She handed out shoe protectors and face masks. Her fingers squeezed Will’s when he took his share.
She said, “The body is out of rigor and entering decomp, so that, combined with the victim’s liver temp and the higher ambient temperature, gives us a physiological time of death that’s consistent with reports that Vasquez was attacked roughly forty-eight hours ago, which puts time of death toward the beginning of the riot.”
Amanda asked, “First minutes or first hours?”
“Ballpark is between noon and four on Saturday. If you want to narrow down an exact time, you’ll have to rely on witness statements.” Sara adjusted Will’s mask as she reminded Amanda, “Obviously, science alone cannot pinpoint precise time of death.”
“Obviously.” Amanda was not a fan of ballparks.
Sara rolled her eyes at Will. She was not a fan of Amanda’s tone. “There are three locations to the Vasquez crime scene—two in this main area, one in the kitchen. Vasquez put up a fight.”
Will reached behind Sara to hold open the door. The smell of shit and urine, the rioting inmates’ calling card, permeated every molecule inside the room.
“Good God,” Faith pressed the back of her hand against her face mask. She wasn’t good with crime scenes in general, but the odor was so sharp that even Will’s eyes were watering.
Sara told her assistant, “Gary, could you get the smaller channel locks from the van? We’ll need to unbolt the table before we can remove the body.”
Gary’s ponytail bobbed under his hairnet as he happily made his departure. He’d been with the GBI for less than six months. This wasn’t the worst crime scene he’d ever processed, but anything that happened inside of a prison was all the more soul-crushing.
The flash popped on Charlie’s camera. Will blinked away the light.
Sara told Amanda, “I managed to get a look at the security video. There’s nine seconds of footage that captures the beginning of the argument and goes right up to the tipping point into the riot. That’s when an unidentified person came up off-image, behind the camera, and cut the feed.”
Charlie provided, “No usable fingerprints on the wall, cable or camera.”
Sara continued, “The argument started at the front of the room by the service counter. Things turned heated very quickly. Six inmates from a rival gang jumped into the fight. Vasquez stayed seated at the corner table over there. The eleven other men at his table ran to the front of the room to get a better view of the fight. That’s when the feed cuts out.”
Will gauged the distances. The camera was at the rear of the room, so none of the eleven men could’ve slipped back without being seen.
“This way.” Sara led them to a table in the corner. Twelve lunch trays sat in front of twelve plastic seats. The food was moldy. Soured milk spilled across the surfaces. “Vasquez was attacked from behind. Blunt force trauma created a depressed skull fracture. The weapon was likely a small, weighted object swung at velocity. The force of the blow sent his head forward. There are bits of what appear to be Vasquez’s front teeth embedded in the tray.”
Will looked back at the camera. This felt like a two-man operation—one cut the feed, one neutralized the target.
Faith’s facemask was sucking in and out as she breathed through her mouth. “The first blow, was it meant to kill or to stun?”
Sara said, “I can’t speak to intent. The blow was significant. I didn’t visualize a laceration, but a depressed fracture is what it sounds like—the broken bone displaces inward, pressing on the brain.”
Amanda asked, “How long was he conscious?”
“We can infer from the evidence that he was conscious until the moment of death. I can’t speak to his state. Nauseated? Certainly. Blurred vision? Likely. How cognizant was he? Impossible to say. Everyone reacts differently to head trauma. From a medical standpoint, anytime you’re talking about a brain injury, we can only know that we don’t know.”
“Obviously.” Amanda had her arms crossed.
Will crossed his arms, too. Every muscle in his body was retracted. His skin felt tight. No matter how many crime scenes he investigated, his body never accepted that being around a violently murdered human being was a natural thing. He could deal with the stench of rotting food and excrement. The metallic tinge that blood gave off when the iron oxidized was a taste that would stay fixed in the back of his throat for the next week.
