Fire Medic Lucarelli had assessed that young woman did not have a pulse or any respirations. Sophia Smith, Black Creek County Coroner, confirms this.
Presumed perpetrator Stefan Paul Christiansen, 17
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:
The autopsy is begun at 8:30 a.m. The body is presented in a black body bag. The victim is wearing a long white-appearing sweater, size S, black tights, size S, and pink ballet shoes, size 6, a bra size 32B and underpants size 5. Jewelry included two smooth-textured silver hoop pierced earrings, 1-inch diameter, one in each ear, and one 1-inch wide silver expandable wristband on left wrist with two charms, one in the shape of a cross and one in the shape of a star. Fingernails and toenails are painted a pale pearl pink. The body is that of a normally developed and nourished white female measuring 67 inches and weighing 119 pounds, and appearing generally consistent with the stated age of eighteen. The body is cold and unembalmed. The teeth are native and in good condition. The genitalia are consistent with a normally developed adult female. The eyes are closed. Irises are gray. Pupils are fixed.
INJURIES:
The neck is fractured at the C3 vertebra. There is a depressed skull fracture of five centimeters of the occipital bone. Extruded brain tissue is observed. An abrasion of four centimeters to the left cheekbone appears sustained post-mortem.
I shifted through more papers.
The alleged perpetrator, Stefan Paul Christiansen, age 17, of 11 Washtenaw Street, Portland, Wisconsin, is unable to stand, walk or answer questions. He explains his arms are on fire. He asks for his mother. He tells this interviewer, “It is all my fault.” （See video recorded statement.）
Then this:
REPORT OF THE IDENTIFICATION DIVISION
To: Detective Sergeant Peter B. Sunday, cc Detective Sergeant Dashelle Lamartine
Black Creek County Sheriff’s Police Department
55 College Avenue
Black Creek, Wisconsin 53575
Specimens delivered by Louis Torres
60 negatives
60 photographs of latent prints, including tips, sides and lower joint series of fingers, palm prints and footprints of Jillian Rae McCormack, Belinda Lowell McCormack, Stefan Paul Christiansen, unidentified fingerprints and palm prints.
Photographs of household surfaces include TV, nightstand, coffee table, lamps, presumed murder weapon golf club. Prints of all three individuals distributed throughout the living area of the apartment 216, Covered Bridge Townhomes, 100 Tamarack Road, Black Creek, Wisconsin. Prints on the shaft of the golf club include palm, tips, lower joint prints consistent on examination with those of Belinda Lowell McCormack, Jillian Rae McCormack, Stefan Christiansen and two unidentified others.
I was wondering now whether some of the unidentified prints might belong to the caller Esme. Maybe she had been there, as she claimed, and left before the EMT arrived? Why would she have touched the golf club? What possible reason?
“Wouldn’t an autopsy report have the contents of the victim’s stomach?” Julie asked.
“That’s what happens on TV.”
“It’s what happens in real life too. There’s nothing like that here. I don’t see a toxicology report of any kind for Belinda or Stefan.”
We wrote down two questions for me to ask Sunday when I called him:
* * *
Where were the toxicology reports done on Stefan and Belinda?
How many hours after the murder was Stefan’s first interview? Was he still under the influence? Did that happen at the hospital or the police station?
* * *
After all this distress, I still didn’t feel that I’d learned anything new. I’d just been forced to look at disturbing images. Forced? I wasn’t forced. No one forced me except my own demons, unleashed by me. Maybe now they would get back into the box.
“We need to get some sleep now,” Julie said. So I gathered up all the files and envelopes and carefully replaced them. Then Julie said, “I’m glad we are here together, in case you have nightmares.”
We lay back to back, as we had for thirty years. The melony smell of Julie’s hair was as familiar to me as my own palm, the slight lift in one of her shoulders from a broken clavicle sustained by falling off the handlebars of my bike as known to me as Stefan’s eyes.
“I have to let go of this,” I told her. “Julie, put a spell on me. Make me stop ruminating. I’m sick of this cat-and-mouse game, like waiting, waiting, waiting, for what? For that one fact, that exists only in my mind? Or for the big climax? Is somebody going to shoot him from ambush? Or shoot me? This has to end.”
“Maybe it has ended already. Maybe it’s over and you don’t know it.”