Anya left the operating theater an hour and a half later, with three surgical teams still fighting to save Sophie Goodwin’s life. In the change room she took a few minutes to wash her face in cold water and absorb exactly what she had witnessed.
Never before had she seen injuries so severe on a survivor. It was the degree of trauma that might be found following a fatal road trauma or plane crash.
Despite all the years of pathology and examining wounds, it was difficult to accept that a human being had done this to a young girl. She could only imagine the pain the sister had gone through before dying.
She was grateful for the way the gynecologist had not hesitated to take the vaginal swabs while examining Sophie, who remained unaware of the bodily trauma thanks to the anesthetic. Anya had managed to collect important samples while the vascular team tried to repair the massive neck wound. She included clippings and scraping from fingernails along with a short dark strand of hair from Sophie’s sparsely blonde pubic region. Each item was meticulously labeled.
Anya did not want to make any mistake with these specimens.
Unusually, none of the surgeons present objected to a forensic physician’s presence in the theater. Egos appeared to have been temporarily shelved. Each member of the team wanted Sophie to live, but the mood made it clear that everyone present also wanted the perpetrator to be caught.
Silence fell over the group when the gynecologist announced she would have to perform a hysterectomy to stem the hemorrhaging. The knife used to stab her had penetrated Sophie’s young womb. Removal was the only option. If she lived, she would be unable to have children and would have to face a gamut of medical complications related to premature menopause.
Armed with the bags and vials of forensic evidence, Anya headed downstairs. Outside emergency, she dialed Liz who had been with Sophie’s father in a private room.
Within moments of hanging up, Liz appeared from inside, black sunglasses masking her eyes.
“Guess you want a lift to the lab with that lot.”
“Considering you had me chauffeured here this morning…” Anya clutched the bags, relieved that her job was over for the moment.
“Sure, but we need to make a detour first. I want to check out the scene. It might be helpful for you too.”
Anya took an extra breath; visiting the scene would be draining for both of them.
Liz unlocked the unmarked Commodore and Anya placed the bags on the floor in the back before getting into the passenger seat. She buckled her seatbelt as the car left the parking bay and waited until they were in traffic to speak.
“How’s the father?”
“As you’d expect. He’s just lost one kid and the other’s not expected to make it. So what do we do? Treat him like a suspect and interview him as he stares at the doors of ICU for anyone with news of his daughter.” She checked the rearview mirror. “Not the most satisfying part of the job.”
Liz Gould was unusual in Homicide. A new mother and back full-time within weeks of the birth, she had to be under considerable stress. Her usual warmth was understandably lacking today. She seemed shut-down. Sitting with the father would have taken its emotional toll.
“Should he be a suspect?”
Liz stared at the road ahead. “Gut feeling tells me no but the stats aren’t in his favor. His grief seems pretty genuine to me, but that doesn’t always mean much.”
Anya knew the police would need to exclude the father and close family members before they even considered any other suspects. Experience taught them to look at those closest to the victims, then work outward. Unfortunately, that caused even more distress for those already suffering the worst imaginable loss.
“Is the girls’ mother around?”
“Divorced years ago. She died last year from breast cancer and the girls decided to stay on in her house. There’s something I don’t understand. If the slash to the neck was so dangerous, how did Sophie manage to crawl without killing herself?”
“No one knows. The ambulance officers did a hell of a job just transferring her safely.”
Liz Gould’s phone rang a number of times. On speakerphone, a male voice proudly announced that their little boy had just sat up for the first time. He was about to send a photo.
“Honey, that’s great but I’m with someone and can’t talk.”
Liz’s husband sounded deflated when she said she would be home late.
The female detective let out a sigh and glanced over at Anya.
“Sorry about that. He thinks his child came out a genius.”
Anya remembered what those early few months were like. As she was struggling with exhaustion after a marathon labor and delivery, Martin would brag to anyone who would listen about how great their child was, how well behaved and what a perfect sleeper. Her recollections of Ben as a newborn were very different from her former husband’s. Instead of time mellowing those images, they had been permanently etched onto her memory.
