Chapter 14
WREN PULLS ON A DISPOSABLE gown and catches her reflection in the mirror.
She looks exhausted, but why shouldn’t she?
She had hoped beyond hope that this case would somehow turn out differently, that these girls would get home alive to the people who loved them.
It kills her that it’s too late for Melissa and that Beth is still out there with the clock ticking.
Getting the call that Melissa had been found posed as a prop in a sick little haunt is just another example of the way humans will always fail each other.
Every ounce of humanity she has ever seen is counteracted the second she clocks in to work.
She sees the worst that people do to one another, and, unfortunately, the ante only seems to get upped each time she ties on a gown.
Her mind is still reeling from the previous evening’s visit with Dr. Price.
She sensed there’s something he hasn’t shared yet, something that’s fighting to stay locked up inside him.
John sensed it too, and he always knows when someone is hiding information.
He’s like a human bullshit detector, easily able to clock liars and withholders.
She really can’t blame Dr. Price for keeping things close to his chest. After all, they were digging into territory in which even he wasn’t comfortable. She just hopes he fully opens up soon. Unfortunately, they don’t have a lot of time.
As she slides another pair of gloves over the first, she hears the techs preparing the room just beyond the dressing area’s thick, windowless door.
They are moving quickly, probably anticipating her heightened need for order inside the autopsy suite.
Music plays from within, a soft, muffled version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles.
It must be Cheyenne’s day to choose the playlist.
Wren finishes her preparation and walks toward the door, snapping her mask over her head. Everyone gets a little quieter, a little busier, when she enters the suite.
“Thanks for prepping her, guys,” she says, making her way to the table where the techs have laid out her tools for the autopsy.
She looks them over, exchanging the new set of forceps for an older one.
For some reason, the new polished metal feels too smooth and slippery to her.
She likes the worn-in pair, especially now that she has altered how she uses them to account for the bend in the metal that won’t ever go away, no matter how many times they try to straighten it out.
She approaches Melissa’s body to begin an external examination and notes that a blue cloth has been placed over where her eyes should be.
She’s grateful for that small act of consideration by her staff—it’s disconcerting enough to have an open set of eyes blankly staring at endless nothing while she’s performing an autopsy.
She imagines being tracked by an empty set of orbitals would somehow be worse.
She removes the cloth for a moment, taking note of the lack of substantial blood or clotting in the wounds.
She breathes a sigh of relief at the fact that the eye removal was likely done very close to when, or more likely after, Melissa was killed.
It appears that the killer painted a tear-like pattern down her cheeks, as though she were crying tears of blood.
Dipping a brush in the blood of a victim and painting it on them is a perversion Wren hasn’t come across before, one she could have gone her whole career without knowing.
There is a significant wound on Melissa’s head that they didn’t initially see since it was cleverly covered by the habit she was dressed in at the scene.
It’s a blunt force wound, and Wren quickly realizes, her blood turning to ice, that it looks like a hammer blow.
Wren clocks that the hit was very nearly fatal but not quite.
Melissa would have been quickly incapacitated by the force, as it created a notable hematoma on the left side of her skull that bled enough to cause her hair to mat.
Her long blond hair is dirty, caked with dried blood and leaves.
Wren removes some of the debris with tweezers, placing it into bags and confirming there aren’t any other wounds to Melissa’s head.
While the skull injury would have rendered Melissa unconscious, the real cause of death is likely related to the deep strangulation marks that encircle her throat.
Wren can see three different marks, as if the tool used circled that many times around, an inescapable nightmare of a death.
Based on the depth of the marks and the way they cut into the skin, causing an occurrence of active bleeding, it looks like the killer used either a wire or a cord of some sort to strangle her.
Melissa was alive, her heart beating and pumping blood, when something was looped very tightly around her neck.
Melissa’s mouth was closed when she was found in the haunted house display, and initially any suspicions about that were cast aside as an effect of the deep-set rigor mortis her body was in.
But now, with Melissa’s time of death well past twenty-four hours, rigor has started to break, and her mouth remains shut tight.
Wren looks at the dark blood that has hardened on her lips, and she runs her gloved finger across the bottom one, revealing what appears to be some sort of glue holding them closed.
So that’s why.
Wren prepares a scalpel. She tears open a new blade, clicking it into place on the scalpel handle, taking care not to slice herself in the process.
Even after all this time, she makes sure to stay alert whenever she changes scalpel blades.
She’s had enough trips to occupational health and spur-of-the-moment tetanus shots to realize that carelessness and the potential time saved by rushing is simply not worth it in the end.
She gestures at the techs, who are labeling containers and marking up a large sheet of paper on which the innards will be displayed. “Take a look at this,” she says, placing the scalpel down on Melissa’s chest and pointing to her mouth.
Melissa’s tightly closed lips make her appear both peaceful and unnatural in equal measure.
It reminds Wren of viewings at funeral homes, where the deceased always appear to be sleeping, wearing a carefully crafted expression of serenity on their faces.
It’s when the veil slips—and you remember they won’t be waking up—that it becomes unnatural.
“Are her lips … glued shut?” Cheyenne asks, leaning closer to Melissa’s body, a look of horror twisting her expression.
Gavin shakes his head, moving in next to Cheyenne and craning his neck to see. “Man, who does shit like this?”
“Does it ever get easier to see this kind of stuff?” Cheyenne asks, unable to tear her gaze away.
Wren shakes her head, pursing her own lips instinctually.
