“We know who they are,” Delorme said when Cardinal arrived in the squad room. “We’ve got IDs!”
“Let me guess,” Cardinal said. “Lev and Irena Bastov.”
Delorme looked deflated. “How’d you find out?”
“Doesn’t matter. How’d you find out?”
“Woman up at the fur auction called in a missing person. They were staying at the Highlands Lodge. We should head up there right now.”
“Let Ident get started on their own. We’ve got the autopsy this morning. Just give me a minute and we can catch the next plane-I’m not driving on the 400 again.”
Cardinal sat at his desk without removing his coat, pulled out the business card Donna Vaughan had given him and dialed the New York Post. It being Sunday, there was no upper management available, but Cardinal finally got connected to an editor.
“Donna Vaughan? Yes, she used to be on staff here.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I can’t discuss anybody’s work history, Detective-too likely to end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit. I can confirm that she was on staff and that she left about a year ago, and that’s it.”
Cardinal had googled Donna Vaughan as they spoke. Several stories popped up with her byline, mostly about fashion.
“You coming or what?” Delorme was standing beside his desk, looking annoyed.
–
They caught an Air Canada flight to Toronto and arrived at the morgue a little early. Cardinal made a few calls, but Delorme just sat staring at the row of wellington boots lined up on a high shelf. A list of funeral homes and phone numbers was tacked up next to the door, and a hand-lettered sign above the sinks said Caution: Chlorine + Ammonia = Poison!
Eventually the door opened and Dr. Elmer Spork was saying hello and introducing his assistant, a petite, intense woman named Tranh, who was about half his height. He took off his sports coat and threw on surgical scrubs and a plastic apron. He didn’t look anything like you might imagine a pathologist would look. Although he must have been fifty, he had curly blond hair and the youthful, robust air of someone who has just won a game of tennis. A memory stick dangled from a cord around his neck.
The two bodies were already laid out in the autopsy room, with the heads, which had been flown down earlier. “We put them through the X-ray this morning,” Dr. Spork said. He snapped on the light boxes, and ribcages, femurs and arm bones lit up. “As you can see, we didn’t pick up anything unusual. No blade or bullet fragments.” He snapped off the light again and went over to the male body.
“I have a dumb question,” Delorme said. “How do you know a particular head belongs to a particular body? How do you know there isn’t some other corpse somewhere minus a head?”
Dr. Spork pointed to the neck area. “Skin tone is the first thing we go by. As you see, we have a perfect match here. Also, the width of the neck. Again a perfect match. Plus, we already took blood samples from each part and we have a match in blood types. That’s not definitive, but we’ve sent the samples to the lab for DNA analysis. But the crucial thing, at least with well-preserved bone and tissue, is the matching trauma.”
He tipped the head neck-up, and Delorme’s stomach did a half turn. One minute the body looks like a young woman, then he’s turning the head upside down without moving the trunk.
“We can pair up the damage on both sections of cervical spine,” Dr. Spork continued, “same as a broken chair leg. Severed between C5 and C6, in this case, with matching damage to 5. Obviously with decayed remains it’d be a different story.”
Dr. Spork switched on his overhead mike. He announced the date and time, case name and number, and the names of those present. “I’m sure your coroner already noted that the severing of the heads took place post mortem. There’s no bleeding into the bone.”
He examined the female first, from head to toe. He raised his voice to say, “Lividity indicates she was killed where she sat.” Then he made the Y incision and removed the organs. By the time the chest was turned inside out, the body ceased to look human and Delorme’s stomach settled down. Dr. Spork didn’t address them directly again until he had finished with the torso and extremities.
“Negative for disease or trauma,” he said. “The head, obviously, is going to be another matter. We have two bullet wounds-entry wound in the left parietal region nine millimetres in diameter, ragged exit through the right parietal approximately fifteen centimetres in diameter.”
His assistant started up the Stryker saw. Dr. Spork removed the cap of the skull with its beautiful hair. Smell of burnt bone. Dr. Spork placed the brain in a pan and dissected it with a few swift strokes. “Bullet ricocheted around in there, crossing both hemispheres and ripping a hole in the brain stem. That would have shut down pretty much all the vital organs, so that’s our cause of death.”
