Monday Mourning

LAMANCHE CIRCLED THE TABLE AND I HANDED HIM THE LENS. He studied Parent’s dentition, then spoke without straightening.

“A feather.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

LaManche used forceps to transfer the feather to a plastic vial. Then he spread Parent’s jaws and examined her back teeth.

“I see no others.” Muffled through his mask.

“Luma-Lite?”

“Please.” He turned to the autopsy technician. “Lisa?”

As I dug the apparatus from a closet, Lisa transferred Parent to a gurney and rolled her next door to the X-ray room. By the time I rejoined them, she had also collected the granny gown and spread it on the X-ray table.

While LaManche and I donned orange-tinted plastic goggles, Lisa hooked up the Luma-Lite, an alternate light source composed of a black box and an enhanced blue fiber-optic cable. With it, we would be able to see trace evidence invisible to the naked eye.

“Ready?” Lisa asked.

LaManche nodded.

Lisa slipped on her goggles and hit the light switch.

In the dark, the pathologist began scanning Parent’s nightie. Here and there hairs lit up like tiny white wires. Lisa tweezed and transferred them into a plastic vial.

When we’d finished with the gown, LaManche turned to the corpse. Slowly, the light crept over Parent’s feet and legs. It probed the hills and valleys of her pubis, belly, rib cage, and breasts. Lit the hollow at the base of her throat.

Nothing glowed but a few more hairs.

“They look identical to her head hair,” I said.

“Yes,” LaManche agreed.

Parent’s hands and fingernails yielded nothing. Her eyes, nostrils, and ears were clean.

Then the beam entered the dark recess of the woman’s mouth.

“Bonjour,” Lisa said in the darkness.

One molar sparked like phosphorous along the gum line.

“That’s not a hair,” I said.

Lisa withdrew the thing with forceps.

Though we worked another thirty minutes in the dark, our efforts produced only two more hairs, both fine and wavy like those of the victim.

When Lisa restored the lights, LaManche and I headed back to the autopsy room. There he opened the molar vial and examined the contents under magnification. It seemed a decade until he spoke.

“It is another feather fragment.”

LaManche and I exchanged glances, identical suspicions crossing our minds.

At that moment, Lisa reappeared with Mrs. Parent. LaManche crossed to the gurney. I followed.

Grasping the tissue firmly, LaManche rolled the woman’s upper lip upward. The inner surface appeared normal.

When LaManche pulled Parent’s lower lip downward, I could see tiny horizontal lacerations marring the smooth purple flesh. Each corresponded to the position of a lower incisor.

Using thumb and forefinger, the pathologist spread Parent’s left eyelids. Then her right. Both eyes showed petechia, pinpoint red dots and blotching of the sclera and conjunctiva.

“Asphyxia,” I said, terrible images filling my thoughts.

I pictured this woman alone in her bed. Her safe place. Her refuge. A silhouette looming in the darkness. Fingers wrapping her throat. Oxygen hunger. Heart-pounding terror.

“Petechial hemorrhage can be caused by many things, Temperance. Its presence indicates little more than capillary rupture.”

“Resulting from sudden increase in vascular congestion in the head,” I said.

“Yes,” LaManche said.

“As in strangulation,” I said.

“Petechiae can occur due to coughing, sneezing, vomiting, straining at stool, laboring in childbirth—”

“I doubt this woman was having a baby.”

LaManche continued speaking as he probed Parent’s throat with a gloved finger.

“—foreign object obstruction, gagging, swelling of the airway linings.”

“Are you seeing indications of any of those?”

LaManche raised his eyes to mine.

“I have barely begun my external exam.”

“She could have been smothered.”

“There are no scratches, no broken nails, no signs of violence or of a defensive struggle.” More to himself than to me.

“She could have been smothered in her sleep. With a pillow.” I was verbalizing thoughts as they were forming in my head. “A pillow would leave no marks. A pillow would explain the feathers in her mouth and the cuts on her lip.”

“Coarse petechiae aren’t uncommon in corpses found prone with the head at a level lower than the rest of the body.”

“The lividity on her back and shoulders suggests she died face up.”

LaManche straightened. “Detective Ryan promised scene photos this afternoon.”

For a moment our gazes locked. Then I lowered my mask and told LaManche the story of Mrs. Parent.

The sad old eyes held mine. Then, “I appreciate your bringing the victim’s involvement with you to my attention. I will take extra care in performing my internal examination.”

The statement was unnecessary. I knew LaManche would be as meticulous with Mrs. Parent as he was with every corpse he studied, prime minister or petty thief. Pierre LaManche refused to acknowledge unexplained death.

By ten-thirty I’d unwrapped the bundled remains recovered from the second depression in the pizza parlor basement.