Heather Graham by Down in New Orleans Read Free Book Online Page A

you, I’ll hang around,” he told Lee.
    Lee nodded.
    The medical examiner began without touching a knife. He commented on every scrape, bruise and tiny wound on her body, noting his findings clearly for the microphone suspended above the gurney where Gina lay. He was slow, methodical, detailed. With an assistant, he scraped underneath Gina’s nails. Swabs were done of her body orifices. She’d engaged in sex during the day, but it didn’t appear that the act had been forced. The sperm would be analyzed, possibly helping to pinpoint her killer.
    Lee’s voice droned on. None of his findings was surprising.
    Yet, no matter how professional and courteous Lee’s treatment of Gina’s body was, Mark was forced to think of how impersonal and humiliating death could be.
    He ached for the dead woman on the slab. Meat. She was dead now; her butchering was still going on.
    Lines were drawn; Gina’s chest was opened. More fluids were taken for the lab. Organs were removed for testing. As Mark watched and listened, Lee gave his conclusive statement at last.
    “Death caused by severe loss of blood from severance of the carotid artery...”
    No mystery. It hadn’t taken a forensic genius to figure that one out.
    I could have said that, Mark thought. Any fool could have said that...
    He walked out into the hallway beyond the autopsy room and leaned against the wall, exhausted. How many of these had he seen? He was accustomed to coming to the morgue. He was grateful for the pathological sciences; technicians could solve crimes now when the greatest detectives in the world would fail. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t stand a chance next to modern technology.
    Death by loss of blood due to the severance of the carotid artery...
    But there was more to the autopsy than that. And Lee Minh was a genius. His forensic findings had helped solve many a crime before. A stomach full of half-eaten fast-food french fries had once helped the police give the D.A. the materials to convict the estranged husband of the slain woman. The husband had denied seeing her, but he had been working at the place where she’d acquired the french fries. Faced with the facts, the fellow had confessed.
    So no matter how obvious Lee’s findings seemed so far, Mark was glad of his associate’s slow care with the victim. In the end, something in the autopsy just might give them what they needed.
    A cup was pressed into his hands. Hot coffee. He’d been just staring at the floor. Lee, scrubbed down now, free of his work greens, was standing next to him. “You look like shit,” Lee said bluntly.
    “Thanks.”
    “Go home. Why are you still here?”
    “I don’t know. I kept thinking that maybe you’d find something more.”
    “Something more?” Lee arched a brow. “This one looks about as good as a murder case can look, if I understand the facts correctly. Miss L’Aveau’s attacker left a trail of blood all the way to the point where he collapsed. You don’t have to collar him; he’s in the hospital. Sad, but true—if the guy dies, he’ll save the state a fortune in court costs.”
    “Yeah,” Mark said.
    “You don’t think this guy did it?”
    “As yet, we haven’t found a murder weapon.”
    “They’ll come up with it by morning. Wait, hell, it is morning.”
    “Hmm. No wonder I look like shit.”
    “So what’s keeping you up? Cop’s intuition, the guy did it, right?”
    Mark hesitated. He discovered he was picturing her again. The wife. The petite dynamo with the striking eyes—so emerald against the redness of tears. He didn’t do it, she’d insisted. She was convinced that Marcel was innocent.
    Marcel had fallen at her front door.
    Maybe he’d had a knife. Maybe she’d hidden it. How had Marcel been stabbed? The same knife? Maybe, he didn’t want to believe this, but maybe Gina had been the one with the knife. Maybe she’d been desperate enough for some reason to attack first. Maybe Marcel had even killed her in self-defense, maybe, just