Call Me Princess Part 10

Flemming shrugged and said, "I don't know. There weren't any witnesses on site when I arrived. I think Suhr mentioned a female friend. There were a few indications that this time there will be quite a few clues to go by. The victim fought like crazy. Things were knocked over, and he left prints in several places."

That was the most encouraging news Louise had heard all day.

"It looked like the situation sort of got out of hand for him, so he was less careful this time," Flemming said.

Just then, they heard the buzzer from the other side of the gla.s.s sliding doors. Flemming stood up to let the people in.

Louise sat for a moment before following him. She heard Suhr's voice and was glad he was there. For the more spectacular cases, Suhr tended to come observe the autopsies in person, along with one of the people from his office. In addition to this, two people from the forensics unit would attend, one photographing the body during the procedure and the other asking questions and taking notes.

"We need every single shred of information," Suhr's voice thundered as he entered. "Now we'll catch him."

The others were eagerly debating whether the tissue someone had already noticed under the fingernails on the victim's right hand would provide enough DNA.

Louise joined everyone, saying h.e.l.lo to the lead forensic investigator, who set down her large bag and held out her hand to Louise. She had transferred to Copenhagen the year before from the forensics unit at lborg in northern Jutland. She was pet.i.te and slender; the first time Louise had met her, she'd mistakenly thought the woman was a trainee. She had to quickly rea.s.sess the woman's delicate appearance, however, because it turned out se had a lot of experience and was only slightly younger than Louise.

Just then, the elevator started making noise. The body was on its way up from the bas.e.m.e.nt for the autopsy.

Louise nodded to Suhr and Klein, the no-nonsense forensic investigator on duty. She didn't recall ever having seen Klein without his lightweight blue windbreaker on. In the summer he would push up his sleeves, where they would sit, wrapping his arms like sausages, right above his elbows. In the winter he would wear several layers of sweaters underneath, but even when it was bitterly cold he just wouldn't wear anything over that windbreaker.

Louise and Flemming chatted on their way up the stairs to the second floor, where the autopsy rooms were located, just beyond the changing room with its lockers containing sterile scrubs and gowns. It was quiet as everyone walked through the open door into the changing room.

Louise adjusted her pant legs inside the scrubs, gathering her long, thick hair and twisting the unruly curls before pulling a hairnet over it all. She had already stuffed her feet into a pair of blue plastic shoe covers, and finally she tied the mask on so it sat securely over her face.

As they started the autopsy procedure, she sat down toward the back on a lab stool with her notepad on her knee. The body lay under a white sheet on the autopsy table in the middle of the room.

Flemming removed the white sheet. The first thing Louise spotted was the long blond hair that hung down like a curtain. The sight was like a fist to the gut. Camilla's apartment flashed before her eyes, sealed off with red and white crime-scene tape. She jumped off her stool and brusquely shoved se aside. se was just getting her camera ready so she could start photographing the body before they removed anything. The tape was still covering the victim's mouth, and her arms and legs were tied together with heavy-duty plastic strips. se said, "Hey, watch it!" after Louise's shove.

Both Flemming and Suhr knew Camilla Lind. Obviously they would have responded if the image that Louise suddenly pictured in her sick imagination had turned out to be true; but by the time she realized it wasn't Camilla, it was too late for her to stop herself from rushing over.

"Sorry," Louise mumbled.

She put a hand on se's shoulder before quickly withdrawing, scolding herself for letting her thoughts run rampant. She had managed to see the face with the closed eyes and the thick piece of tape over the mouth. The deceased didn't look like Camilla at all.

Her notepad had fallen to the floor when she leaped up.

"Her name is Christina Lerche," Suhr stated, looking at Louise.

Louise felt like she had been found out. She tried to get a grip on herself as she bent down to pick up her notepad.

Back on her lab stool with the pad on her lap, she followed along as Flemming took the forceps and cut through the cable ties.

"Easy! There may be evidence in the closures," Klein said. He held out a bag the coroner could drop the ties into.

