Chapter 7
They had chosen to use one of the meeting rooms offered by the hotel to go through the report. Byron had agreed with Abigail’s statement that something was unsettling about the idea of going through Jacob’s autopsy in the room they slept and ate in.
What she hadn’t expected, though, was that it was pretty much exactly as unsettling to be doing in the cold and impersonal meeting room the hotel employee had ushered them to.
The file sat between them, unopened. Abigail had barely registered that Byron had hit two birds with one stone when he had gone out for breakfast that morning, though she was glad he had convinced her to eat when he had because there was no way she wanted to eat after... after what she was about to read.
Or see...
Abigail’s stomach turned and she took a deep sip of the strong black coffee keeping her company. Contemplating what the report probably contained, she felt dirty. It felt like the ultimate invasion of privacy to be going through what she knew would be a pretty meticulous and detailed inventory of Jacob’s dead body. It wasn’t like she could get his permission, but it felt... wrong.
“So... how did?”
“Don’t ask that,” he said quickly. “I didn’t ask it, don’t you ask it either. When we’re done, it will go back to Peta in exactly the condition it’s in now and then it will have never happened—okay?”
Byron’s suddenly serious face brought her down to reality. People had taken risks to help her, but she couldn’t back out because it felt uncomfortable.
Abigail took a deep breath and nodded, “Yeah, I know. sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Byron said, “just needed to make sure that we’re clear.”
“We are,” Abigail said, “all the hovering is making me nervous. Can we just—?”
He reached for the file and opened it between them so they could read at the same time. A lot of the information was the same as what had been written on the death certificate they’d found—including the date of his death, when he had still been alive and well at Abigail’s bedside. Or, at least, she thought he had been.
Summary: John Doe reported by cleaning staff at 0530, processed and delivered to morgue at 1137, later identified as Jacob Givens based on room booking and credit card found in personal belongings. Autopsy performed by Henry Whittaker, assisted by Jaime Freeling.
Abigail swallowed hard. “If he was identified by the credit card in his personal belongings—how can he have been a John Doe?”
With a shrug, Byron turned the page and answered, “Honestly, it could have been a lot of things. The cops who attended might not have found it on the first sweep, or it may have been hidden inside a jacket lining and was only found when the coroner did his detailed search.”
“Right...”
“Now, the next pages are probably... not going to be nice,” Byron said.
Abigail glanced down from his face and saw a line about halfway down the page.
Condition of remains: full rigidity of joints and musculature, rigor mortis indicating a time of death of between eight and thirty-six hours, Livor mortis is fixed in the legs and distal upper extremities, general lividity indicates subject was not moved and was likely upright, no contact with hard surfaces or moved for several hours after death which is consistent with reports of being found hanging by the neck. Similarly consistent with hanging, extensive bruising around neck and swelling of —
She shuddered. “Yeah, uh, I mean, are you okay to read it? Will you be able to tell... anything?”
Byron shrugged. “I’m not a med tech, but I can look over it and see if anything stands out. Peta said to me that nothing struck her as out of the ordinary except how long the report took to be filed.”
Nodding, Abigail fiddled with the paper clip at the top of the page and caused several photographs to protrude from the side of the folder. She cocked her head and pulled them out.
“Are you sure…?” Byron asked, hesitantly.
“Yeah,” she replied, “I can’t tell you why but I’m less afraid of the photos than I am of reading about it in detail...”
Byron helped her detach the rest of the photos from the file and handed them over.
Now I just have to look at them, she thought as she took the stack from him and swallowed hard against the nausea that was hinting at the back of her mind.
“Do you want me to let you know anything I find interesting, or will you ask specific questions?”
The question confused her for a second, and as she looked up at him, she turned the words over in her mind.
“I… I mean, I don’t really know what I’d be asking,” she said, “If you see something that might be… enlightening, then tell me. Otherwise, just read and summarize.”
He nodded solemnly and turned his attention back to the page in front of him.
The photographs were somehow both more and less detailed than she had been expecting, though her only experience with autopsies was from TV shows that she was pretty certain took plenty of liberties with the truth. Each photograph was an extreme close-up of Jacob’s body, but the quality wasn’t quite what she had expected. Abigail had forgotten what photographs were like when she was young, and even though these would be some of the best resolution—she assumed—it was strange to think how much detail might have shown up if they had been digital with modern technology.
As it was, each photo only covered a few square inches. The largest portion photographed in one go was his hands and feet. His feet were a dark reddish purple, she noted, and she shuddered as she remembered what lividity meant from an episode of something where it was important. Abigail looked away and fixed her gaze on the far wall, silently counting backwards from ten.
Was what she was doing weird? The question had been bugging her since she decided it was what she wanted to do and the answer was yes, obviously, but a part of her also felt strongly that she would be doing her friend a disservice if she didn’t at least look into her concerns… right?
