The ME rocked her head side to side, weighing that and agreeing. “Want the basics?”
“Good a place as any to start.” Nikki took out her own notebook, a slender, reporter’s cut spiral that fit perfectly in her blazer pocket.
“Female Jane Doe. No ID, no purse, no wallet, no jewelry. Estimating age as early sixties.”
“Cause of death?” asked Heat.
Lauren Parry’s eyes left her clipboard and settled on her friend’s. “Now, how did I guess that would be your question?” She glanced inside the suitcase and continued, “I can’t say, except preliminarily.”
Nikki echoed back, “Now, how did I guess that would be your answer?”
The ME smiled again, and small trails of vapor floated from her nostrils. “Why don’t you come on up here, and I can show you what I’m dealing with.”
Detective Heat gloved up as she ascended the corrugated metal ramp sloping from the pavement to the back ledge of the truck. As she stepped aboard, her gaze momentarily stuck on the suitcase, and when it did, her teeth clacked with an icy shiver. Attributing it to crossing climates—leaving behind the mild April morning for a January chill inside the cargo hold—she shook it off.
Lauren stood so Nikki could squeeze by to get a view of the corpse. “I see what you mean,” Heat said.
The woman’s body was frozen. Ice crystals like the ones shimmering on nearby boxes of ground beef, chicken, and fish sticks glistened on her face. Clothed in a pale gray suit, she had been folded into the fetal position and fit into the suitcase, where she now lay on her side. Lauren gestured with the cap of her pen to the frosty bloodstain covering the back of the suit. “Obviously, this here is our best guess for cause of death. It’s a significant puncture delivered laterally to the posterior of the rib cage. Judging from the amount of blood, the knife entered sideways between the ribs and found the heart.” Heat experienced that uneasy deja vu she felt every time she saw one of those wounds. She made no comment though, just nodded and folded her arms to warm the gooseflesh the refrigeration had no doubt raised on them, even through the blazer. “With her frozen like this, I can’t do my usual field prelim for you. I can’t even unfold her limbs to check for other wounds, trauma, defense marks, lividity, and so forth. I can do all that, of course, just not yet.”
Nikki kept her gaze fixed on the stab wound and said, “Even time of death is going to be a challenge, I suppose.”
“Oh, for sure, but not to worry. We can still come close when I get a chance to work on her down at Thirtieth Street,” said the medical examiner. And then she added, “Assuming I don’t get back there to a major situation following the quake.”
“From what I hear, it’s mostly a small number of treat-and-release injuries.”
“That’s good.” Lauren studied her. “You all right?”