"Now I'll remove the tape," Flemming announced, leaning over the victim's face. Very cautiously he loosened one side. He could never have done it so quietly or slowly on a living person. With his white-gloved fingers, the coroner checked inside the victim's mouth. When he was done, the vomit ran out, forming a little puddle on the shiny surface of the stainless steel table.

He turned toward them and observed, "The gag isn't sitting flat."

At the scene, he had determined that the victim had vomit in both nostrils and concluded, "Suffocation by vomit."

"The gag must have slipped far enough back into her mouth that it triggered her gag reflex." He bent over the body again. "The duct tape formed a complete seal, so she suffocated."

Louise concentrated on taking notes while simultaneously reaching a conclusion in her own head: the perpetrator hadn't suffocated his victim. He certainly caused her death, but was it premeditated murder?

Before Flemming proceeded, it was se's turn again. She photographed the body's back and right and left sides, this time without the cable ties or gag.

Klein cut the victim's nails and took a sample of her hair while Flemming dabbed her nipples with a cotton swab to secure evidence. Louise studied the woman's neck and chest. Those were areas where rapists often kissed their victims. Flemming placed the long swabs back into the carton and closed it carefully. When he was finished, he asked the lab technicians to come open the body.

Louise followed the others out into the hallway to wait. Their steps echoed faintly as they walked past the open tiled autopsy rooms: high ceilings, stainless steel tables, sinks, hand-held showerheads with extra long hoses for rinsing bodies and body parts. The whole place was clinical and cold, and ultimately completely utilitarian when you were in the middle of it.

She leaned against the wall and eavesdropped on Suhr, who was chatting with the forensics people. In the background, a saw started. Normally other tools and running water would have drowned the noise out. But today the insistent drone echoed through all the empty autopsy rooms before reaching the "murder room," as they called the last one because it was twice the size of the others and thus had enough room for everyone who had to observe a forensic autopsy.

Louise was used to being there while the pathologists did their work, but something about that lonely sound from the saw, cutting through the silence, made her turn and face the other way. On weekdays when people were walking around working, the cold, clinical feeling was usually humanized some. But the Sunday-morning quiet made the sound of the saw too persistent to block out of her mind the way she would have liked.

Flemming called everyone back in by announcing, "We're ready."

The two lab technicians came out of the room removing their armor-like iron gloves. They hung them up side by side in the changing room. Louise backed up a little to give them room to get by, accidentally b.u.mping into the row of white rubber boots the pathologists wore when they were working. She nodded to them as they left, and Suhr came over to her.

"I'm heading back to headquarters now; you'll have to give the report on Flemming's exam," he said.

Louise nodded and watched him disappear, his steps precise and determined, making his gait a little stiff. The others had already taken up their positions around the steel table when Louise entered, walking back over to the lab stool, ready to continue taking notes.

"Oral cavity and nasopharynx filled with vomit. Same color as gastric contents," she wrote, listening as Flemming explained that this was a case of asphyxia secondary to an internal obstruction. The victim would have lost consciousness quickly, probably within one minute.

"She was dead after about five minutes," he said.

Louise's hand was getting tired from writing in this awkward position, perched on a stool with her pad balanced on her knee.

"He used a hard object in her v.a.g.i.n.a. I'm guessing it was the d.i.l.d.o we found on the floor next to the bed. There are incised wounds, the edges are reddish, and there is blood around the opening," Flemming announced.

Louise let the words flow onto the paper, but avoided looking over while the woman's gynecological examination was going on.

An hour later, they were done. Flemming didn't pause during the exam, but he did look over at Louise when he determined that the victim would still be alive now if the tape had been removed from her mouth.

She nodded, following his train of thought: Did the perp sit there, watching her suffocate?

- LOUISE ACCOMPANIED FLEMMING BACK TO HIS OFFICE AFTER THEY SAID good-bye to se and Klein on the stairs.

She sat down in the chair across from his desk, her notepad still in her hand. She followed him with her eyes as he checked his messages and looked around for any notes that might have been placed on his desk.

