"You, Jen. She could be you."
Justin's words came to haunt Jenna later that night as she stared down at the small face of the eighteen year old girl. They'd found out a lot about the poor beauty in the past couple of hours. Her car, full of half the girl's life, was also carrying a few missing pieces of the puzzle. Stephanie was a note taker. She had notes about everything from scheduling time to do her laundry to a late night meeting with someone she called D. The meeting was scheduled in the back parking lot of the warehouse where her car had been found.
"Now if we only had some idea who D could be," she mused out loud.
"Oh, come on Jenna. You know we never get the easy ones, those go to the slackers and the kiss asses." He rubbed his hand down her arm, feeling the chill on the skin bared by the tee shirt she'd managed to pull out of her locker to go with the jeans she had unearthed. The morgue was cold, purposefully kept that way to put a temporary hold on decomposition and smell. Even so, the scent of death lingered above the heavy duty air cleaners that ran 24/7.
The morgue always gave Jenna the creeps, the black vinyl bags on top of gurneys lining the walls of the hallways made her think of horror flicks she had watched as a kid where the dead always sat up and walked. That thought sent another shudder through her slim frame.
"Yeah, but just once I'd like to have a bloody knife with a good set of latents on it and a scumbag of an ex husband to match them to." She pulled away from him and walked around the metal table their victim was laid out upon, her eyes taking in every detail of every wound. She studied the pattern, the slight curve upward at the end of every wound stroke, the different areas that were given the most heavy cuts. Now that she was laying here, the blood and gore cleaned from her body, she didn't quite look real. But the wounds were real. He had left the genitals and the breasts alone, preferring to use his hands from the looks of the bruises.
"Look at the size of those hand prints," Jenna said suddenly, startling Justin.
Justin stepped up to the side of the table, staring at the girl's naked breasts. He brought his own hand up, cupping his hand about an inch from the girl's skin.
"Okay, now I know I've seen it all."
The voice startled Justin who started violently, dropped his hand behind his back and quickly stepped away from the metal table. He turned and saw the coroner, a man who was known for his sarcastic sense of humor and irreverent attitude. "Jenna was just.." He clamped his mouth shut, knowing anything he said would make the situation worse for him.
Doctor Bill Rumny was a dark haired man who was just starting to show gray at the temples. He wore wire rimmed glasses and was tall and thin, preferring sleek Italian suits to the usual scrubs worn by most of his assistants. He took off the expensive jacket now and hung it carefully over the hangar he kept just for such a purpose, pulling on a smock to cover the pale striped dress shirt and silk tie before coming to look at the body.
"Justin, what you and Jenna do on your off time is your own business, but no kinky stuff with my stiffs, okay?" He laughed as Justin turned bright red. And then he turned to the body. "Yeah, that guy had big mitts. Those bruises are something." He put his own hand, now safely covered in a latex glove, over the top of the bruises, his fingers not quite meeting the ends of them. "He had to really squeeze to get bruises that deep and formed in that short amount of time."
Jenna stepped closer, her mouth still twitching from trying not to laugh at Justin's face as he watched Doctor Rumny manhandle their victim. "So what killed her doc?"
"The head wound wasn't serious enough to do anything but make her dizzy. None of these wounds are deep enough to kill right away, even the ones that exposed her intestines. So without doing any further work on her, off the cuff, I'd say it was blood loss. He sliced enough so she bled to death." He bent over to study the gaping wounds on the girl's abdomen. "I'd say your weapon was a very long, very sharp single edged knife with a slight curve on the end, see the upward slant?" He pointed it out for Jenna, standing back a bit for her to get a good look.
"Now, mind you, this is just preliminary and I haven't had a chance to become better acquainted with Miss Lawrence yet. If I were to hazard a guess..."
"Please Doc. Your guess is better than mine at any point." Jenna did the obligatory ego stroke knowing Justin was still too red faced to be able to handle it.
"Okay. The head wound was the first shot, first blow to incapacitate. It didn't knock her out but made her dizzy and disoriented. After that, I'd say he stripped her and raped her. Pretty brutally too, considering the damage that I can see. First swipe of the knife happened after the rape, which gave the bruises time to form. Then they came fast and furious while she tried to get away. Finally, she lost too much blood and passed out. See this.." He pointed to a spot under her arm where a small slice could be seen. "Hit her brachial artery. He had to know what he was doing. Hit that, she bleeds out in just a few minutes time."
Jenna backed away from the table, shaking her head. They had a brutal killer who had intimate knowledge of the human body. "Thanks doc," she slipped off her gloves with a snap and wadded them up. "Can you get us copy of your reports, preliminary and final as soon as possible?"
"For you, Jenna girl, anything. My lab is wide open for you." He grinned, showing off too white teeth.
She smiled back and started to leave, listening to Justin grumble and the clanking of tools as Doctor Rumny began to work. The door was just shutting behind them when she heard the first whirring noises of the bone saw begin to cut. She shuddered again.
"Ick. I just couldn't do that job."
"But his lab is open wide to you anytime," Justin countered, his tone sarcastic. "He means his pants are open wide to you anytime. Dirty old man."
She flashed her badge at the guard at the gate and he buzzed them out, new procedures since a rash of organ stealing had been going on in the building. After clearing the gate, she turned and glared at Justin. "You seem awfully interested in any man who is interested in me all of a sudden. First Ethan, and now Doc Rumny. You got a problem with me dating, Justin?" She poked a finger into his chest to emphasize her point.
He rubbed his chest and glared down at the diminutive beauty. "Nah, you date who you want to. I don't got a say in your life. I'm just your partner."
"Oh, don't you just your partner me." She turned and stomped towards the door, seeing the interested look in the guard and the older woman behind the glassed receptionist desk's faces. She threw them open and stepped out into the fresh air, made to smell even cleaner coming from the smell of death they had just been in. She got to his car, a late model Monte Carlo, and slammed her hands down on the roof.
Justin threw her a murderous look, checking his paint job for scratches and the body for dents, then glared at her. "Okay, if you're mad at me, you take it out on me. You can pick up a baseball bat and whale the hell out of me, but don't ever touch my car like that again."
She glared right back. "I don't give you problems when you want to take out Marcie, even though I know you can do better, don't start in on me and my dates."
"Fine." He popped the lock on his door and climbed in, hitting the door locks for her side as well.
"Fine," she sat in the seat, slammed the door shut and clicked the seat belt into place.
He drove at a break neck speed the few blocks back to the precinct, pulling into his parking spot and hitting his brakes at the last possible minute, knowing how much she hated when he drove like that.
They sat there for a second, staring at the brick wall in front of them without speaking.
"I'm so..."
"List.."
They both spoke at the same time. Justin smiled, his mustache crinkling around his firm lips. "Me first?" he offered.
