ME’s office. When they stepped out of the car, the sun was peeking out through a break in the clouds above them, and the air was still.
They made their way through the building’s glass doors and up to the fourth floor. A clerk at the front window checked their shields, buzzed them through to the back, and pointed them in the direction of a stocky man standing at a nearby desk, dictating into a digital voice recorder. He had brown curly hair and a graying beard, and wore a white lab coat over khakis and blue sweater. He held up one finger while he completed his thought, then flipped a button to turn off the recorder.
‘J. J. Rogan, right?’
Rogan accepted his handshake. ‘You’ve got a good memory, Doc. This is my partner, Ellie Hatcher.’
‘Richard Karr,’ the man said, extending his hand. ‘We spoke on the phone. First murder case?’
‘Second,’ Ellie said, ‘but close enough.’
‘All right, well, our first one all together, then. Let’s hope I can help you out. Now when you called, Detective, you said our young Miss Hart was nineteen years old and was last seen alive at a nightclub last night at two thirty a.m., correct?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s consistent with my best estimation of her time of death. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet.’ Corpses began to stiffen about three hours after death, due to changes in the muscles’ biochemistry. ‘I found undigested pasta. You said she last ate at ten o’clock?’
‘That’s when her friends say they finished eating.’
‘Again, it’s consistent. Digestion was well past the gastric phase, and into the duodenum –’
‘She was killed sometime between three and five this morning?’ Ellie asked, cutting to the chase. Chelsea’s friends last saw her dancing at two thirty; her pallor was gray by the time Ellie saw her at five thirty. It only stood to reason.
‘Sorry, some of the detectives are more dazzled by the science than others,’ Dr. Karr said. ‘Okay, so, on to some other findings, then. You probably already know this too, but Miss Hart appears to have taken full advantage of the libations at said club. She had a blood alcohol content of point-two-six.’
‘Drunk times three,’ Ellie said.
‘Three and a quarter, to be precise. Now, it takes the liver sixty to ninety minutes to metabolize the alcohol in a single serving of liquor, so the body’s BAC actually continues to rise during that time before it starts to dissipate. Depending on how long she was drinking –’
‘Her friends say she had an early drink before dinner,’ Ellie cut in, ‘but then the real partying started around ten. She was definitely still drinking at ten thirty, and the club closed at four.’
Karr nodded, looking up to the ceiling as he ran the numbers. ‘Very well, then. Assuming she continued her consumption, I’m probably correct that she was still on the upswing at the time of death. With a body weight of only a hundred and twenty-two pounds, my best guess is she must have consumed nine or ten drinks over the course of the night.’
Ellie shook her head at the stupidity of it all. Attractive girl, scantily clad, underage. Blasted out of her mind. Wandering the streets of Manhattan alone in the middle of the night. A few times a year, a handful of girls were killed after making the identical mistake. And no one seemed to learn.
‘Plus we’ve got the tox screen. Positive for crystal meth.’
That one caught Ellie by surprise. She liked to think she could spot a liar, and none of the usual red flags went up with Chelsea’s friends. They’d been clear: no sex, no drugs.
‘Can you tell how recent?’
‘She used within four hours of her death.’
Add methed up to attractive, scantily clad, underage, and drunk. Ellie couldn’t think of a more dangerous combination.
Rogan cut in with a question of his own. ‘CSU thought the vic was killed off-site and then moved to the East River scene.’
‘Oh, yes. Certainly. As you might know, it’s the power of the beating heart that keeps our blood cells and platelets all mixed together in our vessels.’ He pantomimed a mixing gesture with his hands. ‘So once the heart stops beating, and the mixer loses its power, the red blood cells begin to settle with gravity. That’s what causes the telltale discoloration of lividity – that look of a layer of grape jelly beneath the skin.’
‘And the discoloration on Chelsea?’ Ellie asked.
‘Her body may have been found propped up in a seated position, but the grape jelly was on her back.’
It meant that Chelsea Hart’s body was lying faceup after her death and was then moved into the position in which she was found.
‘The movement of the body was not the only postmortem activity. Based on the minimal amount of blood on the wounds’ edges, my best estimation is that the cuts you saw on her arms, legs, and face were inflicted after death. If you told me she’d been immersed in water – a hot tub or a bath, for example – I might revise my opinion to antemortem cuts, but there’s no evidence of that, especially in light of the speed with which the body was discovered.’
‘So cause of death is strangulation?’
‘I still need to complete the entire autopsy, but yes, I’m confident that’s what I will ultimately conclude. Looking at the pattern of bruising on her neck, you can see she was strangled manually, from the front.’ He held his hands out, fingers strong and splayed. ‘Thumbs at the larynx, palms on the carotid arteries, fingers wrapped all the way around the back of her neck. With her on her back, and him on top of her, it creates a tremendous amount of pressure.’
Manual strangulation was in many ways the most dedicated form of murder. It wasn’t an instantaneous decision, like the pulling of a trigger or the slashing of a throat. It wasn’t remote, like poison or a contracted kill.
And there was nothing to physically separate the killer from his victim – no rope, no scarf, no belt to do the strangler’s job for him. Everything about the act guaranteed that if the killer had any kernel of doubt – any second of hesitation – he could stop. Among murderers, stranglers who used their bare hands were the most committed and least repentant.
And they were almost always motivated by sexual desire.
‘Any evidence of sexual assault?’ she asked.
‘Surprisingly, there was no indication of either vaginal or anal trauma. I did a rape kit anyway, obviously. Sometimes we get a hit on the oral swab. It will take a couple of days for the initial results on the swabs – weeks for any DNA profile, if we do in fact have any fluids to examine. Will there be evidence of voluntary sex within the last few days?’
‘Not according to her friends. She has a boyfriend who’s supposedly been in Mexico all week.’
‘Well, at least we’ll know that any DNA we find is for us. That’s all I have for you now,’ Karr said, switching gears abruptly, ‘but I’ll be in touch when we get those labs back.’
As they walked back to the car in the sunshine that was warming the cold morning into day, Ellie thought about the last hour of Chelsea Hart’s life and the fear and pain she must have experienced. Then she pictured Chelsea two hours earlier, smiling, dancing, and telling her best friend that she was having the best night ever.
Chelsea Hart’s favorite movies were Run Lola Run, The Notebook, and The Princess Bride. Her favorite books were Wuthering Heights and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Her favorite drink was called an Angel’s Tip, a mix of dark crème de cacao and heavy cream that she swore prevented hangovers. She wanted to meet Ellen