Chapter 19
THE MORGUE HAS BEEN UNCHARACTERISTICALLY busy lately, with victims from a recent three-car accident adding to the tedious job of identifying and sorting the body parts from the haunted house crime scene.
All the techs and even Wren herself are feeling the effects of being overworked.
At times it seems as if they’re just floating through each task together.
“Can you start on reflecting the scalp for this one?” Wren asks Cheyenne, pointing to one of two bodies in the autopsy suite. At least one will be having a brain removal done, and that adds a bit more time to an already busy day.
“On it!” Cheyenne nods, making her way to the other side of the room to start collecting tools.
“Thank you,” Wren says, removing a layer of gloves to scratch her nose, which has been a source of irritation for at least the past two hours. The relief is indescribable.
Sighing, she looks around at everyone working like a well-oiled machine. The exhaustion is showing only in their faces, not in their work, and for that, she is grateful to this team.
“Remember, guys, if you need a break, take it. We don’t want careless mistakes because we are ignoring body cues,” she says, then notices the doorbell sound indicating that someone from a funeral home has arrived for transport.
Looking up at the surveillance monitor, she can see it’s Stan, and she can’t help but shake her head, remembering how quickly her techs had indicted him as a murderer without real merit.
Watching him struggle to push the maintenance cart past the threshold while also keeping the heavy morgue door open is indication enough to Wren that her first instinct about his innocence is correct.
For a moment she mentally breaks down what other pickups should be happening today so she can have Gavin or Cheyenne put them at the front of the fridge.
Doing so would hopefully eliminate the need for a transporter to have to call them for help with anything other than paperwork.
To avoid getting backed up, they need to keep the process as orderly as possible.
The week prior, there were a few mishaps that put them behind, and they found themselves having to race to catch up. She never relishes having to tell families that their loved one’s autopsy has been delayed. When you lose someone, especially to violent means, closure is that much more important.
Sabrina approaches Wren, placing a file into her open hand. “So we got the sample of adhesive from Melissa’s mouth,” she says.
Wren nods, opening the file and beginning to look through the notes and photos. “Thanks for handling that, Sabrina.”
“Well, it was pretty generic super glue, so it really wasn’t helpful, unfortunately.
” She pauses, pointing at a slightly blurry photo attached to the report.
The newer techs sometimes need time to gain confidence and lose their shaky hands.
“But there was something very interesting inside her mouth.”
Wren looks down at the photo, which shows two pairs of silver pins holding Melissa’s jaw shut, one set placed diagonally across from the other.
A closer look reveals to Wren’s trained eye that they are needle injector pins.
They are used to keep a deceased’s mouth from falling open at an inopportune time, like during a wake.
“These … these were under the adhesive?” Wren asks. She suddenly feels immense guilt for leaving such a big task to a tech and not overseeing the entire autopsy herself. Her mind whirls, and before she can question Sabrina any further, it suddenly hits her.
She rushes to the computer, quickly bringing up a previous case and scanning the photos. “Cheyenne and Gavin, come over here, please,” she says, a slight tremble to her voice as the anticipation begins to bubble up.
They stop what they’re doing, laying their tools in their metal trays with a series of clinks before they approach the computer. She takes a deep breath, deciding to start at the beginning.
“Do you remember the body from last week that we had to get a tissue sample from after it had already been partially embalmed?” she asks.
They both nod, looking at her with confusion.
“Yeah, that mess was their fault, right?” Gavin asks.
Wren nods in confirmation. “Do you remember when I opened the patient’s mouth?” she asks. She’s barely able to contain the now-brewing anger, the disbelief, inside her.
“Oh yeah, they had done that extra set of wire pins, kind of diagonally, right?” he asks.
“You taught me the trick to getting them out cleanly,” Cheyenne adds.
Wren gestures to the photos on the computer screen from the case she is referencing, drawing their gazes to the unique diagonal pins in that person’s gums, placed with extra care.
Before they can ask anything more, she holds up the photos showing the pins placed in the same unique way in Melissa’s mouth. The pins ensured her mouth didn’t fall open, didn’t ruin the tableau.
She can see the recognition on their faces, the way both of their eyes ignite as they stare at the killer’s clear mistake.
