Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs Read Free Book Online Page B

first year full time at the lab. She was sixteen. I’d spread the autopsy photos on my desk this afternoon, but I didn’t need them. I remembered her vividly, remembered in crisp detail the day she’d arrived at the morgue.
    October 22, the afternoon of the oyster party. It was a Friday and most of the staff had quit early to drink beer and shuck their way through the crates of Malpeques that are an autumn tradition.
    Through the crowd in the conference room I noticed LaManche talking on the phone. He held a hand over his free ear as a barricade against the party noise. I watched him. When he hung up he did a visual sweep of the room. Spotting me, he signaled with one hand, indicating that I should meet him in the hall. When he located Bergeron and got his attention, he repeated the message. In the elevator, five minutes later, he explained. A young girl had just come in. The body was badly beaten and dismembered. A visual ID would be impossible. He wanted Bergeron to look at the teeth. He wanted me to look at the cuts on the bones.
    The mood in the autopsy room was in sharp contrast to the gaiety upstairs. Two SQ detectives stood at a distance while a uniformed officer from the identity section took photos. The technician positioned the remains in silence. The detectives said nothing. There were no jokes or wisecracks. The usual banter was completely stilled. The only sound was the click of the shutter as it recorded the atrocity that lay on the autopsy table.
    What was left of her had been arranged to form a body. The six bloody pieces had been placed in correct anatomical order, but the angles were slightly off, turning her into a life-size version of those plastic dolls designed to be twisted into distorted positions. The overall effect was macabre.
    Her head had been cut off high on the neck, and the truncated muscles looked bright poppy red. The pallid skin rolled back gently at the severed edges, as if recoiling from contact with the fresh, raw meat. Her eyes were half open, and a delicate trail of dried blood meandered from her right nostril. Her hair was wet and lay plastered against her head. It had been long and blond.
    Her trunk was bisected at the waist. The upper torso lay with her arms bent at the elbows, the hands drawn in and resting on her stomach. Coffin position, except her fingers were not intertwined.
    Her right hand was partially detached, and the ends of the creamy white tendons jutted out like snapped electrical cords. Her attacker had been more successful with the left. The technician had placed it beside her head, where it lay alone, the fingers drawn in like the legs of a shriveled spider.
    Her chest had been opened lengthwise, from throat to belly, and the pendulous breasts drooped downward toward each side of the rib cage, their weight drawing apart the two halves of divided flesh. The lower section of torso extended from her waist to her knees. Her lower legs rested side by side, positioned below their normal points of attachment. Unfettered by union at the knee joint, they lay with the feet rotated far to the sides, the toes pointed outward.
    With a stab of pain, I’d noticed that her toenails were painted a soft pink. The intimacy of that simple act had caused me such an ache that I wanted to cover her, to scream at all of them to leave her alone. Instead, I’d stood and watched, waiting for my turn to trespass.
    I could still close my eyes and see the jagged edges of the lacerations on her scalp, evidence of repeated blows with a blunt object. I could recall in minute detail the bruises on her neck. I could visualize the petechial hemorrhages in her eyes, tiny spots left by the bursting of small blood vessels. Caused by tremendous pressure on the jugular vessels, they are the classic sign of strangulation.
    My gut had recoiled as I’d wondered what else had happened to her, this woman-child so carefully composed and nurtured by peanut butter, Scout leaders, summer camps, and Sunday