He turned his attention to the male, muttering into the mike, raising his voice when he had any finding of interest. Lividity again indicated death in the seated position. “Liver’s enlarged. This guy liked a drink.” A little later he held up a cross-section of heart. “Left ventricle’s virtually closed. Short of a transplant, he didn’t have a lot of time left.”
Once again the finding was death by gunshot wound to the head.
“Not much so far,” Delorme said as they got into the elevator. “Hardly worth coming down here.”
“Ah, but now we get to see Cornelius Venn,” Cardinal said. “The wizard of firearms and toolmarks. I think I’ll let you handle Mr. Venn.”
“I can’t believe we’ve got that guy for both ballistics and toolmarks. He’s such a dork. And you always make me deal with him.”
“Because you look so cute when you’re upset.”
“That’s inappropriate in so many ways I’m not even going to count them.”
“I know. I’ve been studying under McLeod.”
Outside, they breathed in deep lungfuls of cold air-even Toronto’s atmosphere could be refreshing after the morgue-and headed around the corner to the Forensic Centre.
“I don’t have anything for you.” This from Cornelius Venn, a bony little stork of a man who always spoke in a strange sub-glottal whine, as if there were a small bottle lodged in his throat. “If I did have anything for you, I would have called. That would have been the proper protocol.”
What was it with Venn? He always came on as if you had committed against him some well-known outrage, unaddressed by the proper authorities. Delorme made an effort at Buddhist serenity-otherwise she might have smacked him. “Could you just tell us what you have so far?”
“All I can say is that the heads were severed by a weighted blade. An axe or an axe-like object.”
Cardinal laughed. Venn beamed a level-four scowl at him.
“You must be able to tell more than that,” Delorme said. “You have photographs of the wounds. What do you see under the microscope?”
“Detective, are you aware of Crown versus Toft in New Brunswick?”
“No, Mr. Venn, I am not up to date on New Brunswick case law.”
“You should be. Rudiger Toft was convicted of stabbing a man to death five years ago, largely on toolmarks evidence. The superior court overturned the conviction, because the so-called expert had testified that the wound in question had been caused by a certain knife-i.e., a particular knife to the exclusion of all others, as the law books have it. Which was far beyond his actual expertise. And if you think I’m going to join him in the thin-ice club, you are grossly mistaken.”
“I’m not asking you to swear to anything. I’m just asking for what you’ve got.”
“I won’t have anything useful until you have an actual weapon for me to compare with the wounds. I can tell you that both decapitations were performed using the same blade. And it was obviously not the knife in the male victim’s back.”
“There you go, Cornelius. See, you do have something after all. Don’t sell yourself so short. And you know this how?”
“There are crush marks in the damaged tissue, which you’d only get with the weight of an axe or something similar. Striations in the neck cartilage are identical in both cases, but totally dissimilar to test markings with the knife.”
“And what about that knife?”
“It’s a Bark River Upland hunting knife. Barely used, I’d say. Fixed blade, not folding, in the so-called skinner style.”
“So the sort of thing a trapper would use?”
“Let’s not go leaping to conclusions. Yes, it is designed to field dress and skin large game. But point two, it’s also expensive, and point three, it’s a popular item with survivalists. Most trappers these days would be more likely to go for the newer drop-point style of blade.”
“So it might be the choice of an older man?”
“Leap, leap, leap, Detective. I’ll just stay on solid ground, if you don’t mind.”
“Detective Cardinal, did you have any questions for Mr. Venn?”
“No, indeed.”
“Okay. Well, I guess I have just one last one.”
“Really,” Venn said. “How pleasant.”
“Have you ever considered taking antidepressants? Zoloft? Prozac? Might make your life a lot easier.”
“Perhaps you’re unaware, Detective Delorme, that the SSRIs have the known side effect of interfering with sexual function.”
Delorme had to leave before he said any more. She checked her watch and said something about making their plane.
“Good to be out of there,” Cardinal said when they were out on the street again. “That was terrifying.”
“Yeah. Weighted blades and all.”
“No, no. The thought that Cornelius Venn has a sex life.”