Damaged by Pamela Callow Page A

whispered.
    “It’s where her blood pools,” Ethan replied impatiently. Lamond needed to get his shit together and read the manuals instead of Men’s Health . He was in homicide now.
    Dr. Guthro looked at Ethan. “She was supine when she was discovered?”
    “Yes.” Ethan looked at Lisa. Fifteen-year-old private school student. Daughter of wealthy, professional parents. Resident of an upscale condominium. The ridges of herspine showed through her skin. She looked so vulnerable. He wanted to throw a blanket over her.
    He crossed his arms. He needed to be objective. Not let this victim get under his skin. For some reason, the longer he worked on this unit, the harder it was getting to keep his distance. He thought he’d get desensitized. But he’d only gotten more thirsty for retribution.
    The assistant put her hand on Lisa’s waist and pulled her onto her back. She took out a measuring tape and ran it along the side of Lisa’s body. “Thirty-nine inches,” she called out briskly. Then she looked at the scale reading on the autopsy table. “Seventy-nine pounds.”
    There was silence except for the sound of chalk scribbling. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking: in her case, these numbers didn’t mean much.
    Dr. Guthro slipped a swab in her mouth. Her jaw had dropped open before rigor mortis had settled in. Ethan was relieved they wouldn’t have to break the rigor. He’d had to do it once at a funeral home to get a victim’s fingerprints, and he’d never forget the crack each bone made as he unlocked the hand. Now whenever someone cracked their knuckles, his stomach lurched.
    Dr. Guthro began combing Lisa’s pubic hair with methodical thoroughness, plucking a hair and dropping it into an evidence envelope. He then picked up a long swab. Ethan forced himself to look as her genitals were examined and swabbed. He hated that invasion of her privacy. He could just imagine how a fifteen-year-old girl would feel to have all these strange men examining her. He clenched his jaw. He had to stop thinking about her feelings. She was dead. She had no feelings. He needed to focus on finding clues. Clues that would help them catch this bastard and make him pay.
    He glanced at Lamond. The younger man shifted slightly on his feet. His eyes were glued to Dr. Guthro’s efficient hands. His color was getting higher by the minute. Ethan was surprised. The guy’d come from sexual assault. But he’d never had to watch a girl getting the rape kit. He’d only had to read the reports.
    Just wait. It’s going to get a lot worse.
    “No evidence of forced penetration in either the vaginal or anal regions,” the M.E. said. “In fact, no indication of any sexual intercourse prior to her death. The hymen is intact.”
    “Intact?” Ethan started.
    “Holy sh—cow,” Lamond said at the same time. Then looked sheepishly at Dr. Guthro.
    “Not your typical teenage rebel,” Dr. Guthro said, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
    “No.” The discovery of Lisa’s virginity unnerved Ethan. It brought to the surface all his protective instincts. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d taken a hard line at any punk who’d tried to mess around with his sister. Until she’d told him to stop scaring off her boyfriends. She could handle herself, she told him.
    He bet this girl thought she could, too.
    He was thankful for Lisa’s sake that she had not been raped before her death, although the lack of sexual assault meant a potential source of DNA was eliminated. But it also shed some light on the killer’s profile. He—or she—was likely not a sexual predator.
    Dr. Guthro peered at the raw open wounds below Lisa’s hips. He ran his finger lightly along the edges of flesh, pulling back the skin and tissue to reveal the bone. It gleamed under the large lamp.
    He then looked at where her arms had been cut off. For several minutes he went back and forth between the woundson her hips and her shoulders. “Her limbs appear to have