Girl Missing - By Tess Gerritsen Page 0,2

was time for the hands-on part of the job – the part one never saw on House. Occasionally, the answers fell right into place with a first look. Time of death, cause of death, mechanism and manner of death – these were the blanks that had to be filled in. A verdict of suicide or natural causes would make Sykes and Ratchet happy; a verdict of homicide would not.

This time, unfortunately, Kat could give them no quick answers.

She could make an educated guess about time of death. Livor mortis, the body’s mottling after death, was unfixed, suggesting that death was less than eight hours old, and the body temperature, using Moritz’s formula, suggested a time of death of around midnight. But the cause of death?

‘Nothing definitive, guys,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

Sykes and Ratchet looked disappointed, but not at all surprised.

‘We’ll have to wait for body fluids,’ she said.

‘How long?’

‘I’ll collect it, get it to the state lab today. But they’ve been running a few weeks behind.’

‘Can’t you run a few tests here?’ asked Sykes.

‘I’ll screen it through gas and TL chromatography, but it won’t be specific. Definitive drug ID will have to go through the state lab.’

‘All we want to know,’ said Ratchet, ‘is whether it’s possible.’

‘Homicide’s always possible.’ She continued her external exam, starting with the head. No signs of trauma here; the skull felt intact, the scalp unbroken. The blond hair was tangled and dirty; obviously the woman had not washed it in days. Except for postmortem changes, she saw no marks on the torso either. The left arm, however, drew her attention. It had a long ridge of scar tissue snaking down it toward the wrist.

‘Needle tracks,’ said Kat. ‘And a fresh puncture mark.’

‘Another junkie,’ sighed Sykes. ‘There’s our cause of death. Probable OD.’

‘We could run a fast analysis on her needle,’ said Kat. ‘Where’s her kit?’

Ratchet shook his head. ‘Didn’t find one.’

‘She must’ve had a needle. A syringe.’

‘I looked,’ said Ratchet. ‘I didn’t see any.’

‘Did you find anything near the body?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ratchet. ‘No purse, no ID, nothing.’

‘Who was first on the scene?’

‘Patrolman. Then me.’

‘So we’ve got a junkie with fresh needle marks. But no needle.’

Sykes said, ‘Maybe she shot up somewhere else. Wandered into the alley and died.’

‘Possible.’

Ratchet was peering at the woman’s hand. ‘What’s this?’ he said.

‘What’s what?’

‘She’s got something in her hand.’

Kat looked. Sure enough, there was a tiny fleck of pink cardboard visible under the edge of her clenched fingers. It took two of them to pry the fist open. Out slid a matchbook, small and pink with raised gold lettering: ‘L’Etoile, fine nouvelle cuisine. 221 Hilton Avenue.’

‘Kind of out of her neighborhood,’ Sykes remarked.

‘Hey, I hear that’s a nice place,’ said Ratchet. ‘Not that I could ever afford to eat there myself.’

Kat opened the matchbook. Inside were three unused matches. And a phone number, scrawled in fountain pen ink on the inside cover.

‘Think it’s a local number?’ she asked.

‘Prefix would put it in Surry Heights,’ said Sykes. ‘That’s still out of her neighborhood.’

‘Well,’ said Kat. ‘Let’s try it out and see what happens.’ As Sykes and Ratchet stood by, she went to the wall phone and dialed the number. It rang, three times, four. An answering machine came on, the message spoken by a deep male voice:

‘I’m not available at the moment. Please leave your name and number.’

That was all. No cute music, no witty remarks, just that terse request, and then the beep.

Kat said, ‘This is Dr. Novak at the Albion medical examiner’s office. Please call me back, in regards to a . . .’ She paused, unwilling to reveal that she had a corpse whom he might know. Instead she said, ‘Please call me. It’s important,’ and left her number. She hung up and looked at the two cops. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see who calls back. In the meantime, do you both want to stick around for the autopsy?’

It was probably the last thing the men wanted to do, but they remained stoically by the table, wincing as she stabbed various needles into the corpse, collecting blood from the femoral vein, vitreous fluid from the eye, and urine from a puncture through the lower abdominal wall. After watching a needle pierce an eyeball, a blade does not hold nearly as many horrors. Kat picked up the Henckel knife and this time neither man flinched, even as her blade sliced into the torso. Even as she snapped apart ribs and lifted off the sternum, releasing the odor of