Page 25 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Jayne and Kilgour leave the police station and get into an unmarked car.

Kilgour drives. It doesn’t take long to arrive at the Coroner’s Office, and they make their way across the pavement and through the heavy glass doors without speaking.

Jayne knows that autopsies are not most people’s favorite thing about being a homicide detective, but Jayne doesn’t mind.

Not anymore. She’s become used to it. She doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

She doesn’t want to become hardened, inured to all the suffering she comes across, but how the hell else can she do this job year in and year out?

She thinks briefly of Michael as their footsteps click on the shiny linoleum along the empty hall.

Michael keeps her human. He keeps her from dwelling too much on the dark side of human nature.

He wants to get married and maybe have a baby someday.

She’s not at all sure she would be able to reconcile those completely different sides of her life. She’s not even sure she should try.

She pulls open the door and the familiar sights and smells greet her.

The antiseptic steel tables, the body-length refrigerated drawers.

The bright overhead lights. The steel instruments, the bone saws, the sinks, the scales, the viewing area up above.

Jayne doesn’t like to observe from the viewing area, she prefers to be down here on the floor, with the body, able to ask the forensic pathologist questions as they strike her.

She doesn’t want to be at a remove—that isn’t what makes a good detective.

She wants to be close to the victim, to study her intimately.

But they are not here to observe an autopsy today; it has already been carried out. They are here for the results.

“Hi, Ginny,” Jayne says, greeting the longtime forensic pathologist. Ginny Furness is in her late fifties, almost a generation older than Jayne, but they have always got on well.

They are both no-nonsense and go about their work with curiosity and persistence.

Jayne knows Ginny has children, grown now, and makes a mental note to ask her, over a drink some evening, how she managed it.

“There you are,” Ginny says pleasantly. “I’ve finished with her.” She walks over to a gurney with a sheeted body, and Jayne and Kilgour follow. Ginny pulls the sheet down from the top of the head to rest below the feet, without speaking. She gives them a moment.

Jayne looks down at the woman on the gurney, cold and lifeless.

It always strikes Jayne how different someone looks in death compared to how they looked in life.

She’s never thought they look like they’re just sleeping.

The animating force is missing, and it’s everything.

This isn’t Bryden Frost anymore. Bryden Frost is gone.

The long blond hair is pulled away from her face, her eyes are open.

Her body looks untouched to Jayne’s eyes, apart from the large, grisly, Y incision that was done to conduct the autopsy.

There are no visible marks around the neck or throat, as she was expecting.

No apparent sign of a head wound. No stab wounds, although she wasn’t expecting those, if Bryden was killed in the apartment, because it was pristine.

She looks at Ginny questioningly. “Cause of death?” she asks.

“This wasn’t an easy one, but I’d say asphyxiation. There is some facial congestion, some petechial hemorrhaging.”

“Method?”

“Again, tricky. She obviously wasn’t strangled or choked.

The hyoid bone is intact, and as you can see, there are no signs of pressure on the neck.

I found no fibers around her mouth or nose, so it is unlikely that she was smothered with a pillow, for example.

If I had to guess, I’d say she had a plastic bag held over her head until she died.

Most likely, someone put it over her head from behind and held it tightly to her face. ”

“A plastic bag,” Jayne repeats thoughtfully. She imagines it, the plastic sticking to the woman’s gasping face, her terror as she realizes what’s happening.

“Best guess,” Ginny says.

“Any sign of sexual assault?”

“No, not at all.”

“Did you find anything else?”

Ginny shakes her head regretfully. “I’m afraid not.

No signs of being drugged, no puncture marks.

Tox screen will take longer, but not really expecting anything there.

Given how she was probably killed, I suspect she fought back, and there is some bruising on the back of her forearms, indicating a struggle.

But we found nothing under her nails; they were clean.

That might make sense if she was surprised from behind.

No foreign hairs on the body. And strangely, very few fibers.

We’d expect more from her own clothing, which I understand is missing? ”

“Yes,” Jayne answers.

“So we don’t have them to make a comparison.”