Sara said, “Vasquez was beaten to the floor. Three left-side molars were cracked at the root, the left jaw and orbital bone were fractured. Prelim suggests left-side rib fractures. You can see the blood splatter on the wall and ceiling has a semi-circle pattern. We’ve got three sets of footprints here, so you’re looking for two assailants, both likely right-handed. My guess is a sock lock was used, so there won’t be any obvious damage to the assailant’s hands.”
A sock lock was pretty much what it sounded like—a combination lock inside of a sock.
Sara continued, “Vasquez somehow ended up barefooted after the initial attack. We haven’t found his shoes or socks anywhere in the cafeteria. His assailants were wearing prison-issued sneakers with identical waffle patterns. We were able to infer quite a lot from the shoe and footprints. The next location they took him to was the kitchen.”
“What about this tattoo?” Amanda was across the room, looking down at the severed hand. “Is it a tiger? A cat?”
Charlie answered, “The tattoo database says a tiger can symbolize hatred for the police or that he’s a cat burglar.”
“A con who hates the police. Remarkable.” Amanda rolled her wrist at Sara. “Let’s skip ahead, Dr. Linton.”
Sara motioned for them to follow her to the front of the cafeteria. Empty trays were on the conveyor belt, so at least some inmates had finished their lunches before the riot started.
She said, “Vasquez was about five eight, one-hundred-forty pounds. Undernourished, but that’s not surprising since he was a heavy IV drug user. Track marks on his left arm, between the toes on his left foot and at his right carotid, so we can assume he was right-handed. There’s a meat cleaver in the kitchen prep area and a lot of blood, indicating the left hand was removed there.”
Amanda asked, “He didn’t chop it off himself?”
Sara shook her head. “Unlikely. Shoe and footprints indicate he was held down.”
Charlie added, “There’s no distinguishing marks on the waffle treads from the sneakers. Like Sara said, they’re standard issue. Every inmate has a pair.”
Sara had reached Vasquez’s final resting place. She squatted down in front of another table. Everyone but Amanda followed suit.
Will’s nostrils flared. The body had been festering in the heat for almost two full days. Decomposition was well on its way. The skin was slipping off the bone. Someone had obviously shoved Vasquez’s body under the table with their foot, kicking him out of the way like dirty clothes under the bed. Streaks of blood and waffled shoeprints showed where at least two men had put him there.
Vasquez’s bare feet were caked in blood. He was on his side, folded at the waist. One hand was reaching out in front of him. The bloody stump where his other hand used to be was tucked inside his belly. Literally. Vasquez’s murderers had stabbed him so many times that his gut had blossomed open like a grotesque flower. The nub of his wrist was jammed inside his body cavity like a stem.
Sara said, “Absent contravening evidence, cause of death is likely exsanguination or shock.”
The guy certainly looked shocked. His eyes were wide open. Lips parted. He had an otherwise ordinary face, if you dismissed the bloating and dark, black crescent where his blood had pooled to the lowest point of his skull. Shaved head. Porn mustache. A cross hung on a thin gold necklace around his neck, legally allowed by the GDOC because it was a religious symbol. The chain was delicate. Maybe a gift from a mother or daughter or girlfriend. It said something to Will that the murderers had taken Vasquez’s shoes and socks but left the necklace.
“Shit. That’s shit.” Faith clamped both hands over her mask as she dry-heaved. Vasquez’s intestines hung out of his abdomen like uncooked sausage. Feces had pooled onto the floor, then dried into a black mass the size of a deflated basketball.
Amanda told Faith, “See if they’ve tossed Vasquez’s cell yet. If they have, I want to know who did it and what they found. If not, you do the honors.”
Faith never had to be told twice to leave a dead body.
“Will.” Amanda was already typing into her phone. “Finish up here, then start the second-round interviews. These men have had enough time to get their stories straight. I want this solved quickly. This isn’t a needle-in-a-haystack situation.”
Will thought it was exactly that kind of situation. There were roughly one thousand suspects, all of them known criminals. “Yes, ma’am.”