of red bricks and light-gray lintels. The extravagant entrance stairway was flanked by a couple of gothic-looking lampposts, which added an extra pinch of charm to a beautiful building that ironically sheltered nothing but death.
In morning traffic, the short drive from the Police Administration Building to the LACDC took Hunter and Garcia just under ten minutes. As they stepped into the entrance lobby, Martha, the Jamaican receptionist with kind eyes and plumb cheeks, nodded courteously at them. She had perfectly mastered the art of the solemn-respectful face. Her greeting smiles were always gentle and polite, her facial expressions showed compassion and understanding, and her tone of voice had an almost soothing quality to it.
‘Detectives,’ she greeted Hunter and Garcia as they approached the reception counter, already placing two visitor badges on it.
‘Martha,’ Hunter replied, returning the courteous nod. ‘How are the kids?’
‘More expensive than ever,’ she replied with a roll of the eyes. ‘I hope you’ve been keeping well.’ She pushed the visitor badges toward both of them. ‘Dr. Hove is expecting you. She’s in Autopsy Theater One, down in the basement.’
Hunter and Garcia had been to the LACDC so many times that they could practically navigate every corridor… in every floor… in every building… blindfolded.
Martha buzzed them through the security gate and they made their way to the staircase just past and to the right of the reception counter.
In the basement, they turned right at the end of the first corridor then left at the end of the following one. Directly in front of them was a set of double swing-doors.
The plate above the doors read: ‘Autopsy Theater One’. Hunter pressed the button on the intercom and waited. Three seconds later, the door buzzed open and Hunter and Garcia stepped inside the large, winter-cold room, illuminated by two rows of fluorescent lights that ran the length of the ceiling. Two stainless steel autopsy tables dominated the main floor space – one fixed, one wheeled. Each was occupied by a body, covered by a white sheet. The two circular surgical-lights above both examination tables were switched off. A hospital-style gurney was parked next to a wall of body fridges. Dr. Hove was standing by the second examination table – the fixed one. She wore blue latex gloves and a long, white lab coverall over her regular clothes.
‘Robert, Carlos.’ She greeted each of them with a subdued head bob.
‘We have a note?’ Garcia asked, losing no time.
‘Come have a look and I’ll guide you through everything.’ Dr. Hove gestured them closer as she spoke.
Hunter and Garcia gloved up and approached the autopsy table. Dr. Hove reached over, grabbed the two top extremities of the white sheet that covered the body and pulled it down to the body’s waist.
‘Oh Jesus, Doc!’ Garcia gasped, his head jerking back slightly.
Hunter didn’t flinch.
The body on the table in front of them was that of Melissa Hawthorne, but her face was now incomplete. The entire lower jaw was missing.
As part of the post-mortem examination, Dr. Hove had to cut through what was left of skin, muscles, tendons and ligaments, and remove the mandible in its entirety to determine the extent of the damage caused by the fishing hook and the pressure exerted on her jaw.
‘What?’ Dr. Hove asked. ‘I thought you were at the crime scene.’
‘I was, but so was her jaw. Dislocated and hanging by a thread, but it was still there.’
‘You’ve seen… similar. I know that.’
‘Similar, yes,’ Garcia accepted. ‘But even you have to admit that this is something else.’
The doctor’s lips squeezed into a thin line. ‘Yes, this is definitely something else.’
‘So what have we got, Doc?’ Hunter asked.
‘Well,’ Dr. Hove began. ‘Just like Carlos mentioned, her mandible was severely dislocated. It was also fractured in nine different places.’
Garcia grimaced again.
‘I’m going to skip the whole anatomical explanation about ruptured muscles and what have you because none of that would really interest you, but this will.’ Dr. Hove guided their attention to something on a stainless steel worktop to her left. ‘Her tongue was deliberately severed. Not by the hook that was forced into her mouth, but by a sharp instrument, something like a scalpel or a pair of scissors. The cut was clean.’
Garcia peeked at Hunter, who kept his full attention on Dr. Hove. They both knew that a victim’s tongue being deliberately severed by a perpetrator could signify an act of revenge – payback for something that the victim had maybe said, or could’ve said.
‘What’s the official cause of death?’ Hunter asked.
‘It’s actually a combination. She half suffocated, half drowned – both in her own blood.’
‘Fuck!’ Garcia breathed out, momentarily closing his eyes.
‘The wound to her lower jaw was brutal,’ Dr. Hove explained. ‘Savagely so, and unfortunately, as I’m sure you already know, she was alive through it all.’
Hunter nodded once.
‘I have no doubt that she passed out from the sheer pain of the perforation,’ the doctor said. ‘Without anesthesia, no one would be strong enough to withstand that sort of pain.’ She drew everyone’s attention back to the body. ‘Despite the tremendous pain and the viciousness of the attack, the wound to her jaw didn’t kill her. What it did do was fill her mouth with blood… too much blood.’
Garcia uncomfortably shifted his weight from one foot to another.
‘In any other position,’ Dr. Hove added, ‘sitting down… laying down… standing up… whatever, she would’ve been able to spit out some of the blood from her mouth, but strung out through her jaw…’ To demonstrate, the doctor threw her head back as far as it could go. ‘This position is severely problematic for two reasons. One…’ She pointed to her own throat. ‘It constricts the throat, making swallowing anything, even saliva, a difficult job. Two – it creates a gravitational pull, so all the blood that inundated her mouth had nowhere else to go but down.’ She indicated with her index finger. ‘If she still had her tongue, she could’ve maybe moved it up and down, pushing some of the blood out of her mouth.’
‘But the tongue was gone,’ Garcia said, his eyes going back to the deformed face on the autopsy table.
Dr. Hove nodded. ‘Her tongue was gone. All the blood in her mouth had nowhere else to go but down to her already constricted throat. She swallowed some, of course, but it was too much blood. In time, it obstructed her respiratory system. Blood was found inside her lungs, just like water is found in the lungs of a drowning victim. Like I said, she partially drowned, partially suffocated. Her eyes were dotted with petechiae. Blood toxicology will still be a couple of days, but I suppose that she was sedated before being tied up.’
Silence ruled the room for a moment.
‘How long do you think she would’ve lasted before she finally suffocated?’ Hunter asked.
‘Not very long,’ Dr. Hove confirmed. ‘Just a matter of minutes, really, but even seconds would’ve felt like an eternity for her. The pain… the agony… the desperation to take in oxygen.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘This woman’s last few minutes on this planet were undoubtedly the most painful minutes of her entire life.’
Another silent moment went by before Garcia spoke.
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ he asked.
‘Not in the way that you are thinking. She wasn’t raped,’ Dr. Hove explained, as she turned to direct their attention to a strip of paper on the instruments trolley. ‘But this was left inside her vaginal canal.’
Hunter and Garcia approached the trolley.
The strip of paper contained a single, handwritten sentence:
‘Through these eyes, no one will ever look as perfect as you did.’