“What is your son-six months?”
“Four and a half. He probably pulled himself up and waited a second before tipping over. To his father, that counts.”
It triggered memories of Anya’s experience. Just when she thought she could not cope any longer with sleep deprivation and motherhood, Ben looked at her with huge blue eyes and beamed a smile. One relaxation of a few facial muscles and she thought her heart would burst. From that moment on, she was tied to motherhood and adored her only child.
Liz paused at the lights. “How old is your little one?”
“Ben just turned five and started school.”
With one hand, the new mother fiddled with her bra strap beneath the collar of her shirt. “Please tell me it gets better.”
Anya grinned. “Every day. Once the overnight feeds stop, everything becomes easier. Can I make a suggestion?”
The lights turned green and the car accelerated forward.
“Sure.”
“Check out YouTube. Search for laughing baby. There’s a clip on there of a baby laughing at some noise. Just hearing it makes you want to keep going.”
“I’ll do that.”
The car pulled up at a bend along Rosemount Place, a quiet suburban street. The crime scene had been cordoned off with tape. Up a long, sloped driveway was the house. A uniformed constable stood guard to direct any traffic around the scene. The detective removed a nail file from the middle console and slipped off both shoes.
“New leather soles,” she said, scraping the bottoms of her shoes with the file into a backward “G.” “Now if I stick my hoof in the wrong place, everyone will know it’s my print, no one else’s.”
Anya preferred the disposable shoe covers pathologists wore in the morgue and at scenes.
The pair climbed out and the car beeped when the doors locked. The evidence bags would be safe with a policeman standing guard nearby.
Liz pointed to an area of dirt at the bottom of the drive.
“This is where she was found.”
Anya surveyed the ground. Numerous footprints and the wheel tracks of what had to be the ambulance gurney made impressions in the soil.
“Has your photographer been through?”
Liz nodded and the pair squatted to look more closely at a blackened area on the sloped driveway.
“Sophie must have laid here for a while. Allowing for absorption, it’s a significant amount of blood loss. If she crawled along, her head was pointing downhill the whole time, which might have just saved her life.”
“The trail goes back up to the house.”
The women slowly stepped along the drive, careful not to disturb the bloodstains soaked into the white gravel.
“She must have been on her stomach for most of the way.”
Anya thought of the blackened fingernails and the samples she had taken from beneath the fingernails.
“I’d say she stopped at least three times for a rest, judging by the pools concentrated at various intervals.”
The neck and abdominal wounds would have oozed and been further traumatized by the driveway. “What was the temperature overnight?”
Liz Gould pulled out her notebook. “Your colleague asked the same thing, apparently. Got down to four degrees Celsius. Sophie’s lucky she didn’t die of exposure.”
“Or the cold slowed the blood loss and her metabolic rate long enough for her to be found alive.”
“Barely-she’s not out of the woods yet.”
Anya knew that even if the young girl survived theater, there was the possibility of kidney, lung and brain damage. For the moment, she kept those thoughts to herself.
As she and Liz approached the house, the photogram-metry team appeared with their array of digital equipment. One crime scene officer held a vertical stand supporting two cameras mounted on either end of a crossbar. The other held a computer bag and recorded findings. By combining the two images taken of the one object or area, the police would establish a 3-D image and from that calculate distances and depths of objects without touching and disturbing them any more than was necessary for the pictures.
The one with the computer offered Anya disposable gloves and shoe covers. She took them gratefully.
Despite the warmth of the midmorning sun, Anya felt a shiver as she crossed the threshold into the house.
Two crime scene officers swabbed separate patches of living room floor in silence. They looked up at the sound of footsteps on the polished wooden boards.
“Anyone from Homicide here?” Liz asked.
“Try the bedroom. Third door on the left.”
