Chapter 23
The time was a few minutes shy of noon. Skip had just left with the body.
Colt and I would be right on his heels, heading to the medical examiner’s office to remove the bag from the body and hopefully get an identification on our victim.
With the bag removed, we would also be able to determine the time and cause of death.
From there, we planned to get that envelope to our forensics lab to see the contents.
I stood with Donaghy, who was letting me know that the Midwest patrol guys walking and searching the back alley, dumpsters, and surrounding areas had found exactly nothing.
He also told me that his men interviewing employees weren’t having much luck in the way of leads.
We didn’t have any employees who weren’t accounted for, and nobody had reported seeing anything or anyone questionable around the store.
“Are you ready?” Colt asked as he walked up. “I’m ready to roll when you are.”
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said.
“Do you need us to clear you a path to get out of here?” Donaghy asked. “It’s pretty thick out front with news vans, reporters, and gawkers.”
“I’ve got red and blues,” I said. “And a horn and siren if that doesn’t work.”
“Well, let me know if you need us,” Donaghy said. “We should be wrapped up here in a couple hours. I’ll give you a shout if we end up finding anything.”
“Thanks, Donaghy,” I said. “I hate to dump this scene on you and bail but…”
He held up a hand. “Nah, nah. Don’t worry about it. We all saw the guy. This isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill thing. We’ll be fine here. Let me know what you find out with the body and letter, though.”
“Will do,” I said.
Colt and I left the alley and headed for the front.
We split up near the fire lane, with Colt walking to his truck and me to my Explorer.
As I walked to my cruiser, a couple of reporters caught a glimpse of me and started shouting questions.
The reporters were being followed by cameras and their crews.
Some other people jogged toward me as I got into the cruiser and quickly fired the motor.
I backed from my parking space and had to slam the brakes as the backup camera caught some guy in a suit and with a microphone who was trying to run behind my vehicle.
I hit the red and blue lights and inched forward as a crowd formed in front of my cruiser. Some people moved, and some didn’t.
“Move!” I waved my hand left and right toward the windshield, thinking that might work to clear the reporters and camera crews.
It didn’t, so I hit the siren, which was pretty damn ear-piercing at such a close distance.
The siren seemed to do the trick, and I wove through the people and hit the exit to the lot.
I caught up to Colt at a red light up the street, and we made our way to the county medical examiner’s office in about twenty minutes.
Colt led us through the main entrance doors, and we were greeted by the usual couple-of- degrees-too-cold temperature and commercial-cleaning chemical smell.
Jenny at the front office told us that Skip was waiting on us, and we found him in the autopsy room.
Sheets were draped over an additional pair of bodies in two of the workstations.
On a table in front of Skip, at a workstation near the back, lay our victim, still wrapped up in the bag.
The man was on his side and in roughly the same seated position that we’d found him.
As Colt and I headed to the workstation where Skip had our victim, I noticed that the smell was thicker than normal. Instinctively, I placed a knuckle beneath my nose to keep the stench of death from my airways.
“Hey, guys. Sorry about the smell,” Skip said. “We had a woman in here overnight that… You know what, just forget it. You don’t need the details. There’s a tub of menthol rub over there if you need to put some under your nose.”
I didn’t think there was enough menthol rub on the planet, and certainly not enough in the little tub that Skip pointed at, to kill the smell. I planned to not breathe then burn my clothing afterward.
“How do you want to go about it?” Skip asked Colt.
“Remove the envelope then the bag,” Colt said.
“Get the stuff bagged and tagged as evidence. Then we’ll get a look at our victim.
See if we can determine COD and TOD. Check his person to see what he has on him.
See if we can get an identity. Then we need to get that envelope back to the forensics lab to see what we have with it. ”
“Sounds like a plan,” Skip said.
“Do you have a suit for me?” Colt asked. “Otherwise, I can grab one from my truck.”
“You know where they are,” Skip said.
As Colt went to gear up, I had a better look at what I could see of the man.
Like Colt had said, there weren’t any signs of defensive wounds on the man’s hands or knuckles.
There didn’t appear to be anything like skin beneath his nails.
The man’s jeans were pretty clean aside from some blood on his right leg near his pants pocket.
“Anything jump out at you, Skip?” I asked.
“No drag marks on his boots,” Skip said. “I would have to think that someone carried him back to that dumpster. Or, you know, at least carried him from a vehicle to where we found him.”
“What do you think this guy weighs?” I gave the body a look. “Maybe one seventy-five?”
“Probably pretty close,” Skip said. “So, we’d be looking for someone physically capable of moving that much dead weight.”
“Meaning a woman is probably out. Not that I really was banking on a woman being responsible for whatever this is,” I said.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t imagine so. Other than that, it looks like his wallet is still in his back pocket. But I don’t think he has a phone on him.”
Colt stepped out of the room that he’d gone into, now wearing a white clean room suit. He grabbed a set of blue nitrile gloves from a box near a different workstation and came to my side. “Do we have evidence bags?”
Skip fetched him some.
“Thanks, Skip,” Colt said. “Let’s start with a scalpel. I’m going to cut the bag around the tape that is holding the envelope down.”
Skip passed over a scalpel, and Colt removed the envelope. He placed it into an evidence bag and sealed it. With the envelope placed to the side, it was time to remove the bag and see what we had beneath.
“We’re going to have to cut this tape,” Colt said. “But I want to do it so that we can preserve as much of all this as possible.”
Before Colt made his cuts, Colt and Skip briefly discussed where to slice the tape. Once finished, he set the scalpel down.
“We’re going to have to lift this guy a bit to get the bag off, eh?” I asked.
“Are you volunteering?” Skip asked.
Apparently, I was. I gloved up and did my best to position my hands beneath the man’s torso to get him off the table enough for Colt to remove the bag.
“Damn,” Skip said. “This bag is stuck to his head. One second.”
I didn’t bother to look at what Skip was doing, I just kept the man’s torso up while I did my best not to breathe.
“Got it,” Skip said.
The bag came free with a screech that sounded like packaging tape being pulled from the roll.
“You can let him down,” Skip said.
I did, then Colt placed the garbage bag that had been removed into an evidence bag. My eyes went to the man on the table. I saw something familiar looking. It wasn’t the man himself but the wound to his head.
“Looks just like the guy from the storage unit,” Skip said.
I agreed.