The Taint by Patricia Wallace

Rachel looked at him.
    “Hmm?”
    “Could you wait a few minutes? If Nathan’s finished the autopsy, I’d like to come with you.”
     
     

FIFTEEN
     
    As always, that momentary hesitation as he held the scalpel above the body. He shook his head, slowly, his eyes fixed on the woman’s face.
    She was very young, younger than Rachel, and that made it harder still.
    He stepped on the floor pedal of the dictating machine and began to speak.
    “The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished white female who appears to be the stated age of twenty-five. Preliminary examination reveals multiple abrasions and contusions and a grossly obvious neck fracture.” He lifted the scalpel again and stepped off the pedal. With the sophisticated technology of the recording equipment he used, he had found that if he dictated while actually cutting, many of the sounds were audible on the tape. Ripping, wet sounds.
    He made the primary incision, and laid open the body.
    He worked quickly, removing and sectioning the internal organs for microscopic exam. There were no abnormalities, no masses. Very little blood in the abdominal cavity.
    Very little blood, indeed.
    He looked closely at the contusions on the body. There was no bleeding beneath the tissue. He straightened, trying to recall what Jon had told him.
    Found in a tree. The car in which she was riding had run off the side of a hill, and tossed her out.
    He moved away from the table and paced twice across the room. Then he came back, lifting the head from the table, feeling the play in the neck. When he put his fingers beneath the fracture, he could feel bone scraping.
    There was only one way to find out . . .
    He’d assumed, from what Jon had told him, that the woman went through the windshield. There was glass in her hair, but no cuts with glass in them on her body. Her head might have knocked the glass out . . .
    He got the razor and began to shave a patch of hair from her head, letting it fall onto the tile.
    There they were; dozens of small cuts, the scalp puckered with them. And no subcutaneous bleeding.
    Again he stood back, looking at the body.
    The woman was dead when her head went through the windshield, or there would be blood in the scalp wounds. The woman was dead when her husband’s car slid off the road. Her neck was already broken when she landed in that tree.
    He stepped on the pedal and after a minute he spoke.
     
     

SIXTEEN
     
    He waited outside in the Bronco while Rachel changed clothes, his fingers drumming against the seat. It was dark now, the moon rising in the clear sky. He looked at the house. The light went off in her room.
    She came out the door and down the steps, dressed in beige denim pants, a blue shirt and desert boots. She swung up into the seat and closed the door, turning to face him.
    “Let’s go.”
    “Don’t you have a jacket?”
    “It’s summer.”
    “If you say so.” He put the Bronco in gear and began to turn around in the yard. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”
    “I know my way around the forest . . .” she tucked one leg up on the seat.
    The drive to the Cruz property was along the back roads, dotted with potholes and partially obstructed by brush. The road twisted so that it seemed as if they were traveling in circles, but finally they came to the clearing by the house.
    A solitary light shone on the porch.
    Jon pulled up and turned off the engine. Crickets serenaded the night. For a moment they just listened, not moving.
    “It’s spooky out here,” Rachel said, rubbing her bare arms.
    “And cold, isn’t it?”
    “I’m not complaining.”
    He reached over into the back seat and grabbed his jacket, handing it to her. “Put it on.” He opened the door and got out, then went around to the back of the vehicle and pulled a rifle out.
    Rachel moved away from the Bronco.
    “Hey, don’t wander off.” He walked toward her. The jacket was long on her and she held her arms away from her body,