“We’ll get better photos in the autopsy suite, but it is always a good idea to cover your butt and get extra. You never know what can happen in transit. With no ID, we will need all the identifiers we can get, or she will sit in the morgue for months,” she explains, handing the camera back to the deputy coroner and cracking her knuckles. She knows it is a terrible habit, but it is her habit, nonetheless. “All right, what can we use to determine the time of death?”
Wren looks up at her two young mentees, and immediately their faces drain of color.
The first stumbles to convey what he obviously knows. “Um, well, there is lividity …”
He leans forward and gestures to the red face of Jane Doe.
Wren smirks and nods. “Yes, we see that. How about a less obvious method?”
She knows he is smart. He isn’t quick on his feet quite yet, but he knows what needs to be done. Speed will come in time. Soon he won’t even think before he acts at a crime scene or back at the office.
He runs a hand through his black hair in a slightly anxious way, and offers, “Rectal temperature?”
Wren gives him a finger gun but then shakes her head with a grimace. “You have good instincts. If we were in a temperature-controlled environment, that would be a great answer. Unfortunately, we can’t trust or even wish that the temperature has stayed a balmy eighty-two degrees for this woman’s entire time out here.” She gestures to the stretcher and instructs, “Open up the bag so we can get her out of here.”
As the deputy coroners unfold the white body bag, Wren continues, “You were right with lividity. It is fixed at its highest level, which means we are up at the twelve-hour time frame likely. Grab her arm.”
Both attendants move forward, and Wren nods to allow each of them to hold one of Jane Doe’s arms.
“Try to manipulate it,” she says while she watches them struggle to move it even slightly one way or the other.
“Wow, that’s rigid,” Wren’s mentee points out.
Wren adjusts her gloves farther up her wrist. “Exactly. Rigor is fixed and rigid. It hasn’t broken yet. What does this mean?”
The police officers on the scene are clearly annoyed. They make a point to sigh and look dramatically up at the sky as if they have anything else to be doing in the middle of the night. Their display of impatience doesn’t shake her. If she has to be awake and in a swamp with a dead woman at three a.m., she will at least train some rookies in the process.
The deputy coroner nearest her stands, smoothing out his pants, “Well, it fits with the twelve-hour time frame. Could be even longer, upwards of thirty hours with this type of rigidity.”
There he is.
His growing confidence is promising. With a caseload like hers, Wren can use all the competent help she can find.
“Bingo. And look what we have here,” she says and points to the spree of black flies that everyone keeps swatting out of their faces. “I know there are myriad bugs around here, but this little guy is a blowfly. They arrive first to a corpse, and lay eggs that hatch into maggots. We don’t have maggots quite yet, but eggs could have been laid at this point. This all still puts us within our estimated range. It looks like the killer could have even done this in the middle of the day. Whoever did this is a brazen bastard.”
The rookies are playing the part of captivated students, but the way they both lean on one leg then the other, slightly swaying to keep themselves awake, tells Wren she has lost her audience. Before they turn to leave, a young police officer calls to them from along the tree line.
He is holding a flashlight and pointing it down, exclaiming, “Hey! I got some clothing over here!”
Wren can’t contain the snicker that escapes her lips, as she snidely remarks, “And to think, you were ready to clear the scene.”