you should try to talk to her and find out from her how she looks at it.”
“You can pull it up on the Internet,” he says angrily. “Open Says Me. The name of her website. I hold open your world to possibilities. I can’t believe it.”
It figures he’d bring up his ex-wife when we don’t have time to talk about her. I pull the body on its left side, and it’s so light it feels hollow.
“There can be a lot of money in historic stuff like buttons, medals, old coins, but there’s also such a thing as respect.” He’s back to that. “What you don’t do is sew antique military buttons on a jacket or a coat to make a friggin’ fashion statement.”
“You can see it here. A livor pattern of hemolyzed blood.” I press my fingers into different areas of the back. “No blanching, because the blood has seeped out the vessel walls. So after she died she was flat on her back for at least as long as it took for livor to set, probably twelve hours, possibly more. It could be that she was on her back the entire time since she died, stored somewhere until she was moved and dropped into the bay.”
“You sure as hell don’t send a jacket to the dry cleaner’s if it’s got a thousand dollars’ worth of antique buttons on it.” He won’t stop talking about it. “But it’s not the money.”
“Moderate mummification, skin wet but hard and dried with faint remnants of patchy white mold on her face and neck,” I dictate, and Marino scribes. “Eyes sunken and collapsed.” I pry open her mouth. “Cheeks are sunken.” I swab the inside of them. “No lip, tongue, or dental injuries,” I say, as I check with a light. “Neck is free of any discrete discolorations.” I look up at the clock.
It’s eleven minutes past two. I move down and find more signs of moderate mummification but no injuries, and I open her legs. I ask Marino to bring me a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit, a PERK, or what a lot of cops call a rape kit, and I glance curiously at him as he walks to a cabinet, his face disgruntled and offended, as if there’s something about this dead woman he takes personally.
“We’ll definitely e-mail photos of the buttons and her jewelry to NamUs,” I say. “These details seem unique enough to be significant. Especially if it’s unusual to sew valuable antique buttons on clothing.”
“It’s damn disrespectful as hell.”
He hands me a plastic speculum and opens the PERK’s white cardboard box.
“When you find stuff like this, usually it’s because the person got killed in battle and their body was left out there in a field or the woods.”
He places bags, swabs, and a comb on a clean sheet.
“A hundred and fifty years later someone comes along with a metal detector and digs up their uniform buttons, their belt buckle, and when you find things like that you treat it like you’ve disturbed a grave, because you have.”
I glance up at the clock again as I rehearse what I’ll say to Dan Steward and Jill Donoghue when I see them, an apologetic explanation that I’ll expect one or both of them to relay to the judge. My choice was to lose possibly critical evidence or be late for court, and I’ll be very contrite.
“Even if the stuff comes from the attic,” Marino says, “it’s about respect, because it belonged to someone who made the ultimate sacrifice.”
He begins filling out forms with what scant information we have, and he rants on and on.
“You don’t sew buttons or shoulder epaulets on a jacket or put a dead soldier’s cap box on your damn belt or wear his friggin’ bloodstained socks. You don’t cut up old uniforms that still have the soldiers’ nametapes on them and make them into quilts.”
He hands me envelopes for swabs.
“If you didn’t go to Parris Island or OCS, then don’t wear official U.S. Marine cammies, and for shit’s sake don’t make them into a purse. Jesus Christ, what kind of person does shit like that?”
“Don’t see any evidence of sexual assault. Of course, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.” I remove the speculum and toss it in the trash. “But it appears her legs were shaved not long before she died.”
I look at a scattering of dark stubble that when magnified indicate a razor was used.
“Several days before she died, based on the new growth,” I add. “Obviously the