Flemming sat down. His tall body made the desk and the chair under him look small. His desk was stacked with paper and folders, a hilly landscape leaving almost no free s.p.a.ce on the desktop. They sat there in silence for a moment before he finally confirmed what she had pieced together herself.

"The vomiting occurred right after the gag in her mouth shifted, triggering her gag reflex."

Louise didn't say anything, waiting for the rest.

"When you look at the blows she sustained, it is reasonable to a.s.sume that the gag shifted because he hit her...."

She completed his thought for him: "So he watched her die and didn't help?"

Flemming shrugged and said, "That's a reasonable supposition."

Louise shivered.

"I don't think he likes women very much," Flemming added.

His comment interrupted Louise's train of thought and fed the rising wave of the hostility in her.

"No, you don't say," she exclaimed sarcastically. "He a.s.saulted her, raped her, and then sat and watched her suffocate. Yeah, you don't need to convince me that he feels nothing but contempt for the opposite s.e.x."

They agreed to talk again when the autopsy report was finished, if there was anything in it that required further clarification.

- THEY PARTED WAYS OUTSIDE THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE LAB. Flemming walked her out and then went back inside. As the gla.s.s doors closed behind him, it occurred to her that Peter had dropped her off that morning, so she didn't have her car or her bike with her.

Irritated, she started walking south down busy Blegdamsvej. It was almost one in the afternoon. She flipped open her cell phone and called Heilmann to say she was on her way back in.

Heilmann asked, "Could you go out to Susanne Hansson's place and tell her what happened so she'll be prepared when it leaks to the press?" Louise stopped for a moment as Heilmann spoke, but then slowly turned and started heading toward a bus stop. "I just spoke to her at her mother's apartment, and I asked her to stay put until we arrive," Heilmann continued. "And I explained that a new situation had arisen that we wanted to brief her on."

Louise nodded, looking straight ahead. A new situation! You could certainly call it that. At any rate, it was now clear that the perp was far more antisocial than they had previously a.s.sumed.

"Maybe we should find out if there's somewhere else she could stay until we catch him," Heilmann suggested. "Given the developments, there's a good chance he may decide to go back and stop her from telling us anything else."

"The only thing I'm certain about is that there's no limit to what he may do. The stakes are definitely higher now," Louise responded as she fished out her bus pa.s.s, thinking how ridiculous it was that she was being forced to take the bus to see a witness.

"Are you going to stop by headquarters before you go back out to Valby, then?"

"Nope. I just got on a bus. I'm going straight there."

Louise could hear Heilmann's smile.

"I'll ask Lars to drive out there and pick you up when you're done talking to her. Then you two can also stop and check out the most recent crime scene."

15.

"THERE ARE NUMEROUS INDICATIONS THAT JESPER Bjergholdt"-Louise and Lars had decided to continue calling him that until they determined his real ident.i.ty-"has just committed another very serious crime, which cost a young woman her life."

Louise spoke slowly, gift-wrapping her words. She rolled, folded, and tied little bows around each individual sentence. Still, there was no mistaking her meaning. It could have been Susanne who ended up on that stainless steel autopsy table. That was really what she was saying, and Susanne got the message-although Susanne tried to distance herself from it emotionally.

"But you're saying it was an accident that she died?" Susanne said hesitantly.

Louise nodded, but her gesture was not convincing. Then she continued: "He didn't plan for the gag to slide back into her mouth and make her throw up. But he didn't help her, either, when it happened. He did nothing to save her. To the contrary, he let her die."

The indifferent expression that had clouded Susanne's face since the first time Louise met her at Hvidovre Hospital had returned. Susanne's eyes moved slowly. Just from looking at her, the amount of effort it took for her to pull herself together before she finally said something was evident.

"How can you know it's the same person who did this?" Susanne asked.

"We can't know for sure yet, but it's the same M.O.," Louise replied, realizing Susanne didn't understand what she meant. "The details of what happened to you have not been made public. No one knows about the cable ties he used or the gag you had in your mouth. So it's reasonable to a.s.sume that this is the same man, not a copycat."