With a narrow frontage, the cottage was surprisingly large, extending down the block. Exposed wooden beams gave the place a country feel. Dried flower arrangements and wallpaper friezes at hip height were dated but homely. Anya suspected the mother had been crafty and, since her death, the daughters had kept things as she’d left them.
Until last night.
Broken mugs lay alongside the coffee table along with a pool of water and fresh flowers. The petals had been crushed, presumably by shoes. Anyone in bare feet or socks would have been cut by the shards of vase.
“Sophie was out here, we think. Her sister was in the bedroom.”
Either someone had smashed the items to scare the girls, or Sophie had fought her attacker. Judging by the strength the girl had shown by crawling for help, there might have been a significant struggle.
“We’ve bagged a small pair of underwear from under the coffee table,” offered one of the officers, “and a pair of jeans from just near the door. There are some smears of blood on the outside, so we assume her attacker removed them, then assaulted her. If the blood came from the older sister, then the younger girl was stabbed second.”
“We won’t know until we interview Sophie.” Liz moved further inside.
If she survives surgery and regains consciousness and remembers, Anya thought. The odds were still against her surviving, let alone recovering with full function.
The two women followed the corridor to the second bedroom. Inside, Doctor Jeff Sales leaned over the bed and Kate Farrer stood by his side.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Kate said. “Natasha Ryder said you were off color.”
The pathologist looked up from his task, clutching a pair of plastic tweezers.
Anya suspected her friend was being kind, giving her the option of leaving the scene. But having seen Sophie, she wanted to follow this through in spite of how she felt, physically and emotionally, after the trauma of yesterday.
“Just needed a good night’s rest,” Anya lied as she entered the room. “Cattle class from NY is a shocker.”
Violent deaths had their own distinct stench.
Immediately she was struck by the smell of body odor. Male sweat. Whoever had been here had left part of himself behind and it reminded her of fear and adrenalin combined. Then there was the almost metallic essence of blood.
“Hayden roped Anya in to examine Sophie Goodwin, our survivor. We’ve just come from the hospital.”
All eyes in the room turned to Liz Gould. “She’s alive but hasn’t woken up. What can you tell us so far? Do we still think the deceased is definitely Rachel Goodwin, Sophie’s older sister?”
“Going by the photos on the noticeboard, but we’ll have to get dental records to confirm it. The body is consistent with a woman in her early twenties. She suffered multiple stab wounds to her torso and abdomen while restrained. Judging by the amount of blood on the sheets, at least one of the stab wounds was severe enough to be fatal, but I won’t know which until the post-mortem. There are signs of pre-mortem sexual assault as well.”
If Sophie had lived through hell, her sister had died from it, Anya thought.
The body was naked and hands fixed to the rails of the bedhead with scarves. One side of the young face was bruised and swollen. Long black hair was tangled and knotted on one side. This woman had struggled on the bed, even with her hands bound.
A quilted cover lay beneath her, soaked in blood.
“Someone put a lot of love and time into that,” Liz Gould nodded toward the bed covering. “It looks handmade.”
Soft toys-a tattered rabbit and a rag doll-lay on the floor near the window.
Anya recognized the young male detective, Shaun Wheeler, standing nearby, pale and quiet.
“Remember Doctor Crichton?” Kate asked him. “She’s a pathologist and forensic wound expert.”
The constable nodded in acknowledgment and rocked backward and forward on the spot, hands behind his back. Anya suspected he had been told not to touch anything so, like a child, he was doing as he was told. Judging by the way he rocked and the paleness of his face, he was struggling to keep from fainting.
Kate’s eyes relaxed into a half-smile and Anya knew they were sharing the same thought.
“It’s pretty stuffy in here, how about you take a break. See what you make of the living room. We’ll be with you in a minute.”
Shaun Wheeler didn’t need convincing. He sidestepped the bed and was quickly out the door.
The odor lingered; chances were the killer had left more tangible evidence behind if he was nervous and high on adrenaline.
