The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,72

buried himself in paperwork for the rest of the time.

At half past ten, he drove south to the relatively new facility that housed the Office of the Medical Examiner. The building included labs for forensic pathology, the state crime labs, and offices for the ME and her deputies and investigators. It was in Taylorsville just off the I-215 beltway, almost due south of the DWR offices, and Tean made the drive in twenty minutes. The structure was tan brick and glass and steel, and it could have passed for a twenty-four-hour gym or a dentist’s office in a strip mall. He checked in at the front desk, and the receptionist sent him toward the labs.

Tean had just turned down the next hall when he saw a large woman in scrubs emerge from what he thought he remembered was a locker room. Her dark hair was in a neat bun, and she had tortoiseshell glasses with huge lenses.

“I was going to meet you,” she said, offering him a hand. “I recognized you from all the news stories. Elvira Castorena. I know I should use a nickname, but my parents got the full version stuck in my head.”

“Tean,” he said as they shook. “I do use a nickname because I’d go crazy if I didn’t.”

Elvira smiled. “Let’s get to it, shall we? Locker room connects to the autopsy lab. You’ll find disposable PPE for observers.”

They both geared up with PPE equipment—coveralls, mask, face shield, apron, gloves, boots—and met in the autopsy room. The body on the table was already in a state of active decay: blackened flesh at the extremities and around the orifices, ruptured where gases had escaped, and in places the degloving process had begun, with skin detaching and sliding away from muscle. Tean had only glimpsed part of Joy Erickson’s head buried in the rubble. He was shocked now to see what they had recovered.

“Our best estimate for time of death is approximately three weeks ago.”

“Where’s the rest of the remains?”

“Good question,” Elvira said. “They’re still tearing up that pig farm, but the honest answer is, nobody knows. We recovered the torso and the head, as you can see. All four limbs are missing.”

“Pigs can eat and digest bone,” Tean said, considering the dismembered body. “The trope about people using pig farms to dispose of bodies didn’t come from nowhere. Jem—the investigator hired to find Joy—he believed that the area where the body was found had recently been in use as a pig pen. It’s possible the body was placed there in hopes that the pigs would consume it and eliminate the remains.”

“I understand the police are talking to the man who delivered the gravel. It’ll be interesting to hear why he didn’t report the dead body he buried under a pile of loose stone.”

“That seems strange,” Tean said. “Why bury the body under stone if you want the pigs to eat it and eliminate it?”

“A very good question. Take a look at this, will you? One thing that’s interesting is that the amputations all occurred postmortem; that’s completely clear based on the histopathology. In a body at this stage of decomposition, we look for hemorrhaging in the remaining soft tissue, any evidence of clotting, histamines. Some of these abrasions and lacerations to the head and face were antemortem injuries, as well as bruising on the back and shoulders, but the amputations are definitively postmortem.”

“Cutting off her arms and legs after she died might make sense if the goal was to destroy the remains; if the limbs were scattered in other pens, it might speed up the process.”

“That seems likely. Unfortunately, none of the antemortem injuries explains how she died. I already mentioned the lacerations, abrasions, and bruising. There’s no indication of asphyxiation, strangulation, or drowning. We’re waiting for a more complete toxicology report, but the preliminary panels don’t show any evidence of drugs or toxins.”

“You don’t know how she died?”

“The mechanism was exsanguination. The problem is that I don’t know the proximate cause—where is the injury that produced this massive blood loss? Amputation should be the obvious answer, except these injuries were all inflicted after she died.”

“Damage to the brachial or femoral artery seems like the most likely answer. Then the limbs were amputated to conceal the nature of the injury.”

“That was my thought too.”

Tean leaned closer, inspecting the body through the face shield. “All of these other injuries are antemortem? These bite marks, for example. And the teeth marks on the bone. I can see pits, punctures,