“The body was found in the front of the lab, and as you can see it is only burned on the lower half. That burning occurred after death—the victim succumbed well before the fire reached him.”
His voice was professional and soothing.
“With his lung condition, even a small amount of carbon monoxide from the spreading fire would have incapacitated him. It might have happened even before he was aware there was a fire. His lungs simply had no reserves, no cushion to deal with a drop in the oxygen levels or rise in smoke.”
He paused. “Are there any questions so far?”
Corrie mustered her voice. “You said you did histological sections of lung tissue?”
Dr. Mason nodded.
“May I see those?”
“Of course.” He picked up a digital tablet, tapped it into life, brought up an image, then handed it to her. “You can clearly see the enlargement of the airspaces distal to the terminal bronchioles, accompanied by destruction of their walls. Along with fibrosis, of course.”
She could indeed see it. Inside the bronchioles, there was a scattering of soot and smoke particles. But not all that many.
“That doesn’t look like a lot of inhaled smoke,” she said.
“True. As I mentioned, he was probably affected first by carbon monoxide as well as the rapid decrease in oxygen. The fire, after all, started in a rather small space. I would suggest he was unconscious by the time he actually began breathing smoke and succumbed not long after.”
“Thank you.” She handed back the tablet. “What did you find in the toxicology analysis?”
“Nothing. No sedatives, nothing that would incapacitate him, nothing that might indicate foul play. No alcohol or recreational drugs. He was clean.”
“Forgive the question, but: Any chance you could have missed anything?”
“There’s always the remote possibility of an exotic or unknown compound being present, but we did the full suite of tests. And believe me, that covers just about everything, including nerve agents, radionuclides, and the other suspects, usual or unusual.”
Corrie forced herself to examine the body more closely. It smelled strongly of scorched hair and antiseptics. She felt another dry heave coming up but managed to suppress it.
“There’s a scratch on his neck.”
The M.E. bent over to look. “Yes, we noted that.”
“And?”
“It’s a superficial mark and could have been caused by anything. Bodies almost always bear signs of minor injuries—a scratch here, a bruise there. Especially active males.”
“So it’s not suspicious.”
“In the absence of other signs of struggle, no, we wouldn’t normally find it significant.”
Corrie glanced at Lime, saw the look of sympathy in his eyes. He must be thinking she was grasping at straws. Maybe she was.
“Could I see his effects?” she asked.
“Certainly.” He turned and wheeled over another gurney. Morwood’s clothes had been laid out upon it. Pretty much everything below the waist had been badly burned. The jacket, shirt, and tie were mostly intact, as was Morwood’s body from the waist up. Resting next to these were his glasses, some scorched keys, the spine of a burnt wallet, and a mass of credit cards melted around a piece of notepaper, its bottom half burned away. Centered on the remaining top half was a single word:
ITEM
“Any idea what this is?” she asked, pointing at the piece of notepaper.
Mason shook his head. “I assume it was the beginning of a list of some kind.”
“And there’s no way to retrieve the rest of the list—to read the writing remaining in the ashes?”
“Sometimes that’s possible, but not when it’s as thoroughly consumed as this was.”
Corrie stared at the body, no longer horrified but trying to extract some meaning, even some revelation. But there was nothing. What could have been on that list? Given the underlining, Morwood must have felt it highly significant. She wished to hell it hadn’t burned.
“Any other questions?” Mason asked gently.
“So there’s no indication whatsoever this is a homicide?”
“Whether the fire was accidentally or deliberately set is outside my purview. But as far as cause of death is concerned, I am one hundred percent sure this man died of suffocation due to a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning, lack of oxygen, and smoke inhalation. The fire started in the back of the lab, and he was near the front entrance, and by the time he realized what was happening he was either losing consciousness or already unconscious.” He paused. “He didn’t feel any pain.”