“Very good. After we have concluded our present sad business, then.”
Havers turned to Butch. There was some talk about the victim, and then Butch signed a form of some sort. Meanwhile, Boone was aware that his heart was pounding and his mouth was dry—although not about the murder.
But come on, like he expected Altamere’s ghost to pop the top off his tin can, come down the hall from whichever shelf he’d been put on, and be all pissed off at the whole cremation thing?
Ashes were so much better than a corpse in a tuxedo showing up at Last Meal and asking for another round of scotch—
With a silent curse, Boone forced himself to refocus as Havers opened one half of the inner set of double doors. The formaldehyde smell quintupled. As Butch entered the examination area with the doctor, Boone made himself follow along. He didn’t make it much farther than just inside the doorjamb.
There were four workstations in the floor-to-ceiling tiled room, each of them dominated by a waist-high, stainless steel slab that had a fauceted sink at one end, a drainage hole at the other, and a system of metal tubing and electrical wires underneath. Rolling tables were in place for what he guessed were instruments and tissue samples, and the hanging scales for weighing organs and wall-mounted light boxes for X-rays and imaging test results meant you could do everything in one place.
No expense had been spared. No efficiency underutilized.
No bodies out on the slabs, either. Thank God.
“She is over here,” Havers murmured.
“Over here” turned out to be a wall-sized refrigerator unit with two dozen three-by-four-foot doors stacked two high across its stainless steel face. And as Butch went forward, Boone hung waaaaay back while Havers unlatched a compartment on the top tier.
The physician pulled out a stainless steel slide, and Boone stopped breathing.
The naked female was lying on her back, her head propped up on a block positioned at her nape, her arms tucked into her sides, her legs stretched out with her feet lolling to the left and right. She had dark hair that was matted flat to her skull, and her skin was a mottled gray with bruising in places. Blood, dried and caked, covered a lot of her torso, and the meat hook that had made him so nauseous when he’d been looking at the pictures on Butch’s phone was still in place, supported by that block.
As if it had been something intrinsic to her skull all along.
Boone dropped his eyes out of respect. And also because his gag reflex was beginning to do push-ups in the back of his throat.
“We have the wig and the mask she was wearing,” Havers said softly.
“Yes, we saw the pictures of her at the scene.” Butch made a hmmm sound as he bent in closer. “Come over here, Boone. You can see here where her throat was sliced. Bilateral cuts on her wrists, too. She must have been still alive when she was hung up, given the amount of blood loss on the concrete floor below her.”
“I would have to agree with that assessment,” Havers said. “I have not done an extensive examination of her remains, but the entry of the hook is very clean—which suggests she was likely not conscious or in shock when that was done to her. She did not fight back. But you are correct. For the volume of blood displaced, her heart was still pumping for a while after she was hung.”
“Down this side,” Butch commented as he shifted position, “you can see where she was dragged across a rough floor.” The Brother straightened. “So he cuts her. Drags her. Inserts the hook and grips her here . . . and here . . .” Butch made like he was putting his hands on her upper arms—exactly where there was a series of bilateral, fingerprint-like bruises. “To lift her up. After which she continues to bleed out.”
As Boone focused on those clusters of black-and-blues, that rage he had felt when he had first heard Helania’s recorded call came back to him. The idea that someone had done this to this female . . . had hurt her like this . . . killed her