Wren knows exactly one person with mortuary experience who adds two extra needle injector pins to bodies, diagonally, to provide a better and more sturdy closure.
Someone who has a great fear that their body’s mouth will accidentally fall open and ruin a viewing.
Of course, Melissa must have been of particular importance judging by the way he made damn sure that her jaw, slacked by her brutal death, wouldn’t embarrass him at her final viewing.
You don’t need to justify it, Wyatt.
Wren can hear herself say it.
She can see that awkward smile on his face, and now, with the power of hindsight, she can reinterpret his defensiveness as fear. When Wren commented on his technique, it made him nervous. He fucked up and left something that could be tied back to him.
Did he know it then?
He must have. That’s why he’d covered it up, tried to bury it with that stupid story about the crying ghost. It all makes so much sense to her now, but at the same time, absolutely none of it makes sense.
Why would Wyatt do this? Why would he brutalize this young woman and then set up her body with religious elements?
“What funeral home was that body from?” Gavin asks suddenly, his face going pale.
Wren looks up, swallowing hard. “Someone get Detective Leroux here now.”
John barges in, startling everyone in the room everyone except Wren, who always expects him to barge. Now he’s tying his gown on backward and trying to shuffle a foot into a protective bootie.
“I still hate it here. So this better be good,” he says gruffly.
Wren’s eyebrow raises of its own accord. She looks back at the techs. “You didn’t fill him in?”
Gavin shrugs. “We wanted you to do the honors.”
“Someone tell me, or you can add another autopsy to the docket today,” John growls, glancing at the bodies on the tables. The techs wheeled in Melissa’s body so they could double-check their theory. Now she’s wedged between two other gurneys.
Wren launches right in. “There are a couple of mortuary techniques to keep a decedent’s mouth closed during a wake. One of those techniques is to use something called a needle injector, which shoots pins attached to wires into the gums. You twist them together to keep the jaws shut.”
“Fascinating shit,” he says dryly.
“Using more than two pins is not standard.” She ignores him. “It’s not unheard of, but it’s not standard.” She lifts Melissa’s upper lip to reveal the pins. “Melissa had her jaw wired shut with a needle injector.”
Now he’s interested. “Well, it looks like you know how to bury a lede too, huh? I’ll put in a good word for you at the PR firm.
” He grins, and she rolls her eyes at him.
“So this is probably someone who works in a funeral home,” he says, looking closer.
The crinkling of his nose is visible to her even under his mask.
“Yes, or at the very least someone who is familiar with embalming practices.” Just then, a tech hits the switch on a bone saw, making it whir to life sharply. It startles John, who jumps slightly at the sound. “That’s not the reason we called you, though,” Wren says.
The saw turns off, and she walks around to the other side of the table to stand across from him.
“Can you turn off the fucking music, please?” John raises his voice above it, turning to the techs.
Wren hadn’t realized that they’d been cycling through a Beatles playlist without turning down the volume or turning it off.
Right now, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” mocks them, Paul McCartney’s voice yelling over and over that “life goes on.”
It doesn’t, Paul.
Cheyenne rushes over to the computer, muting it without a word.
“Last week I had a body come back for tissue sampling, and it came from Walden Funeral Home. The pin placement was exactly the same. Needle injector, two extra pins on the diagonal. I even commented on it, John.”
“And?” he asks earnestly.
“It was done by Wyatt DuPont, one of their morticians. I talk to him when he comes for transport, and when I mentioned those extra pins recently, he got cagey and defensive.”
“Holy shit.” John steps back, nearly slamming into a light that has been pulled down close to Melissa’s body.
“He was completely thrown off that I had taken note of his … unique approach to embalming,” she says, unable to take her eyes off Melissa.
“And like you said, this is not standard, right?” he asks, shifting into detective mode with ease.
Wren shakes her head. “Obviously it’s not like a fingerprint, but it’s a pretty signature technique. I have only seen him do it in all my time here.”
For a moment, they stand there, silent, listening only to each other’s breaths and the low hum of machines and refrigerators.
“You know, Andrew told me you would get the answers.” He looks up at Wren, shaking his head, almost in disbelief.