that was left was the bones and dried soft tissue.”
Like many medical examiners, it turned out there was nothing he enjoyed talking about more than his work. I was aware of Zach waiting by himself and needed to get this over with, but my curiosity was piqued. “You say this Natron is commercially available?”
“It’s used in those little desiccant packages they put in things to keep them dry. Mr. Lynch apparently isn’t stupid, and knows how to look things up on the Internet. That’s how he found out how to do it. Agent Coleman could confirm from her interrogation, but I would guess he put the body in a ventilated box out in the desert while it was drying. There was no evidence of predator scavenging.”
“Lynch said it only took a few months until he could use the body without smelling up the truck,” Max said.
“How long did Lynch have it in his truck?” I asked.
“About a year and a half,” Max said.
Manriquez nodded that it agreed with his findings on approximate time since death and added, “He didn’t try to move it so it stayed pretty intact. Of course once it gets that old you can hardly pinpoint a date, but I found enough dried semen on it to show he had it quite a while.”
“Sure it’s his?” I asked.
“We’ve had time to do the DNA analysis that matched it to Lynch.”
“Back to Jessica,” I said. “Cause and manner of death?”
“It’s hard to find ligature marks because the way the head was angled it had fallen off the body anyway. And of course with the eyes dried you can’t see the typical petechiae though it might show up in histopath. But no need to go that far, the hyoid bone is definitely crushed, the Achilles tendon slashed, and the ear removed on this side.” Manriquez shook his head. “After the confession I read the autopsy reports on the Route 66 murders. That’s when I discovered the body in the truck had the same mode associated with it. So I checked the body of Jessica Robertson for semen and found some on various parts, just like the mummy in the truck. Preliminary tests don’t exclude Lynch. We’ve put a priority on the DNA analysis to confirm.”
I thought again about Zach alone out in the waiting room and wanted to get back to him, but Coleman was talking now. “In his interrogation Lynch said he’d been using Jessica’s body for several years but got tired of driving up the mountain road and worried someone would spot him. So he started experimenting with animals and ended up with the body he had on his truck when we caught him.” She turned to Manriquez, “Would you send me both the reports, for Jessica and for the other body found in the car?”
“Sure. I’ve got it over here.” Manriquez walked to the far end of the autopsy lab where the other body waited on a gurney, covered with another green cloth. Max and Coleman turned their attention to it as Manriquez withdrew the cloth. I saw the dark tissue that was speckled here and there with yellowed bits, pieces of trash that had stuck to it before it completely dried. I left the others gazing at the body, Manriquez enthusiastically waving his hands as if he was going to levitate it. He was saying, “This one was fairly intact, like that of Jessica Robertson.”
Max said, “Intact? The heads came off when they took them out of the car and this one is in pieces.”
Manriquez said, “I’m talking hard-tissue damage.”
“Hey, I gotta go,” I said, still standing next to Jessica’s body, but no one heard me.
Eight
I took Zach to the Sheraton nearby, at the corner of Campbell and Speedway, got him situated in room 174, ordered him a Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes from room service, and made small talk until they arrived. I sat in the chair at the desk and he sat on the edge of the bed nearest me. I wanted to slip him one of the Valiums I kept in my tote, but thought better of it since I saw him looking at the liquor list on the room service menu. He didn’t seem to want to talk about his experience at the medical examiner’s office. He assured me he would be all right, preferred to be alone. I didn’t believe him, but what can you do? He was a grown man.
“You shouldn’t have been there,” I said again, at the