The Butcher and the Wren(3)
Jeremy was a kid who craved knowledge. And chronically understimulated, he fed his own hunger by experimentation. His father’s early advice echoed in his mind over the years.
“You want to learn about something, son? You have to open it up.”
CHAPTER 2
THE LOUISIANA AIR FEELS IMPENETRABLE, even at this early hour. Forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller is still blinking the sleep from her eyes as she steps out of her car and into the muggy night. She checks her watch and cringes, thinking how great it would be if criminals could take their nefarious dealings out of the two a.m. hour for a couple of months at least.
She steps over some thick, soggy vegetation, steadying herself on the exposed roots of a nearby bald cypress tree. The grooves of the trunk feel as if they could swallow her up, like the crumbling hands of some ancient, folkloric bayou creature. She stops, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the artificial light ahead. The flashlights of three police officers point downward at something on the banks of the water. Their beams of light cut through the darkness, casting everything around them in an even thicker layer of black. The contrast is welcome. It helps the scene come into better focus.
The dead woman’s seminude body is crumpled beneath a substantial amount of tall grass that lines the water’s edge. Her head and shoulders are completely submerged in the murky black water. The rest of her body is lying faceup, curled in the grass. The woman is tall and of average weight. As Wren glances over her shoulder, she can see the deputy coroners trailing behind with a stretcher between them. Even between the three of them, it will still be a struggle to get her out of this foreboding bayou.
Only two weeks earlier, investigators recovered the decomposing body of another young woman from behind Twelve Mile Limit bar. She was found facedown in a puddle and drenched with foul-smelling swamp water. The parallels are not lost on Wren as she surveys the area, and although the alarm bells start ringing right away, she tempers them. She always receives a body without bias or expectation. But even while she maintains a single-minded focus on this unique Jane Doe, she makes a mental note to check for hidden items left by the killer. When the previous murder victim was found two weeks ago, they found several crumpled pages from a book shoved halfway down her throat. They were waterlogged and mostly illegible, but one page with the words Chapter 7 just barely visible was mostly intact.
She carefully creeps closer to the present situation. Jane Doe is missing a shirt, wearing only filthy denim cutoff jeans and a blue bra. There is a large horizontal laceration across her stomach. She has been nearly gutted by something crude. Wren can’t help but think of how the cicadas would have been deafening out here. They certainly are right now, as this tired team attempts to piece together this woman’s last moments. Was Jane’s murderer thinking of the last breaths they stole from her as they dragged her lifeless corpse out here to rot? The thoughts of the depraved fascinated Wren. But the last thoughts of the dead fascinated her even more.
She looks back to the scene and notices a braided bracelet around Jane Doe’s left wrist. Its original color was likely crisp white, but now it has taken on the color of something well-worn and well lived. She thinks about the woman buying this innocuous accessory. She can see her picking it up in her hands and turning it over before deciding to buy it. An impulse purchase from an endcap now immortalized in death.
She finds herself closer to the body now. Her coworkers help her pull it onto the sloping shore, slowly slipping the head out of the water to get a better look. The lividity has set noticeably in Jane Doe’s face. The coagulated blood that ceased to flow when her heart stopped beating has followed the pull of gravity and crawled across her face, forming blotches that harshly stain her cheeks and forehead. It’s difficult to see perfectly with just the dim lights, but Wren thinks that the lividity is a deep pink color, suggesting that the victim took her last breaths about ten hours before this moment. Livor mortis usually begins only about a half hour after death, but you won’t see it with any certainty until about two or three hours later. After about six hours, livor mortis darkens into the deep pink color that is obvious to the unaided eye. Bring it to twelve hours after death, and lividity is fixed at its highest level.
When her eyes travel down Jane Doe’s face, frozen in an expression of permanent dread, she notices the severe bruising on her neck. There are very clear indications of strangulation. Wren notes these injuries as a reminder to examine them better once she’s back in the morgue, and, after slipping on some purple latex gloves, runs a finger over the deep indentations that mar the flesh of the woman’s throat.
She pats the outside of Jane Doe’s pockets, being careful to feel for anything bulky or sharp. It’s incredible how many times she has been thankful for this extra step, feeling a syringe from the outside and avoiding a trip to the clinic. Feeling nothing potentially hazardous, she reaches into Jane’s pockets and comes up empty—no identification on the body.
“Anything found around her? A wallet?” Wren asks, though she knows the answer already.
She looks up at the three police officers shining their flashlights down at her for confirmation. All three shake their heads.
The young fellow on the right flippantly moves his flashlight around the area surrounding the body. “What you are seeing, we are seeing. No wallets, no IDs, and no weapon in sight.”
While Wren doesn’t appreciate the attitude, she nods and manipulates Jane Doe’s limbs, revealing an old, faded tattoo on the back of her bicep. It looks like hands set in prayer with a rosary entangled through them.