In the Bleak Midwinter

“Then we’d better be prepared to do what we have to to ensure that he stays ours,” Geoff said.

Russ resignedly contemplated the old glass-fronted vending machine in the hallway between the coroner’s office and the mortuary, where he was reluctantly spending his Saturday afternoon. EAT-A-TERIA it proclaimed in vintage fifties lettering. HOT—COLD—TASTY—CONVENIENT! For a buck in change, you could get one of several sandwiches alleged to be turkey, ham, or cheese, and for fifty cents more you could make your meal complete with chicken soup, which poured out of a spout to the right of the sandwiches.

Everything tasted as if it had been made sometime last summer and had been left in the machine since then. The idea of a limp mystery-meat sandwich and soup with more salt than chicken in it was pretty damned unappealing, but it was closing in on one o’clock, and if he didn’t get some food in him he was going to collapse. He was thinking longingly of lunch at his mom’s place when Dr. Dvorak came through the heavy wooden doors of the mortuary.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually going to consume some of that swill,” the M.E. said.

Russ snorted. “It’s your machine.”

Dvorak shrugged off his lab coat and slung it over his arm. “It’s the county’s machine, my friend, probably put there to ensure a steady supply of customers to the hospital.” He headed up the short hallway to his office. Russ fell into step alongside him. “I tell you, Chief, in seven years I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone refill that thing.” Dvorak opened his door, solid wood and frosted glass, just like the one to Russ’s office. “You didn’t need to come here, you know. Right now all I have is my preliminary report. We’ll have to wait on the state lab for toxicology.”

Dvorak sat down at a desk considerably neater than Russ’s. The preliminary report, already color-coded, went on top of a thin stack of similar files, squared to the edge of the desk. A large desktop calendar was filled with precisely lettered notes and reminders, its edges held down with a pencil cup of identically sharpened pencils and a marble-based pen set from the New York State Association of Medical Examiners. The leather cup matched the framed photo of Dvorak, the heavyset, bearded man who was his partner, and their two border collies.

The coroner, who also worked as a pathologist at the county hospital, was a compact man in his fifties, with close-cropped, grizzled hair and pale blue eyes that peered at Russ over the top of his trifocals.

“Of course I needed to stay,” Russ said. “A Jane Doe that’s a possible murder? You’re lucky I didn’t sit in on the autopsy.”

Dvorak looked askance. “Mmmm. As I recall, the last time you did that you—”

“Don’t remind me. What do you know?”

“The basics. From her teeth, she’s somewhere between sixteen and twenty-four. She was hit with a heavy, blunt object at the base of her skull, crushing in part of her medulla and causing swelling and hemorrhaging in her brain. It would have rendered her unconscious, and could have led to her death eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“My guess is she died of exposure. Based on her lividity, she hadn’t been dead more than four hours before you found her. But the body temperature taken by the paramedics was very low, the sort of thing you see a day or so after death. There’s no sign of frostbite, which means she was dead before any damage to the skin could occur.”

Russ nodded. “Her killer whacked her and then dumped her. And she froze to death.”

“In the vernacular, yes.”

Russ remembered Clare’s voice, shaky with horror, asking what it would be like, watching the car drive away, leaving you alone in the cold and the dark. “Did she ever regain consciousness?”

“No.”

He wondered if Clare would think this a mercy from her God. He rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. “Anything else?”

“No other injuries. No distinguishing marks. The lab work from the state should be back by Monday afternoon, Tuesday at the latest. Then I can let you know if there were any alcohol or drugs involved.” The pathologist opened the folder he had carried from the mortuary and slid a paper across the desktop to Russ. “Here are her prints.” A set of X-rays. “Her dental profile.” A few Polaroids followed. “Pictures for identification purposes. I hope for her family’s sake you find out who she was quickly.” Russ turned the photos over in his hands, trying to lay the color and expression of life over the pale, fixed mask of death. “She had a baby recently, poor thing.”

“What?” Russ jerked his attention back to the doctor. “God damn. I was right. You sure?”

Dvorak gave him a quelling look. “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure. She’s about a week, ten days post-partum. Why?”

“Because six days ago we found an abandoned infant we’ve been trying to place ever since. And when Jane Doe turned up, I had this feeling . . . You got her blood type?”

The doctor looked at his sheet. “AB negative.”

“Hot damn. The baby is AB positive. That means she could be its mother, right?”