“Yes,” Jerry said, with the kind of methodical and professional tone that coroners often slipped into when describing all kinds of bodily injuries. As if he, too, knew how to flip off that switch and look at the body as an object instead of a person. “Judging by the impressions around the mouth in particular, I would suggest that the ropes were bound in place for a longer period of time before death took place. Hours, certainly.”
“How long?” Laura asked, glancing at him.
“Difficult to say exactly,” Jerry replied. “Though Captain Blackford here tells me that there was a stopped clock and a timer found at the scene. Twelve hours, wasn't that correct?”
“That's right,” Blackford replied laconically. “Techs have managed to take the clock apart, confirmed it was a twelve-hour timer.”
“So, in my professional opinion,” Jerry concluded. “The victim was bound and gagged on the platform for the full twelve hours before the hanging occurred. As for death, it would have been fairly instant. Her neck was snapped by the fall, which is exactly what you usually prefer when it comes to a hanging. She didn't even have time for strangulation.”
“Anything else to note, with this particular body?” Nate asked. Laura glanced at him and saw that he was keeping his eyes to certain spots on the body. Only looking at the hands, the neck and mouth, the legs. As if, even in death, he wanted to be respectful to the woman who had lost her life.
“Nothing affecting the case,” the coroner shrugged. “I can tell you that she ate a fruit salad for her last meal. Again, quite some time before her death. There were a few existing injuries, though nothing serious - a couple of minor bruises and a scratch across one knuckle. Upon examination, it does not appear to be connected to the case. I would say it happened a couple of days before.”
“What about the second victim?” Laura asked, turning a full one eighty degrees to look at the table behind them. Jerry took her cue, replacing the sheet over Stephanie Marchall's body before removing the one from over Veronica Rowse.
“We have a very similar story here,” he said. “I’m not seeing anything pre-existing that would have any bearing on the case, except for a small bruise to the back of the neck which could have taken place in the time before she was brought to the platform. Perhaps the day before, perhaps earlier that morning. It’s a little difficult to say, because of the burns left by the rope – they partially cover it, I’m afraid.”
Laura ran her eyes over the second body, trying to convince herself that it was easier the second time. It wasn’t. But she could at least pretend. “You’re thinking he may have knocked them unconscious before bringing them to the platform?” she asked.
“It would certainly make sense.” Jerry paused, cocking his head. “But I don’t want to give too many assumptions, here. It’s also possible that the women were tied up before being put into place. Perhaps threatened with a weapon if they didn’t comply, which would explain the lack of defensive wounds. He might have walked them right up there himself. I can’t say that I have the evidence present in the bodies before us to be able to tell you exactly how they arrived where they did.”
Laura nodded again. She appreciated the way Jerry spoke. He was very clear about what he did and did not know. That was helpful, as an investigator. It was good to discuss theories and whether they might be plausible, but equally good to know which ones were confirmed and which were just theories.
“What happened to her hand?” Nate asked.
Laura lifted her eyes to the other side of the body. She hadn’t even noticed it, until he’d said something. She’d been looking at the wrist closest to them, but the other one…
It was mangled. Beyond repair, certainly. Even if Veronica Rowse had been alive and breathing, she’d have needed a huge amount of medical help. Her skin was all but ripped away, leaving behind gouge marks over the surface of her thumb, wrist, and the back of her hand. Her fingers were clean but oddly bloodless, no doubt as a result of Jerry having cleaned away all of the blood that must have issued from such a wound.
“Well, I’m afraid it wasn’t a pretty end for her,” Jerry said, with a note of sympathy in his voice. “While Marchall fell and broke her neck immediately, Rowse did not. She appears to have managed to get a hand free before her death, though I don’t think it was very long before. If it had been a long while, she may well have suffered enough blood loss to die from that alone – or to tip herself off the edge of the platform when she fainted. Either way, we’d be looking at a different result. And the platform itself, while it did contain some significant blood spatter, was not bloodied enough to suggest that she was bleeding down onto it for long.”
“So, she was strangled to death by the rope?” Nate asked. His tone was low, sickened.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Jerry said. “It would have been a slow death by asphyxiation. She does appear to have emptied her bowels at the moment of death, and before we cut away her clothes and the rope, there was blood on the noose consistent with the shape of her fingers. My guess would be that she made a last-ditch, desperate attempt to get her hand free as the timer ticked down, partially degloving herself in the process. She then fumbled to get the rope from her neck but wasn’t able to make any significant impact before dropping. Unfortunately, her angle or perhaps the way her arms were braced prevented her neck from snapping, and there we have it.”
Laura suppressed a shudder. It was a gruesome way to go. In terrible pain, panicking, knowing that it was almost over and not being able to stop it. But at least she’d been able to fight until the end.
She reached for the sheet, as if she wanted to be respectful and cover up the suffering this woman had endured. But she had an ulterior motive, as Jerry reached to help her: she let her hand brush just lightly over Veronica Rowse’s wrist, the less injured one, right across the rope burn. A spot the killer must surely have touched while tying her up. She concentrated on the feel of the cool skin, and as a faint headache spiked in her forehead. she knew she’d managed it. She let the sheet drop quickly into place, not wanting to interrupt her own movement when she came back to –
She was looking ahead, but there was blackness all around her. It was like looking through a tunnel. Not being able to see anything beyond this small circular window onto the world, this tiny glimpse…
And the window – it was almost entirely filled by a clock.
Immediately, viscerally, Laura recognized it. It was the same kind of clock that had been used in both of the other crime scenes. She’d seen it in the photographs. An old-fashioned, circular, pale white clock face with black hands and Roman numerals, the kind that might have been a kitchen clock. Below it, a timer that was built into the same frame, allowing you to time your
dishes and ensure you never forgot to take anything out of the oven.
And yet, the timer itself was changed, updated, modified somehow. She’d seen those clocks, remembered one hanging on her grandmother’s wall, a place that filled her memory with the scent of freshly baked cherry pie. The timers on those clocks went up to an hour, no more. This one had obviously been removed and replaced with a more modern timer, something with a digital display.
There were hands in her vision, two of them. One steadied the clock, turned it as it caught a glint of the sun across the face. She saw a reflection of a window, a real window, with a blue sky beyond. There wasn’t much detail, though she strained to make it out – and then the clock shifted slightly, and the reflection was gone. Instead, she saw the other hand covering the timer. Tapping it.
The clock showed almost three. Three in the afternoon – it had to be. The sunshine precluded three in the morning.
And the hands holding the clock were shaking. Laura couldn’t see the timer properly, not the whole display, but she could see a second counter ticking downwards rapidly. Ticking someone’s life away.
They were already on a deadline.
Laura snapped out of the vision and back to herself, staring down at the freshly covered body on the table. She moved to cover her momentary lapse, as she always did, instinctively able to return to what she had been doing so as not to give away that anything was wrong.