Skin Privilege (33 page)

Sara had seen what meth could do to a person’s mouth. Most heavy users lost their teeth within the first year.

‘Big business,’ Bart said. ‘But I’d trade it all in if I never had to see another kid hooked on that shit.’ His face reddened. ‘Sorry for my language, ma’am.’

Sara didn’t know if it was his apology or his obvious concern, but she felt herself not hating him so much.

Bart said, ‘Let me help you turn the body.’

Sara was still reluctant to accept his offer, but she had to admit she wasn’t relishing maneuvering Gibson over on the table. She took a few more photographs, then waited for Bart to glove up again. He took the head and shoulders and Sara took the feet. It gave her some amount of pleasure to watch the dentist struggle under the weight as they rolled Gibson onto his back. It also gave her pause, because if the two of them were having trouble just flipping the body on the table, it must have taken some pretty strong men to toss him through a window.

She said, ‘Big guy, huh?’

Bart shrugged his shoulders, but she could see a bead of sweat roll down his cheek. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

‘I can imagine.’

She saw his eyes flash as he registered the comment, probably wondering if she was being condescending. Sara kept him wondering, all but batting her eyelashes when she said, ‘Thanks so much for lending me some of your muscle.’

Instinctively, he reached for his cigarettes, then stopped himself. ‘I see you figured out Bertha.’ He pointed to the X-rays. ‘I keep asking the county to replace that thing and they keep telling me no.’

‘It serves its purpose,’ Sara allowed. If you watched enough television, you would assume that all police departments were at the cutting edge of forensic technology. In reality, no lab in the country could afford the billions of dollars of equipment you saw being used on an average Thursday night drama. What little equipment the state had was in high demand, and sometimes it took up to a year to get an analysis back.

Bart was still studying Boyd Gibson’s X-rays. He gave a low whistle. ‘Not much of a childhood.’ He traced a faint line along the clavicle. ‘Nasty break.’

‘Did you know him?’

Bart turned around, and for the first time since he’d come into the room, he seemed to be really looking at her. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his tone filled with sadness. ‘His mama used to bring him in. She was always torn up.’ He indicated his face, and Sara realized he was indicating abuse. ‘Never saw it in Boyd or his brother – he’s got an older brother -but I called the sheriff plenty of times about Ella. That was her name.’ He turned his back to Sara as he looked at the films again, or maybe he just didn’t want her to see him upset. ‘She was a great lady. Quiet, respectful, good cook. Everything you’d want in a wife. I guess some men can’t be happy with that. Grover sure as hell wasn’t.’

Sara waited to make sure he was finished speaking before asking, ‘What did the sheriff do when you reported it?’

‘This was back when Al was in charge,’ Bart said, turning back around. ‘Al was a good man, but you couldn’t press charges back then without the wife on board to testify, and Ella wasn’t going to say a word against Grover. Not that she had any love left for him, but she knew what he would do to the boys, and it wasn’t like she could go out and get a job to support all of them.’

‘Is she still with him?’

‘No,’ he said, looking down at his feet. ‘Cancer took her when Boyd was about ten, maybe eleven. I didn’t see him much after that. Grover wasn’t gonna waste his drinking money on having their teeth cleaned.’ He pointed to the corpse. ‘Course, I’ve seen him plenty lately.’

‘How’s that?’

Bart directed his gaze toward Gibson’s forearms, where track marks scarred the flesh. They were fairly healed, at least four to six months old. Gibson was also heavy, and meth users tended to be extremely thin.

She said, ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s been using lately.’

‘Yeah, he got cleaned up for a while.’ Bart shrugged. ‘Lots of ‘em clean up for a month, sometimes a year. Then something happens and they’re back on the needle quick as you please.’

‘Is that what happened to Boyd?’

Bart didn’t exactly answer her question. ‘He came in about six weeks ago. He didn’t have the money for the work, but I set up a payment schedule for him. He was in awful pain. His whole mouth was infected. Would’ve lost the rest of his teeth if I hadn’t done something.’

‘I saw the bridge,’ Sara said, indicating the dental film. She hadn’t yet examined Gibson’s mouth.

Bart looked at the X-ray. ‘Not as bad as it could’ve been.’ He gave a quick smile. ‘You must see that kind of thing a lot more than me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Indigents,’ He pronounced the word sharply, but Sara could not tell if she was meant to infer derision or pity. ‘They come in and you know they can’t afford it but you can’t turn them away because that’s not why you went to school.’