“It gets easier to compartmentalize it, but it never gets easier to accept it.” She looks down at the body again.
The dried blood on Melissa’s mouth tells a tale of horror in her last hours.
A visual assault begins in Wren’s mind. Pictures of torture and pain flip by.
She blinks them away, swallowing hard as she lands back in the present.
“The things people do to each other are monstrous.”
“And it could be anybody,” Cheyenne says quietly, almost under her breath.
Gavin makes an exaggerated shivering motion with his shoulders, jumping on the opportunity to tease. “What if it’s someone we see every day? Someone who works here?”
Cheyenne’s eyes bulge from their sockets, a subtle smirk playing at her lips.
“Oh my Lord, do you think it’s Stan from maintenance?
He’s always asking me if I still have a boyfriend.
” She turns, starting to prepare the scale that will soon weigh organs one by one.
“That guy is creepy as hell. Makes my skin crawl.”
“Stan does live alone, you know,” Gavin says, nodding as if he cracked the case wide open.
Wren can hear them, but it’s as if they are far away, maybe even underground. It’s all muffled around her. She finds herself stuck in an anxiety loop—probably a by-product of getting no sleep.
“Guys, come on,” she says, shaking her head and trying to rattle her thoughts to get some clarity. “We can’t start going all 1600s Salem here. Besides, Stan can barely push a maintenance cart without help. There’s no way he’s responsible for this.”
Gavin raises an eyebrow, teasing Wren with an elbow to the ribs. “Ah, but see? Made you think about it, didn’t I?”
Wren gives him a look. “Let’s just do our jobs, please. What’s the first rule here?” she asks the room.
Without looking up from what she’s doing, Cheyenne yells, “Don’t put your lunch in the organ storage fridge!”
Gavin laughs, and Wren can’t help but chuckle and shake her head. Normally their inability to stay serious for more than three minutes would irritate her to no end, but tonight she welcomes the distraction from reality. “Okay, I walked into that one.”
“You ran headfirst into that one, boss,” Gavin says through a laugh.
“Sorry, what was the question? I’m ready to be serious,” Cheyenne says.
“Not my problem you didn’t hear it,” Wren says flatly.
Gavin answers without looking up. “Have no preconceived notions when walking through that door.”
“Exactly. We let Melissa talk to us, not the other way around,” Wren says, moving the light above the table into a better position.
“You’re right. Sorry, boss,” Cheyenne says, giving herself a little shimmy to get back to business.
“So one reasonable thing we can assume here is that there was antemortem torture, right?” Wren looks at Gavin expectantly.
Gavin nods, leaning over slightly to take in more of the picture. “Correct, and there is definitely evidence of strangulation with an instrument of some kind.”
“Yes, absolutely.” Wren runs a gloved finger over the markings on Melissa’s neck again. “We just need to determine if that’s the cause of death or if there’s something else lurking under the surface.”
“Are we running a full panel?” Gavin asks, walking toward the computer, ready to send out an order.
“Yes. There is so much going on here that I wouldn’t be surprised if he used some kind of substance to try to keep her compliant.”
Wren allows herself to really look at Melissa, taking in her features as they would be in life.
She tries to put her back together again in her mind, to repaint her into the person she was before she came to be on this table.
It’s a part of her process, because corpses all begin to look the same after some time.
Their skin fades and thins, their eyes dry up, and their hair loses its shine and volume.
Everyone turns into a husk and then a skeleton in the end, but before that, they are uniquely themselves.
Melissa has beautiful lips with a deep Cupid’s bow. It’s a rare trait, and one that likely gave her smile a striking quality. Her jaw is strong, making her profile one to be admired.
“The wound to her skull looks like it was done out of necessity more than anything else. Maybe he lured her somewhere, but she fought or resisted, and he had to strike her in the head as a plan B.”
“How can you tell?” Cheyenne asks, genuine curiosity in her eyes. She walks around the head of the table, using a gloved hand to probe a bit at the wound in Melissa’s head.
“Well, for one,” Wren begins, feeling at ease in her environment, “there are not multiple blows. If you want to kill someone with blows to the head, you are going to do it more than once, right?”
Cheyenne puffs out a breath, nodding. “Well, I suppose you would, yes.”
“And the position of the wound on the side of her head here? It looks like something you would inflict while in a confrontational position, yeah?”
“Oh yes, if someone was in front of you and you swung like this.” Cheyenne makes a move like she’s swinging a weapon at Gavin’s head.
Gavin grabs her arm before she gets far. “You would never get the jump on me like that,” he says teasingly.
Wren smiles, prodding the wound. “To me, it initially looked like a hammer blow, but now I think it looks like maybe a heavy flashlight caused this. See the way it’s shaped?”
Gavin and Cheyenne both lean closer, their eyes focusing on where Wren’s gloved finger points to a deep ridged pattern that lines the wound.
“And you would probably use a weapon of convenience like that if you were trying to stun someone, huh?” Gavin asks.
Wren nods. “Exactly. And I bet we will see even more evidence of this when we open up the skull and take a look at her brain.”
Cheyenne grabs the skull key and bone saw, placing them on the small silver tray beside the table.
She slides a block under the base of Melissa’s head, elevating her to a height where they can easily perform the brain removal.
“We are getting an education here tonight, folks,” she says, cracking her knuckles.
“Settle in. We’re going to be here for a while,” Wren says, taking one last look at Melissa before they open her up and dig for answers.