Blood Relatives Read Free Page B

hemorrhage, attended by inhalation of infused blood, and supervening pulmonary air embolism.
    The coroner explained that in most homicides where rape was suspected, the examiner searched for injuries of the genital organs, blood and semen stains, and foreign hairs or other foreign substances. The coroner had found no traces of seminal fluid in the dead girl’s vaginal, rectal, or digestive tracts, and there had been no semen stains on her clothing. This did not eliminate the possibility of rape; it merely indicated that there had been no attendant ejaculation. Neither did he find foreign hairs or substances, but there was one wound that indicated the crime might have been sexually motivated, a wound that in itself had hemorrhaged severely enough to have been a possible cause of death. This wound had been the result of the tearing of the vaginal vault, the introduction into the pelvis of a sharp instrument, most probably the murder weapon, and the subsequent tearing of the left common iliac artery. At this point the coroner asked if he might introduce an opinion somewhat beyond the scope of pathology or toxicology, and then suggested to the detectives that perhaps they were dealing with a sadistic killer here, the murder having all the earmarks of so-called “lust” murders, in which the perpetrator’s libido could be satisfied only by slaying. The coroner mentioned again that he was not a psychiatrist, of course, and this was merely his opinion.
    The detectives thanked him, and then went uptown again to the abandoned tenement on Fourteenth and Harding.

The homicide was officially Carella’s, and as the detective in charge of the investigation, he had promptly notified the desk officer and asked him to make the necessary calls that were the routine after-math of any murder. The desk sergeant had immediately notified the office of the chief medical examiner, and then had called the Communications Unit to give them the aided number and the ME’s report number. He had then informed Detective-Lieutenant Byrnes, who commanded the 87th Squad, and Captain Frick, who commanded the entire precinct, that a homicide investigation was in progress. And then he had called the Chief of Detectives’ office, and the Section Command and District Office, and the Homicide Division, and the Photo Unit, and the Police Lab, and the Latent Unit, and he would have called Ballistics had a gun been involved in the murder, and he was ready to call the DA’s office with a request for an attorney and a stenographer should the perpetrator be apprehended, as they say in the trade. (He alsocalled his wife to tell her things had begun jumping and he might be home late.)
    At the scene earlier, Carella had instructed the man from the Photo Unit to take his Polaroids of the dead girl and the murder scene so that Carella could put a UF95 tag on her toe and get her to the hospital for immediate autopsy. There was no electricity in the abandoned building, so Carella ordered floodlights from the Emergency Service Division, and these were in place and operating by the time the ambulance came to pick up the murdered girl’s body. By then, too, the area had been roped off and posted with CRIME SCENE and NO SMOKING signs. The signs warning against smoking had nothing to do with cancer. Cigars or cigarettes were often valuable evidence, and the investigating officer didn’t want a bunch of good guys dropping their butts in with something the bad guy may have left behind.
    Carella had drawn his own pencil sketch of the crime scene, and then—together with the lab technician—had begun looking for (a) the murder weapon and (b) any traces of hair, clothing, excrement, urine, or stains that might have been left by the killer before, during, or immediately following the murder. At the same time he instructed the man from Latent to conduct a thorough search for fingerprints and footprints that could be compared against the dead girl’s. (There was, at the moment,