Sara nodded and shrugged at the same time, not knowing what else to say. She was hardly going to have a protracted discussion about the dismal state of healthcare with this man.

‘Well.’ Bart glanced at his watch as if he had just remembered an appointment. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to drop by and make sure you were making yourself at home. Let me know if you need anything, all right?’

‘Thank you,’ Sara said, and she really meant it until he flashed one of his ferret smiles.

‘You take care now, darlin’. Wouldn’t want you to get mixed up in any of this.’

She felt her own smile tighten on her face. ‘Thank you,’ she repeated, but Fred Bart had already left.

Sara looked back at the dead man lying on the table as if he might offer some wry comment about what had just happened. Of course he did not. Sara took off her gloves as she walked back over to her notes. She found the right page and recorded that Fred Bart had assisted with the removal of the knife. She also noted that the knife had easily slipped from the wound. Bart was right about one thing; usually the blades stuck, whether from dried blood or tissue that stiffened around the metal.

She pushed this to the back of her mind as she continued the external examination, photographing the healed scars that indicated needle use, making note of a few scratches on the front of the shin. Gibson’s mouth was already open and the bridge spanning the gap where his front teeth should have been popped out easily. Though she didn’t want to, Sara had to admit that Bart did good work. The gums were almost completely healed and there didn’t seem to be any indication that the bridge had fit awkwardly.

Sara checked the time, wondering what was taking Jeffrey and Jake Valentine so long. They were supposed to bring Boyd Gibson’s father in to identify the body but that had been a good two hours ago. Technically, Jake had already positively identified Boyd Gibson, but she knew from experience that the family generally needed to see the victim in order to get some closure.

She called Jeffrey’s cell phone but he didn’t pick up. She left a message for him, but after twenty minutes passed without him returning her call, she decided to go ahead with the internal examination. She could always cover the body when Gibson’s father arrived to spare him the more graphic aspects of his son’s death.

She regloved and returned to the table, where she picked up a scalpel and began the Y-incision. Because there was a Dictaphone over the autopsy table that she used back in Grant, Sara could not stop her mind from doing a running narration of every movement she made, so that when she opened the rib cage or examined the pleura, she heard a little voice in her head echoing the motions.

She followed the penetration path of the stab wound to the heart, finding just as she’d predicted. The blade had pierced the left posterior thoracic wall and exited the anterior, causing almost immediate death. She stopped here, making some more notes, taking photographs and measuring the blade’s path, then doing her own drawing of exactly what she’d found.

Even without the stab wound, the heart was in bad shape. Enlarged from the extra weight on Gibson’s frame, the major arteries were already showing signs of disease. Had the knife not killed him, his bad health habits would have ensured he didn’t live into a comfortable old age.

Though she had obvious cause of death, Sara continued the autopsy in minute detail, carefully weighing and dissecting the organs, taking tissue samples. Boyd Gibson’s last meal had been similar to the one Jeffrey and Sara had shared: pizza. He preferred pepperoni from the looks of it, but he’d chosen to eat a healthy salad to balance it out. Maybe he had smoked while he ate. Judging from the coloring and the enlarged air spaces in his lungs, Gibson had been a heavy smoker. Considering this, Sara thought it odd that he hadn’t had cigarettes in his pockets.

She made a note of this, took more photographs and did so many drawings that her hand cramped. Unfortunately, her devotion to detail was only punishing herself. By the time the clock hands ticked past noon, her feet were killing her and her back felt as if it had been bent into a shepherd’s hook.

And, honestly, Sara had never been an artist. Her drawings looked like the class project of a psychopathic kindergartener.

She covered the body and sat down, every vertebrae in her neck popping as she looked up at the ceiling in hopes of counteracting the fact that she had been looking straight down for the last two hours. She was just starting to let herself worry about Jeffrey when she heard a car pull up outside.

Jake Valentine opened the door, knocking at the same time. ‘Sorry we’re late,’ he told her, a sloppy grin on his face. He had a piece of toilet tissue shoved up his nose. The bridge was swollen, the fingertips of a bruise spreading under his left eye.

Sara stood in alarm. ‘Where’s Jeffrey?’

Before she had finished the question, he came in behind Valentine, shutting the door.