Jeff Sales was ready to turn the body. He removed a pair of clippers from his kit and snipped through the scarves, careful to leave the knots binding the wrists intact.
“Where are her clothes?” Liz Gould looked around the room.
“I think you’ll find the bra under here.” With a gentle movement of the body, Jeff removed a blood-soaked item from under the girl’s back.
Anya held the undergarment, hooks and eyes still clasped. The front had been cut through. She placed it inside double layers of paper.
The pathologist concentrated on the wrist marks while the detectives looked under the bed, then around it. Liz stopped at a teddy bear propped up in the corner on top of a set of drawers.
“There’s blood on the bear’s face,” she said, touching its ear.
If only it could talk, Anya thought. She pictured her own son having conversations with his soft Dalmatian puppy when he was supposed to be asleep. That dog had been with him for every milestone of his five years, whether it was tucked inside a kindergarten bag or snuggled in his bed.
This bear’s fur was well worn in patches. One arm and hand were particularly threadbare. It, too, looked as though it had been through a lot and for a while had been inseparable from its owner. The blood spatters across its fur made the scene suddenly even more vile.
Anya moved toward the wall. Above chest height, small stains marked the wall nearest the foot of the bed. Each series of fine droplets was splayed in vertical lines.
Kate’s gloved hands flicked through some magazines on the night stand and routinely tipped them up for notes or missing pages-any possible clue. “Has anyone located the panties?”
Jeff shook his head. “Not that I’m aware. Maybe they were taken as a souvenir.”
“Did someone mention missing knickers?”
Anya turned and looked up to see the grinning face of John Zimmer from the crime scene team. With his usual blue overalls and baseball cap, he held a digital camera around his neck.
“Guys, I’m serious. If they’re here, I’ll find them.”
Anya caught Liz rolling her eyes. Kate tensed her shoulders and jaw.
Doctor Sales looked up. “Anya, what’s caught your attention?”
The pair moved closer to the wall.
“It’s cast-off from the weapon. Can’t be arterial spurts, there’s not enough blood and the force isn’t strong enough. The droplets are too fine.”
She turned and faced the body. “My guess is that the killer was on the bed, probably straddled on top when he stabbed her.” She lifted her fist above her shoulder with a slightly bent elbow. “He used a lot of force because he’s pulled the knife out and up. The blood’s come from the knife and traveled backward through the air. And he’s done it more than once.” She looked over at the bear.
Zimmer smiled again. “Top of the class. Why can’t my officers be more like you?”
“Then they wouldn’t sleep with you,” Kate quipped. She turned to Anya. “Your lot don’t usually bother with blood spatter patterns.”
Jeff Sales joined in. “Can you blame us-if it’s not in the report to the coroner and directly relevant to cause and manner of death, there’s no point. And some lawyer will tear us apart in court anyway for going beyond our level of expertise.”
Anya knew he was right, but she had been around enough crime scenes to learn a lot more than study and exams had taught her.
“Ah, might have just found the missing item of clothing.” With latex-covered hands, Zimmer reached down behind the set of drawers. Wedged between the wall and the back was a pink piece of material.
Zimmer carefully unfolded the item. It turned out to be a small cropped top.
“Jackpot! Look at the size of this little beauty.”
Liz whacked Zimmer’s back with her hand. “For Pete’s sake, show some respect-”
“I was.” Zimmer held up the top indignantly. “I was merely worshipping at the altar of good fortune. What we have here is akin to perfection. A bloodstained fingerprint.”
Liz blushed. “With your track record, what was I supposed to think?”
“Don’t sweat it. If I didn’t deserve it this time, you probably owed me one anyway.”
Anya knew Zimmer had a point. He frequently pushed the boundaries of decency with female officers and techs. She also knew how seriously he took his work, which was how he redeemed himself.
He proudly clutched his find.
“If the bastard’s on file, we’ve just nailed Rachel’s killer.”