Chapter 4
Unger called Dave Mann, the county medical examiner, while Samuels drove.
They had spent an hour searching the beach without much luck—it was too dark to spot anything on the sand or shoreline.
Using driftwood, they taped off a hundred-foot square around the location where the leg was found and called it a night.
The plan was to send the daytime team out at first light to do a more thorough search.
If the beach needed to be closed for the day, they would do that too.
After speaking with Dave, Unger and Samuels were en route to drop off the unusual find at the ME’s office.
It needed to be kept cool so it wouldn’t deteriorate further.
Dave would, if possible, come up with a time of death, but finding human remains in water, especially cold water, meant the results could be skewed dramatically.
The detectives arrived at the medical examiner’s office at three thirty in the morning and presented him with the evidence bag containing the leg.
“I’m going to refrigerate this until morning to stop the decomp. I’ll give it a closer look when I’m wide awake. Besides that, if it washed ashore, I’d venture to say that the rest of the woman isn’t in the best condition either. I’ll give the captain a call tomorrow with my evaluation.”
The three of them left—Dave to go home to bed and the detectives to the precinct to finish their shift.