‘Slight altercation,’ Jeffrey explained. He shared the same sloppy grin as the sheriff, as if they’d just had a great deal of fun together.

‘What kind of altercation?’ Sara felt like she was talking to two naughty children, and Jeffrey’s burst of laughter did nothing to disabuse her of the notion.

Valentine laughed, too, though she could tell from the tears in his eyes that it hurt to do so. He told her, ‘Grover wasn’t exactly happy to see me.’

Jeffrey explained, ‘He punched Jake in the face as soon as he opened the door.’

Sara noticed that he was using the sheriff’s first name now. Only two cops could bond over one of them getting their face punched.

Valentine told Sara, ‘Lucky thing you told me to bring him along this morning. You’d probably have me on that table right now if he hadn’t been there.’

‘Shit,’ Jeffrey replied. ‘Probably be both of us if you hadn’t tripped the old fool.’

Sara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘I take it Mr. Gibson is not coming in to do the formal identification?’

Valentine explained, ‘He wasn’t too broke up about losing his son. They weren’t exactly close.’ He shrugged, allowing a hint of seriousness to enter his voice. ‘Maybe when he sobers up, it’ll hit him.’

Jeffrey turned serious as well, telling Sara, ‘He was out of control. We cuffed him, took him to the station, so he could sleep it off. Not the first time he’s been there, from the looks of it.’

‘No,’ Valentine agreed. ‘Probably won’t be the last, either.’

‘I took several photographs of his face,’ Sara offered. ‘You can show those to his father. It might make things easier.’

Jeffrey asked Sara, ‘Did you find anything?’

‘Not really.’ She picked up the murder weapon and placed it on a sheet of brown paper so that she could photograph it. This was the first time Sara had really examined the full blade and handle. Looking at it now, she noticed two things about the knife: the blade was thin, maybe half an inch wide, and it was at least four inches long. Most important, unlike the majority of folding knives Sara had seen, there was no serration. The blade was smooth on one side and sharp on the other.

Valentine’s cell phone rang, the opening bars of ‘ Dixie ‘ filling the room. He checked the caller ID, then told them, ‘If y’all could excuse me for a minute?’

Sara waited until the door closed before picking up the camera and scrolling through the photographs.

Jeffrey asked, ‘Did you call the hospitals to see if Lena or Hank have been admitted?’

‘There are three within a fifty mile radius,’ she told him, scanning through the photos. ‘No sign at any of them.’

‘I guess that’s good,’ he said, though she could tell he was disappointed. If Lena had been tucked up in a hospital last night, there was no way she could have been out killing Boyd Gibson.

Sara found the photo she wanted. ‘This should make you feel better.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Look at the wound,’ she said, finding the series of close-ups she’d taken. ‘It’s jagged at the bottom and jagged at the top. I knew something wasn’t right.’

Jeffrey looked at the knife on the table, then back at the camera’s LCD. He obviously knew where she was going with this, but still said, ‘Okay.’

‘The knife – this knife’ – she indicated Lena ‘s knife on the table-‘Would have made a wound with a V-shaped bottom and a squared edge at the top. A serration leaves a jagged edge in the skin. The top and bottom of the wound in Boyd Gibson’s back is jagged.’

He was nodding. ‘Based on the wound, the knife that killed Gibson was double-edged, serrated.’ She could hear the excitement in his voice. Statistically, most stabbing victims were killed with single-edge serrated knives because that was what was usually in the kitchen drawer. Sara had never seen a double-edged serrated knife, let alone a stab wound from one. If there was someone out there in Elawah carrying such a weapon, he was more than likely the killer.

Jeffrey tapped his fingers on the table, processing the new lead. ‘I’d bet it was a custom job. Maybe something off-market for the military. Definitely full tang, probably a custom handle to match the sheath… How long do you think the blade would have to be?’

‘From the hilt to the point of the blade would have to be at least six inches long, then I’d guess from the wound that it’s around an inch and a half wide, tops.’ She pointed to Gibson. ‘Look at how big he is. His chest is huge, his heart was enlarged. I found an entrance and exit wound through the left chamber.’ She indicated Lena ‘s knife again. This blade might have pierced the back of the heart, but there’s no way it could have gone all the way through the heart and out the front. It’s not long enough – the whole thing tip to handle is eight inches long.’