26. Stab Wounds On The Screen

“Off to the dead house, man?” Detective Corey Brown deliberately bumped Brampton as the passed in the hall. He threw two playful punches and got a swat round the head in return.

“You like that lady doc, eh? How can she be so hot in that cold, cold place?” Brampton ignored him, grabbed his iPod and strode out for a meeting with coroner, Linda MacDugon. If Corey Brown was smarter, he’d know the only hot lady in Brampton’s thoughts was Kathy Chatsworth. Nevertheless, alone in the elevator, he smoothed his jacket and tidied his hair. The tinted mirrors were flattering. He grinned at Brown’s playful goading.

He’d asked MacDugon for more information on the cold case murder of Catrina Somers, pushing past her objections to persuade her to take another look at the seven-year-old report and any evidence in storage.

As he entered the cool examining room, he was grateful to see they were alone. No patients on the gleaming steel tables. Despite ten years dealing with dead bodies, Brampton could never see them as empty vessels. It wasn’t a religious thing, probably more to do with watching horror movies as a kid, but even when a corpse had no face to speak of, he was painfully aware it had once been a person. He never volunteered to attend autopsies unless it was critical to a case.

MacDugon was sitting with her eyes closed, buds in her ears and boots on her desk. She looked up as he entered and said caustically, “Revisiting a seven-year-old cold case, this is one of Kathy’s wild ideas?”

    Straight to the point, he thought. No hello, how you doing, get right into it and let me know exactly how you feel about it. “And hello, good morning to you, Linda,” he said pleasantly and wheeled a chair up to the desk. He took his time pulling out a notebook and pen, patting his pockets until he found the iPhone. “Yes, it was Kathy’s idea, but you know some of her ideas actually turn out to be right.”

The coroner laughed and raised her hands in a you-win gesture. “She’s right just often enough to make me agree to check out her hunches, but don’t tell her that. Sometimes her crazy ideas get results, but she’s a little intense for me, in fact I think she’s a whack job. But when she wanders off into the wild blue yonder she occasionally comes back with something that helps us close a case.”     

He fought the urge to leap to Kathy’s defense. He didn’t want MacDugon speculating about their relationship. He gave a noncommittal grunt. At least she agreed they might not be wasting her time.

“Let’s go then. Have you had a chance to look at the material, did you find files or data that will help?”

She beckoned for him to wheel his chair round to her side of the desk so he could see her 30-inch screen.

“I have some great new software called Body Scan 500 we can use to scan photographs and then analyze information around stab wounds and bullet holes. It’s pretty exciting.”

    Brampton didn’t think he’d enjoy close-ups of bullet holes and stab wounds, but then he wasn’t a coroner.

    “If we’re looking for a connection between the two murders it will let us closely compare the autopsy photographs. This thing is smarter than the naked eye,” she grinned. “Even mine.”

***    

She slid a photograph of Shaye’s stab wound on to the scanner plate. The machine hummed and in seconds the image appeared on the large computer screen. She typed in commands and lines of data unrolled on the screen indicating the size of the wound, location on the body, probable entry direction and a number of other elements.

She repeated the process with a photograph of Catrina. The scanner hummed, the picture appeared and Brampton frowned at the sight of slashed flesh.

    “Now it’s time to have some fun,” MacDugon said and cracked her knuckles. “The software can do amazing things. I’ll ask it to compare the two stab wounds and let’s see what we come up with.”

The photos slid smoothly into position side by side, and information balloons began to pop up around them as the body sector technology did its work.

She let out a whistle. “Score one for Kathy, it’s interesting.”

Brampton was looking at the data and seeing similarities, but he waited for her to explain before he jumped to conclusions.

“The puncture wounds are in almost the identical place on their chests and almost the exact same width. The analysis of the incision shows a high probability the same blade created both wounds. We know the Stormont dagger was used to kill Shaye,” she was speaking very seriously now. “It looks like it could have been the murder weapon seven years ago.”