"Reichs, Kathy - Temperance Brennan 01 - Deja Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichs Kathy)

or buckles, no jewelry, no weapons or bindings, no slashes or entrance
holes in clothing to corroborate my findings. The body had been dumped,
naked and mutilated, stripped of everything that linked it to a life.

I returned to the body bag for the rest of its grisly contents, ready to
start my preliminary examination. Later, the limbs and torso would be
cleaned, and I would do a complete analysis of all the bones. We'd
recovered almost the whole skeleton. The killer had made that task
easier. As with the head and torso, he, or she, had placed the arms and
legs in separate plastic bags. There were four in all. Very tidy.
Packaged and discarded like last week's garbage. I filed the outrage in
another place and forced myself to concentrate.

I removed the dismembered segments and arranged them in anatomical order
on the stainless steel autopsy table in the middle of the room. First, I
transferred the torso and centered it, breast side up. It held together
reasonably well. Unlike the bag holding the head, those containing the
body parts had not stayed tightly sealed. The torso was in the worst
shape, the bones held together only by leatherized bands of dried muscle
and ligament. I noted that the uppermost vertebrae were missing, and
hoped I'd find them attached to the head. Except for traces, the
internal organs were long gone. Next, I placed the arms to the sides and
the legs below. The limbs hadn't been exposed to sunlight, and weren't
as desiccated as the chest and abdomen. They retained large portions of
putrefied soft tissue. I tried to ignore the seething blanket of pale
yellow that made a languid, wavelike retreat from the surface of each
limb as I withdrew it from the body bag. Maggots will abandon a corpse
when exposed to light. They were dropping from the body to the table,
from the table to the floor, in a slow but steady drizzle. Pale yellow
grains of rice lay writhing by my feet. I avoided stepping on them. I'd
never really gotten used to them.

I reached for my clipboard and began to fill in the form. Name:
Inconnue. Unknown. Date of autopsy: June 3, 1994. Investigators: Luc
Claudel, Michel Charbonneau, Section des homicides, CUM. Homicide
division, Montreal Urban Community Police.

I added the police report number, the morgue number, and the Laboratoire
de M6decine L6gale, or LML, number and experienced my usual wave of
anger at the arrogant indifference of the system. Violent death allows
no privacy It plunders one's dignity as surely as it has taken one's
life. The body is handled, scrutinized, and photographed, with a new
series of digits allocated at each step. The victim becomes part of the
evidence, an exhibit, on display for police, pathologists, forensic
specialists, lawyers, and, eventually, jurors. Number it. Photograph it.
Take samples. Tag the toe. While I am an active participant, I can never
accept the impersonality of the system. It is like looting on the most
personal level. At least I would give this victim a name. Death in
anonymity would not be added to the list of violations he or she would
suffer.