Beneath Devil's Bridge(15)

“Oh, what have we here?” The doctor moves her magnifying light closer. She motions to Tucker and points to a glint of silver.

“Tangled into her hair—” She extracts a pendant of some sort. It hangs on a broken chain. The pathologist holds it up with her forceps for us to see. It’s a locket.

Blood drains from my head.

The locket is about the size of a quarter. It has a purple stone in the center, set into a nest of filigreed silver.

“Looks like a crystal, an amethyst,” Luke says as he leans forward to study the find. “The silver work around the stone—it’s in the shape of multiple Celtic knots.” He glances at me. “My mother had a pendant in this design. She got it in Ireland. She said a lot of the tourist shops sell similar trinkets. The Celtic knot supposedly represents eternity, or continuity, or, in my mom’s case, it represented the Holy Trinity—the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. She was a devout Catholic.”

For a moment I can’t breathe. My pulse begins to race. I clear my throat.

“Leena’s parents never mentioned this locket in their description of what their daughter had been wearing when they reported her missing.”

“Not uncommon,” Luke says. “Parents think they know more about their children than they do. I mean, do you know what jewelry your daughter is wearing today?”

I turn my attention to Leena’s freshly shorn skull. “No,” I say quietly.

Dr. Backmann drops the locket into a little metal basin shaped like a kidney. The diener puts the basin to one side.

The doc continues. “There’s also a clear imprint pattern of a shoe—or boot—sole on the back of her head. Same size and pattern as the one on her back. Consistent with another stomping kick.”

I begin to feel dissociated from my body.

Leena is x-rayed. The examinations show no broken bones, apart from the nose. No dislocations.

The doc readies her blade. My brain scurries down tunnels in an effort to escape as the sharp edge is pressed to dusky flesh. In my mind I see Pratima’s dark-brown, tormented eyes. I see the tightness of Jaswinder’s jaw, the way his hands fisted and unfisted as I told them how we found their daughter in the river.

An incision is made from one shoulder bone to the other, then a cut is made straight down to the belly button to complete a Y shape. They peel Leena open, snip her ribs out. They come out in one big butcher slab.

“Considerable damage to the liver and pancreas is apparent,” says Dr. Backmann. “Evidence of multiple blows sustained to the abdominal area . . . Layers of her abdominal wall are severely bruised in a number of locations.” Claustrophobia tightens. My vision grows fuzzy. The doctor’s words begin to blur. “Organs crushed. Separation of fatty tissue from muscle tissue. Most severe damage at torso . . . Evidence of internal bleeding in the chest and lower abdomen . . . consistent with a forceful kicking or stomping in the abdominal area . . . Damage to pelvis, stomach, liver, pancreas . . . Mesentery torn away. The mesentery is the organ that attaches the intestines to the posterior abdominal wall in humans.” The doctor looks up.

I force myself to focus.

Quietly she says, “This is similar to what I’d expect to see in a crush convulsion injury. Which is something that often occurs with car-crash victims. This girl went through hell. It’s like she was extracted from a vehicle wreck that crashed over that bridge.”

Leena’s heart is removed and weighed, and so is her brain.

“Brain is swollen. A substantial degree of general hemorrhaging and trauma. Sufficient concussive injury to cause unconsciousness.”

The lungs, too, are removed, weighed.

“Internal examination of the lungs shows a frothy white substance,” says Dr. Backmann. “This is consistent with death by drowning.”

The doctor looks more closely at the lungs. Her body stills. She says quietly, “There’s something delicate, hidden by the white froth . . .” The doctor removes four small pebbles. They make a plinking sound as she drops them into the metal basin being held at her side. She finds another five pebbles and drops them into the basin as well. She looks up at us over her half-moon glasses. “The small stones were likely inhaled into her lungs with the agonal gasp.” A pause. Her eyes watch us over her lenses. “She likely took her last gasp for life with her face pressed down into the bottom of the riverbed, where all the little stones lie. Those circular marks on her shoulders . . . could have been made by knees. Holding her down.”

“She was drowned,” I say. “Someone straddled her, knelt on her shoulders, holding her head underwater, until she inhaled pebbles.”

“Death by drowning will be my conclusion on my report,” says the doctor. “But if the decedent had not gone into the water, it’s likely that the assault trauma, the brain swelling, would have killed her anyway. But she was definitely alive when she was forced underwater, and held there.” She hesitates, and her demeanor cracks. “Whoever did this . . . is a monster.”





RACHEL


NOW


Thursday, November 18. Present day.

I close Dr. Hannah Backmann’s autopsy report, but the morning in the morgue is alive in my mind. Leena’s body was released later that day, but the full analysis and final report took another two weeks. I set the report on the table and glance at the clock on the wall. Granger is not back yet. Nor has he called to say when he will return. I’ve disappointed him. But he has also irked me. He should have known better than to try to hide things from me, especially in relation to this case. And after listening to the first episode of the podcast, there is no way in hell I can stuff this genie back into the bottle.