Susanne's head made a couple of small, mechanical nods as Louise spoke, but she didn't seem as though any of it was registering. Her whole body had started trembling. She wasn't crying, just sitting there shaking as though a fist were rattling her body from head to toe. In silence she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She shut Louise out and disappeared into her own hollow world.

Louise contemplated going to the living room and calling Susanne's mother, but instead she remained seated, laying her hand on Susanne's shoulder. Maybe this wasn't the right time to talk about moving to another location, she thought. It seemed almost abusive to force this fragile woman to deal with anything else by highlighting the risk that her a.s.sailant might come back looking for her in the near future. On the other hand, Susanne might be thinking these same thoughts right now, on her own. Maybe her fear of this provoked all the shivering. She might even find the idea of moving somewhere else comforting.

While Louise sat there thinking this through, she pulled out her cell phone and texted Lars that he would have to be patient because she couldn't leave Susanne quite yet.

"Of course you feel scared because he's not in custody yet," Louise tried.

No reaction.

"Our sergeant suggested it might be a good idea for you to move somewhere else while we look for him," Louise continued. She spoke in a subdued voice and patted Susanne's shoulder until she started to calm down and the tension in her body abated a bit.

"Do you have someone you could stay with for a while?" Louise asked gently.

Susanne seemed to consider that, but then shook her head. They sat in silence for a moment.

"Is he going to come back?" Susanne asked looking up. She no longer had the vacant stare, but Louise couldn't interpret what her eyes were hiding. Maybe fear, but Louise didn't think so. Perhaps doubt, or failure to comprehend. Or a fear of something else that Louise just couldn't relate to.

"I don't know," Louise answered honestly. "But there is a risk. You do know what he looks like, so you could identify him."

"Yeah, but I can't remember!" Susanne burst out.

"True, but he doesn't know that."

"Then say that. Get them to write that, that I can't remember anything." Her tears welled up and her voice was desperate.

Louise squeezed Susanne's shoulder and started patting her back again in a soothing motion. "Well, maybe that's what we should do. But then your whole story will come out, and that might not be that pleasant. Worse, perhaps."

Susanne's shoulders relaxed a little. "That doesn't matter," she said hoa.r.s.ely, wiping her nose. "It's worse walking around like this, without anyone knowing why." Silence settled between them before Susanne started to explain what she meant.

"I went to work on Friday...." Susanne had to push the first few words out; but once she got started, it came out as a torrent. "But it was no good. I left again after two hours. People were staring at me, and I could tell they were all talking about me. But no one came over and asked me why my face looks this way. Everyone was avoiding me, even though their eyes were following me everywhere. I couldn't stand it, so I left."

"I think you should seriously consider staying somewhere else for a while," Louise repeated, overcome with compa.s.sion. She knew how weird people get about other people's suffering and how this weirdness creates a distance that is often painful. Plus, the weirdness happens right when the person can least cope with feeling rejected by friends and co-workers.

"I can also check to see if we could find someplace for you to stay for a while," Louise offered, collecting her things. Susanne was so calm that Louise thought it would be all right for her to leave now.

"Think it over," Louise urged. "We can talk about it tonight or tomorrow. Also, I picked up your sweater that you forgot at the restaurant in Tivoli, but the technicians are looking it over right now. As soon as they're done with it, you can have it back."

Louise wrote her cell number on a piece of paper and told Susanne to call if anything happened that made her feel unsafe. "Or, if you think of someplace you could stay," she added. "You're also welcome to call if you just want to talk to someone."

Louise rarely included that last comment in her standard spiel to witnesses, because there were people who took it as a standing invitation to call and go on and on about whatever. Louise decided to offer it to Susanne because it seemed to her that Susanne wasn't going to get anything out of talking to her own mother-in fact, it would probably be better for Susanne if she didn't bother.

Thank G.o.d that woman had to go do some shopping, Louise thought. Before she left, Susanne's mother had actually stuck her head into the room to nag Susanne to rea.s.sure Louise that she certainly appreciated the wisdom of keeping the press out of things for now. But Susanne's mother also said that she would not tolerate the police putting the case on the back burner-as she had also explained to "that delightful gentleman the police had sent over."