Jayne nods. “The clothes her husband described her as wearing that day have not been found. Black yoga pants and a gray sweatshirt. I’ve just issued an appeal through the media in the hopes that if anyone finds them they’ll come forward.”

Ginny nods and continues. “Her clothes were probably stripped off her after, possibly to make it easier to fit her inside the suitcase, or more likely to get rid of any possible transfer evidence. Whoever it was had to be fairly strong, to overpower her and then to get her in that suitcase.”

“Time of death?”

“I’d say between noon and five p.m.—I can’t be any more exact than that.”

Jayne nods absently. “What do you think—crime of passion?” she asks.

“Maybe. Lack of sexual assault doesn’t mean it isn’t. A crime of passion isn’t necessarily about sex, it can be about rage.”

Jayne nods. “Thanks, Ginny.” She looks at Kilgour. “We’d better get to the Forensics lab.”

As she’s leaving, Jayne turns back and suggests spontaneously, “You wouldn’t want to meet me some night for a drink, would you, Ginny?”

The pathologist is clearly surprised at the invitation. But she smiles and nods. “Sure, anytime. My kids have all flown the nest. I’ve got time.”

···

Paige wants to scream. The grief and tension in the condo are so heavy it’s unbearable.

But she’s Bryden’s best friend, and Sam asked her to come, and she has nowhere else to be right now.

She can’t think of a good excuse to leave.

She is uncomfortable, being here with the family at such a terrible time, in such circumstances. When she knows something they don’t.

She thinks about that weird conclave in the kitchen a short while ago, when she overheard Lizzie and her mother. She’d suspected they’d crept out to talk, so she’d pretended she wanted some more coffee after all. And now she knows they suspect Sam. At least Donna does—she’s not sure about Lizzie.

Sam hasn’t showered since Bryden went missing, that’s obvious. He’s usually so well groomed. Right now, he looks unkempt and distraught—pretty much how you’d expect him to look, given the circumstances. She knows she doesn’t look too great herself.

She must step in and help where she can.

She must help Sam with Clara. She is Clara’s godmother after all.

She wonders how Lizzie will feel about that.

Lizzie has always been a little jealous of Clara’s affection for Paige; she might want to take over.

Lizzie has a tendency to do that. And it looks like Sam is letting her.

But it’s early days yet; he may find his feet.

She can’t put off talking privately to Sam any longer; she must tell him what she told the detectives. She gives him a glance, rises, and says, “I’m going to check on Clara.” The little girl has been watching TV in the den.

“I’ll come with you,” Sam offers and stands up stiffly as well.

Paige heads anxiously toward the den, feels Sam following her. Clara is cuddled in the corner of the sofa, sucking her thumb, watching cartoons. Paige sits down beside her and puts an arm around her affectionately. The little girl curls into her. But they can’t talk in front of Clara.

And now, finding herself almost alone with Sam for the first time since Bryden went missing, Clara burrowing into her, she doesn’t know how to be.

“We need to talk,” Sam says, his voice low.

She gives him a sharp look. “Not here. We can go down the hall,” she says quietly.

She pulls Clara away to face her. “Are you okay, sweetie?” Clara nods at her gravely.

“Are you okay to watch television for a bit longer? And then maybe I can take you out to the park?” Clara nods again.

“Good girl.” Paige kisses the top of her head, then gets up and goes quietly into the hall, Sam close behind her.

She walks farther away from the living room, close to the bathroom around the corner, where they won’t be seen or heard.

She turns around to face him. He’s right in front of her, his face close to hers.

He doesn’t kiss her. She doesn’t know what she was expecting.

He asks, his voice low and tense, “What did you say to the detectives?”

She’s taken aback; he’s looking at her as if he doesn’t trust her, as if he’s afraid that she said something she shouldn’t to the detectives. She would never do that. She will protect him, of course she will.

“Nothing,” she lies. She amends her answer. “I didn’t tell them about us. I wouldn’t do that. I know how that would look.” She adds, “And I don’t want my name in the newspapers either.”

He looks relieved.

She keeps an eye over his shoulder, to watch for anyone coming down the hall. She looks at him uneasily and says, “But there’s something you should know.”