Ingle seemed to anticipate her question. “As you can see, she was wearing a very good rain jacket. Arc’teryx brand, Gore-Tex, completely waterproof, cinched at the sleeves and around the hood. Problem was, the zipper up the front was busted, so it wouldn’t stay closed. The pants were Patagonia, some kind of waterproof mountain climbing material, cinched at the ankles, tucked into the tops of her hiking boots.”
Sara understood why he was calling out these details. In Ingle’s scenario, the cinched hood had protected the face. The sunglasses had protected the eyes. The seals on the sleeves and pants had acted as a barrier against insects and animals. That left one area exposed for the predators. The broken zipper had let the jacket flap open. Her undershirt was more like a tank-top, sleeveless with a deep V at the neck. From the looks of it, more than one creature had fought over the body. That could explain why she had been pulled in different directions.
“We get a lot of gray foxes up here,” Ingle said. “Had a rabid one bite a woman a couple of years back.”
“I remember.” Sara pulled a pair of exam gloves from the box on the desk. She told Ingle, “So far, everything you’re telling me, everything I’ve read, points to an unfortunate accident.”
“I’m glad to hear you agree with me.” He added, “So far.”
Sara watched him remove the thick, white sheet covering the body. There was another sheet wrapped mummy-like from the shoulders down. This was clearly meant to keep her parents from seeing more than they probably should. Ingle used a pair of scissors to cut open the thin material. He was gentle in his movements, moving slowly from chest to foot.
The man had obviously taken great care with Alexandra McAllister before letting the parents see their child. Her nude body smelled of disinfectant. Her face was bloated, but not to the point of disfigurement. Her hair had been combed. Ingle must have massaged the livor mortis out of her face as he’d set her features to look as relaxed and natural as possible. He’d judiciously applied make-up to erase the horror of the woman’s last few hours. These acts of decency reminded Sara of Dan Brock back in Grant County. Especially after the death of his own father, Brock had shown an almost saintly kindness toward mourners.
Sara had experienced it first-hand when Jeffrey had died.
Ingle folded away the thin sheet. There was still another layer. He had covered the torso in plastic to keep the fluids from bleeding through. The effect was like cling film covering a full pot of spaghetti.
“Doctor?” Ingle was postponing removing the plastic until the last minute. Even with the precautions he’d taken, the smell would be potent.
“Thank you.” Sara started her visual exam at the head. She was able to appreciate the open fracture at the back of the skull. Dizziness. Nausea. Blurred vision. Stupor. Loss of consciousness. There was no way to tell what state the victim had been in post-injury. Every brain reacted differently to trauma. The one common denominator was that skulls were closed containers. Once the brain started to swell, there was nowhere for it to go. It was like blowing up a balloon inside a glass ball.
She pressed open the woman’s eyes. The contact lenses had fused to the corneas. There were signs of petechiae, the red, scattershot bursting of blood vessels in the eyes. This could be the result of strangulation, but it could also indicate that the brain had swelled into the brain stem, depressing respiration to the point of death. An autopsy might show a broken hyoid, indicating manual compression, but this wasn’t an autopsy.
At this point, Sara did not see a reason to suggest one.
She palpated the neck with her fingers. The structure felt stiff. There were multiple explanations for that finding, from whiplash sustained during the fall to swollen lymph glands.
She asked Ingle, “Do you have a flashlight?”
He took a penlight out of his pocket.
Sara pushed open the woman’s mouth. Nothing appeared any different from the photo. She pressed down the tongue and used the light to look inside. Nothing. She stuck her index finger down the throat as far as it would reach.
Ingle asked, “Do you feel an obstruction?”
“I don’t feel one, no.” The only definitive way to tell would be to dissect the tracheal block. Again, there was no reason to do so. Sara was not going to put this family through one more second of grief based on the theories of a pedophile with an ax to grind.
She told Ingle, “Ready.”
He slowly peeled back the plastic covering the torso.
The sucking sound lurched against the low ceiling. The abdomen looked as if a grenade had gone off inside. The smell was so noxious that Sara coughed. Her eyes watered. She looked back at Amanda. The top of her head still showed, but she was typing with one hand. She’d put the other hand under her nose to block the smell.
Sara did not have that luxury. She took a few deep breaths, forcing her body to accept that this was how it was going to be. Ingle seemed unfazed. The corners of his lips turned up in a well-earned smile.
Sara returned to the body.
The line of demarcation between where the waterproof materials had protected sections of the body and where the thin, cotton shirt had covered the torso could have been made with a ruler. Everything above the clavicles and below the hips was pristine. The belly and chest were a different matter.
The intestines had been gutted. The breasts had been ripped away. Most of the organs were missing. The ribs had been licked clean. Sara could see teeth marks where bone had been gnawed. She pulled the left arm away from the body to follow the trail of carnage from the shredded breast around to the side. The armpit had been eviscerated. The nerves, arteries and veins stuck out like strands of broken electrical cords. She opened the right arm and found the same type of destruction.
She asked Ingle, “What do you make of the axilla?”
“You mean the armpits?” he asked. “Foxes can be extremely vicious, especially when they fight. They’ve got claws as sharp as razors. They would’ve been frenzied.”
Sara nodded, though she didn’t quite agree with his assessment.
“Here.” Ingle went back to the desk. He found a magnifying glass in the top drawer. “You’ll see bits of blue material from the cotton shirt. I didn’t have time to pick it all out.”
“Thank you.” Sara took the magnifying glass. She knelt down beside the gurney. The teeth and claw marks were clearly visible. She had no doubt that several small animals had fed on the body. What she wanted to examine was the damage to the armpits.
Predators were drawn to the blood in organ meat and muscle. There wasn’t a lot of reward in the axilla. The nerves, veins and arteries of the brachial plexus extend from the spinal cord, through the neck, over the first rib and into the armpit. There were more complicated ways to describe the structures, but basically, the brachial plexus controlled the muscles of the arms. The various strands were distinguishable by their color. Veins and arteries were red. Nerves were pearly white to yellow.
Under the magnifying glass, Sara could see that the veins and arteries had been ripped open by teeth drawn to the blood.
By contrast, the nerves looked as if they had been cleanly sliced by a blade.
“Sara?” Amanda was finally looking up from her phone.
Sara shook her head, asking Ingle, “What about the scrape on her back?”
“The wound?”
“You called it a scrape in your notes.”
“Wound. Cut,” he said. “I guess she scratched the back of her neck on something? Perhaps a rock? The clothes weren’t torn, but I’ve seen it happen. Basic friction.”
He was using wound, cut and scratch interchangeably, which was like saying a dog was a chicken was an apple. Sara asked, “Can we turn her onto her side?”
Ingle replaced the plastic over the abdomen before rolling the shoulders. Sara rotated the hips and legs. She used the narrow beam of the penlight to examine the woman’s back. Livor mortis blackened the area like a bruise slashing down the spine. The skin had stretched and cracked from decomposition.
Sara counted the cervical vertebrae down from the base of the skull. She remembered a mnemonic from medical school—
C 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive.
The phrenic nerve, which controls the rise and fall of the diaphragm, branches off from spinal nerves at the third, fourth and fifth cervical vertebra. When assessing spinal cord injuries, if those nerves are left intact, then the patient did not need a ventilator. Any damage below C5 would paralyze the legs. Damage above C5 would paralyze the legs and the arms, but it would also cut off the ability of the patient to breathe on her own.
Sara found the injury from Ingle’s notes directly below C5.