***
Years ago, Ella would have been nervous at the sight of seeing decomposed bodies close up, but now, she’d seen enough corpses to last a lifetime.
The Newark Coroner’s Office was located inside the city hospital. The two agents entered the hospital via a rear fire door which led almost directly to the restricted autopsy room. Down a spiraling staircase, they waited outside the steel entranceway until access was granted.
“What is it you want to see?” Byford asked.
“A few things. A killer like this would want to spend considerable time with his victims, ideally while they were alive. He’d want to relish it for as long as possible. I find it hard to believe he’d be in and out within a few minutes.”
Byford turned to her, prompting her to continue. She realized she hadn’t answered his question.
“I want to see if there’s something we’ve missed. Like maybe a sign of a struggle, or additional wounds we might have missed. It all helps paint a picture of his personality and his motivations.”
A deafening buzz announced their acceptance into the autopsy room. Ella pushed her way in, adjusting her eyes to the heavy fluorescent lights overhead.
The masked technician peered up from his medical table, dressed head to toe in dirty white regalia. In front of him, the same dismembered bodies Ella had seen in the photos earlier lay on two steel gurneys. No longer did they portray human figures, and instead were filed next to each other in a neat line, together in death. She thought of their poor loved ones and how they’d remember these men forever like this.
“Welcome folks,” the coroner announced, “I’m Doctor Sharp. You might want to put some surgical masks on before you head over here. They don’t smell too pretty.”
Ella and Byford obliged, pulling two masks and two pairs of gloves from a box on the table beside them. “Can you talk us through what you’ve found?” Ella asked, hoping there’d be some recent developments.
Doctor Sharp picked up a surgical pointer and put on a pair of glasses. He was only a young man, Ella thought, barely out of his twenties. It was rare to see someone so youthful in this profession. A young man in an old man’s game. How the world progressed.
“Alan Yates, 59 years old,” Doctor Sharp said. He pointed the tool at the incision on the victim’s neck. “This incision was the cause of death, as you can probably guess. I found traces of mild steel along the wound, meaning it was made with a standard carbon knife. Nothing specific.”
Ella cursed. That was one avenue they couldn’t explore.
Doctor Sharp moved over to Jimmy Loveridge. He pointed to the same location. “This incision is almost identical. Same depth, same force applied, same weapon. It’s rare to find two wounds so similar. Usually, uncontrollable factors determine the differences, but this guy knew what he was doing.”
“Were the victims conscious when they were killed?” Byford asked.
“It’s difficult to say. Because it would have taken them a few seconds to pass out, they would have woken up if they were sleeping. But to get precise cuts like these, I’d say he was able to spend a few seconds finding the right spot. If I was a betting man, I’d say they were sleeping when he found them.”
Ella inspected the bodies from top to bottom. Alan Yates’s skin had faded to a sickly yellow color and blemishes were beginning to form. His dead eyes stared up at the green-tinted ceiling above. Ella checked the wrists and feet, finding nothing but putrefied skin. That gnawing dread surged back into her veins, the same one that appeared whenever she was presented with specimens of premature ends. The fragility of life, she thought. She welcomed the sensation, because even in these grim surroundings, it made her feel human. She never wanted to reach the point where she couldn’t feel something from seeing human remains, and she wasn’t, at least not yet.
“Were there any ligature marks?” Ella asked.
“None at all. The only marks were these neck wounds. I’m sorry.”
“Did you check inside the body?” Ella asked. “I know it’s an odd question.”
Doctor Sharp laughed. “It’s fine, and yes, I did. I scanned the internal for any foreign bodies and there was nothing inside. No coins, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Ella felt sudden nausea. Something told her there was more to these bodies than the crime scene photos showed, but it turns out that wasn’t the case. The disappointment came hard. Maybe she didn’t know this killer as well as she thought she did.
“What about the eyes?” Byford asked. “Anything to note there?”
Doctor Sharp shook his head. “I heard about the coins, but they’d been removed before the bodies got here. I found light tracings of nickel and silver around the eyes, so your killer most likely brute forced them in there.”
Ella felt she’d reached a dead end. There was nothing here to go on. She thought about where to go next but couldn’t think of a new avenue to explore. She made some notes in her pad. “Thank you doctor. You’ve been a great help.”
Doctor Sharp covered both bodies with sheets. “I knew him, you know?”
She looked up from her notes. “Did you?”
“Yeah. Alan Yates. He was a popular man around here.”
She felt something. Like this could break new ground. “Was he? How come?”
“Quite a philanthropist. The guy had some serious money. He donated a portion to the hospital if I remember rightly.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. This must be doubly hard for you then.”
“It’s a tough one, I won’t lie. It’s quite ironic as well. The coins.”
Ella and Byford exchanged a glance. “How do you mean?” Ella asked.
Doctor Sharp had a sudden look of hesitation, like he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Not ironic. Just… weird.”
“What’s strange about it? Because he had money?” asked Byford.
“No. Well, sort of. I mean because of his old job.”
“Job?” asked Ella. She suddenly realized the casefile didn’t mention what Alan Yates did before he retired.
“Yeah, he retired real early because he didn’t need to work, but before that he was a big-time banker.”
There was the connection, the link she desperately needed. “Oh my God, really? His notes didn’t mention that.” She caught Byford’s eye. “A banker and an antiques dealer, left with old coins in their eyes. That can’t be a coincidence.”
The first real adrenaline rush kicked in. This was why she loved being out here. She was breaking down the walls and getting into this killer’s head. Byford didn’t seem as excited as her.
“You’ve been a great help, doctor. If you think of anything else, please let us know.”
On the way out, Ella explained her thoughts to her new partner.
“You see the link?” she asked. “That’s huge.”
Byford shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s tenuous, not to mention it means our last theory was wrong.”
They needed to speak to someone close to the victims, Ella thought. Alan didn’t have any close family in the area so that only left one person on their radar: Jimmy Loveridge’s wife. If they could dig into Jimmy’s life and find someone linked to both Jimmy and Alan, they had a shot of finding their unsub.