With the panic ebbing, she turned back to the photos and laid them out on the table in front of her. She tried to line up the photographed portions of the body as close to reality as she could. When she spotted a nervous glance from Byron at the glass door to the meeting room, she quickly repositioned herself to block visibility of the gruesome sight from anyone walking by.
Something looked strange… his hairline surely wasn’t that bad in high school, right? Maybe that happened in death? She’d heard about the skin relaxing in older folks, making their wrinkles smooth out, but this?
“You look confused,” Byron said, interrupting her train of thought.
“It’s just… his forehead doesn’t match…”
“His forehead doesn’t match?” Byron repeated as a question.
“Yeah,” Abigail said, “my memories… I mean, I know that sounds weird.”
Byron shrugged before going back to his reading, “Weird all right.”
The next photos in the stack made her wince. Each was a close-up of one of his eyes. They had always been a startling shade of blue, and these irises staring back at her now were no different despite the bright flash. She placed the photos down and continued to make her way down the body, but something was bugging her.
She pulled out her phone, opened a new search tab, and typed while hoping her account wasn’t somehow linked with the twins’ to mess up their search history.
Search: pupils are muscles?
Yes, they are.
Search: all muscles affected rigor mortis?
She winced at some of the details in those results and quickly changed her question.
Search: eye muscles affected rigor mortis?
“Hmm,” she said quietly, “That report said rigor mortis in full effect, right?”
“Uh,” Byron said, flipping pages, “yeah, why?”
Search: how long pupils stay constricted rigor mortis?
“I just... this is odd, right?” she said, “this pupil is bigger than that one...”
Byron leaned over to look at the photos closely, “Yeah, it is...”
She scrolled through some results and sighed as she came to a stop.
“Ah... apparently that can happen,” she said, “or they can become oval-shaped. Why does that freak me out so much?”
With a chuckle, Byron shook his head, “Because death is weird and people are weird about death?”
“Sure,” she said, closing all the tabs and hoping she wasn’t on some kind of list now.
The mosaic of photographs took a few more minutes to complete, but she kept coming back to the eyes. There were still a handful of photographs left but the picture in front of her wasn’t missing anything major.
“Answer me honestly... does it sound completely crazy that I still don’t think his forehead matches?”
She flipped through the remaining photos and found one of both eyes open and staring. Byron was studying the photos on the table closely and in silence. That was when it struck her.
“The light! The light is different! Look!”
She slapped the photo of both eyes down on the mosaic face that looked less and less like a real person to her.
“Could be a different flash?” he suggested.
“No, look, this is super cool tones,” she pointed at the photos of the skin and forehead, “but these ones? This is warm, like almost a yellow lightbulb... and... do you see that? It looks like a window in the reflection. That can’t be right.”
He picked up the photograph and held it close to his face, “I have to say these eyes... don’t look like dead eyes.”
“Right!? I thought I was losing my mind!” she exclaimed, thankful he had said it first.
Byron picked up the wider shot from where she had discarded it, “and look—this wider shot, the pupils are the same.”
The pair stared at the three photographs in tense silence, thoughts racing through Abigail’s mind and her stomach twisting in anxious knots.
“Pupils change, though, after death, right?” she said, “we might be jumping to conclusions.”
“What about the forehead doesn’t match?” Byron asked, meeting her gaze.
Abigail shifted a little uncomfortably. “It… it kind of looks like his hairline is receding—and it wasn’t when I knew him. Plus, it just looks, I dunno, too wide.”
“But the eyes are definitely his? And the mouth?”
He reached for the picture of a pair of lips that Abigail had kissed probably hundreds of times in their sweetheart romance.
“Yeah, for sure,” she replied with mixed feelings.
“I have never seen autopsy photos quite like this before,” Byron said, shaking his head, “I don’t know if it means anything but… these shots of the eyes and mouth, I think they’re on different paper.”
She cocked her head to one side and reached for one of the other photos on the table, flinching as she realized the closest one to her was the left hand.
“You’re right,” she said as she studied the finish on each photo, “this one is far glossier… and—”
A memory popped up in her mind, not a lost memory resurfacing or painful one—well, not painful for her at least.
“What?” Byron asked, “You just realized something.”
Slowly, she looked up from the dark purple hand that she had avoided looking at closely because the knowledge of what caused it made her nauseous. She needed to get a stronger stomach because she was holding the only evidence she would have needed to know that this was not the body of Jacob Givens.
“In junior year, we took wood shop together,” she said, “we made breadboxes and cutting boards, and for that, we needed to use the table saw. We were supposed to wear these anti-slip, anti-cut gloves, but Jacob’s hands were too big for any of the pairs the school owned, so he promised to be careful. He was not careful. He slipped and sliced off the top of his middle finger on his left hand. All the way to the bone—he only had about half his nailbed left.”
Abigail turned the photograph around to show Byron, whoever this was who had hanged himself all those years ago had all his fingertips.