“I’m not surprised.” The doc makes eye contact with me. “I don’t believe this is a through-and-through, Kate.” He looks down at the wound. “I believe the bolt lodged and was then pushed through the body in order for it to be removed.”
Glock’s words ring hard in my ears … went crossbow hunting a few years ago with a friend of mine. He got a buck. When he retrieved his bolt, he didn’t pull it out. He pushed it through. And it took some doing.
I stare at Doc, and I grapple to find my voice. “How can you tell?”
“It’s only a theory at this point. I may or may not be able to confirm it during autopsy, but I’ve two points to make. First, if you look at the cross marks, front and back, they do not align. Keep in mind that pushing a bolt through a human body is not an easy task and would require some degree of strength. In this case, preliminarily, it looks as if when the bolt was pushed through, it was twisted slightly. The kind of thing someone might do to force it. My second point is that the flesh around the secondary exit wound exhibits a small degree of tearing. As if the bolt head was moving in a fashion that did not have enough momentum to incise. And so the flesh was stretched and torn.”
“As if someone pushed it through,” I murmur.
“Exactly.”
“Was the victim dead when that happened?”
“I don’t know. I may or may not be able to answer that post-autopsy. But I’ll try.”
I think about that a moment. “You said there were two incised wounds.”
The doc grimaces, then nods at his assistant. The two men gently roll the victim back into a supine position. The doc sidles to the head. “Let’s position him,” he says to his assistant.
I watch as the two men slide a body block beneath the victim’s neck so that the head is angled back. When they’ve finished, the doc looks at me. “I was curious about the amount of blood that had leaked from the mouth when we were at the scene.”
“I remember,” I tell him. “I assumed it was from internal injuries. Stomach or lungs.”
“That was my thought initially, too.” He nods to the assistant.
Jared sets a gloved hand on the deceased’s forehead, then cranks the jaw-opening medical device wider, the rapid-fire clicks seeming obscene in the silence of the room. He picks up what looks like forceps, grasps the tongue, and gently pulls it outside the mouth and to one side.
Doc Coblentz adjusts the light so that the interior of the mouth is illuminated. He removes the wrapping from a long, disposable swab and indicates a point inside the mouth.
“There is a wound at the back of the throat, just behind the uvula,” he tells me. “I nearly missed it during this preliminary stage.”
I don’t want to look, but I shift right and lean closer. I see the white-pink flesh of the dead man’s gums. The pale bulge of the tongue. Teeth in good shape. A single cavity on an upper molar …
Jesus.
Using the swab, the doc depresses the uvula. That’s when I spot the dark red wound at the back of the throat. The same cross-mark shape as the wound on the abdomen.
Puzzled, I look at the doc. “He was also shot in the mouth?” I ask. “With a bolt or arrow from the crossbow?”
“I believe so.”
A hundred horrific images fly at me. But none of them quite explain how such a wound occurred. “How is it that a bolt could reach the back of the throat like that without first hitting the face? The teeth or lips?”
“That was my question, too, initially.” The doc’s gaze flicks to his assistant, who removes the block and repositions the victim’s head, so that the back of it is visible.
The scalp has been shaved. I spot the bloodred cross mark immediately. “So the bolt entered the mouth and exited the back of the head,” I murmur.
“I believe it did.”
I turn my gaze back to the doc. “Unless this was some sort of freak occurrence—unless the bolt was fired when the victim’s mouth was open—there’s no way it could have entered the mouth without hitting the lips or teeth.”
“That’s certainly a logical train of thought.” He nods at his assistant. “I wondered the same thing, so I shot an X-ray before you arrived.”
Jared crosses to the counter against the wall and flicks a switch on the wall-mounted X-ray illuminator. The monochrome image of a skull materializes.
Doc crosses to it and uses the swab to point. “We can’t see the soft-tissue injury,” he says. “Only bone. But even from this perspective, you can see the teeth and jaw here.” He indicates each, then runs the swab to the rear of the skull. “Here, you can see the secondary injury where the bolt went through the occipital bone, very close to where it joins the parietal. The important thing here, I believe, is the trajectory of the projectile and the angle of the injury.”
“It looks like the bolt was slanted slightly upward,” I say.
“But not too much,” he says. “As you well know, in most homicides the injury trajectory is generally horizontal.”
“But this can’t possibly be self-inflicted.” Even as I say the words, I hear the uncertainty in my voice. “Assisted suicide?”
“This is not a suicide. Not with two wounds, both possibly fatal. I’ll know more once I do the internal exam, Kate. But I believe the initial shot was the one to the abdomen. Once the victim was down and likely immobile, I believe the shooter went to him, inserted the tip of the bolt into his mouth, and fired the crossbow a second time.”
He returns to the gurney and with the swab indicates the entry and exit wounds, which signify the trajectory of the bolt. “The bolt penetrated the soft tissue at the oropharynx. There are lacerations present at the soft palate and left tonsil. Vomitus present. All of which indicate force. Once the weapon was fired, the projectile penetrated the brain and exited through the occipital bone at the back of the skull.”
I almost can’t get my head around the brutality of such an act. It was a close-range killing done with cold deliberation. “Whether it was personal or random,” I say, “whoever did this was intent on killing his victim.”
The doc nods. “I’ve called in a forensic pathologist to assist with this one, Kate. This will likely be an extraordinarily complex case.”
“How soon can you—”
“As soon as he arrives,” the doc cuts in. “I’m waiting for a call back now.”
We fall silent for a moment. As if sensing the tension, Jared clears his throat and goes to the counter to rearrange some of the items laid out on the tray.
“There’s one other detail I think you should know about.” Using the swab, the doc indicates the wound on the abdomen. “While we were preparing the body for autopsy, taking X-rays and photographs, Jared noticed a small amount of a … foreign substance at the opening of the abdominal wound.”
“What kind of substance?”
He shrugs. “All I can tell you is that it is not biological.”
“Poison?” I ask.
“No idea.”
“Liquid? Powder?”
“Liquid and slightly oily in nature.” He motions toward the victim’s head. “Curious, I checked the wound inside the mouth for any foreign substance. Sure enough, we found the same.”