Home Before Midnight by Virginia Kantra Page A

she just warmed to her work.
     
    She examined the body clothed and then naked, photographing and cataloging it with reassuring thoroughness: hair color, eye color, weight, scars, moles, dental work, age and general condition. The damp hair streaming over the table’s edge gleamed with expensive highlights. The legs were waxed and tanned, the eyebrows plucked, the manicured hands scrupulously maintained. Delicate scars from cosmetic surgery traced the jaw and hairline.
     
    Looking at the pale, crepey skin of the body’s naked belly and upper arms, Steve felt a stab of profound pity. A flood of regret. Helen Ellis had been able to cheat age, but not death.
     
    You could never cheat death. All you could do was make the most of the time you had.
     
    Teresa had tried to show him that, but he’d learned it too late.
     
    Nguyen paused and clicked off her mike. “I’ll want an X ray of the skull,” she told her assistant. She glanced at Steve. “You have a witness who claims the victim was drinking?”
     
    The specter of Bailey’s white, determined face and anxious eyes joined Steve’s personal ghost gallery. Helen usually fixed herself a nightcap at bedtime.
     
    He nodded.
     
    “Well, I won’t have the tox screen results for a couple of days,” Nguyen said. “But based on the head laceration, I can tell you now that the victim didn’t slip and fall.”
     
    The back of Steve’s neck prickled.
     
    It was an accident, Bailey had insisted.
     
    Wrap this up as quick as you can, the chief had said.
     
    Bodies didn’t lie.
     
    “What does the head laceration tell you?”
     
    “In the crime scene photos, all the pool surfaces are rounded. If your victim slipped and struck her head against the side, the steps, even the railing, I’d expect to see a single impact site with non-specific bruising. No laceration and, obviously, very little blood.”
     
    Nguyen positioned the head on the table and then gestured for Steve to join her behind a screen. The X ray hummed.
     
    So far she hadn’t told him anything the responding officer hadn’t seen. He waited until the ME resumed her position beside the table before he asked, “So what do you see?”
     
    “Single impact site. Linear laceration.” She traced it for him with the instrument in her hand. “The scalp is split. Your victim was struck with a heavy blunt object with at least one sharp edge and sufficient force to break the skin.”
     
    Fine. That accounted for the blood. But did it account for the death?
     
    “Enough force to kill?” Steve asked.
     
    “Probably not,” Nguyen admitted. “I’ll examine the lungs, of course, but my guess is she was still conscious, or at least alive, when she entered the water.”
     
    “Signs of struggle?”
     
    Nguyen shook her head, continuing her deliberate examination of the body. “There are no defensive wounds on her arms or hands. No residue under the fingernails. She could have been unconscious, although there’s no sign the body’s been dragged. She may simply have been dazed by the blow. Disoriented. Possibly drunk, as well.”
     
    So she was nightcapped. Literally.
     
    “Any chance the injury was sustained after drowning?” Steve asked without much hope.
     
    “Unlikely. X ray will tell us more, but from the angle of the laceration, I’d say she was struck from above and behind. She probably never knew what hit her.” The ME switched her mike back on, signaling the end of their conversation.
     
    Steve didn’t mind. He already had the information he came for. Now he needed to decide what to do with it.
     
    Water hissed from the tap and drummed in the deep metal sink. The air was cold. Steve thrust his hands into his pockets as the medical examiner made the first shocking cut from shoulder to shoulder across the breasts and then the midline incision, chest to pubis. The body sighed open. The cavity yawned, slick and red.
     
    He could leave now.
     
    The internal exam wasn’t likely to