She Who Watches by Patricia H. Rushford Page A

customer. Doc Thorpe is on her way down.” Henry entered the cooler and, seconds later, wheeled the gurney with their victim on it to the examination room. The body was still covered with the rubber and plastic body bag that they’d enclosed it in last night, the red body tag giving evidence that the zipper had not been tampered with.
    Mac made note of this formality in his notes, in the event a defense attorney tried to claim the body had been accessed and evidence planted. The tag was clipped around the special zipper with metal tabs to ensure the body would not be disturbed until the post. He snipped off the tag and secured it for evidence. As he was bagging the item, Dr. Kristen Thorpe entered the room. His stomach lurched.
    â€œHello, gang.” She gave each of them a friendly smile, her gaze skimming from one to another without meeting Mac’s eyes.
    â€œI thought you were in Florida,” Mac said, ignoring Dana’s questioning look.
    â€œI was.”Without elaborating, Kristen grabbed her rubber apron from a hook on the wall and tested her dictating system.
    Mac’s stomach felt as though it had been filled with lead. She clearly didn’t want to talk about her trip, and she didn’t seem pleased to see him. Mac wouldn’t press it. Not here, and certainly not now.
    With none of her usual gallows humor, Kristen pressed the metal foot pedal on the floor and gave a test count into the microphone hanging from the ceiling. Once she was satisfied it was in working order, she jotted the time and date on the grease board to use for a reference while dictating her autopsy. As she progressed, she would add elements to the board: height, weight, age, and eventually the weight and mass of the organs she removed from the body.
    â€œWho might you be?” Kristen turned to Nate, offering a wooden smile.
    â€œSorry. I should have introduced you,” Mac answered as Kristen moved in to shake Nate’s hand. “This is Officer Nathan Webb from the Warm Springs Police Department. He’s working the murder with us. Nate, meet the infamous Dr. Kristen Thorpe.”
    â€œIt’s a pleasure.”
    â€œI’m pleased to meet you, Nathan.” Instead of regaling them with a grin, she turned back to the body bag. “Is this a tribal member?”
    â€œWe don’t think so,” Dana answered. “We have a visual identification, such as it is, and believe our victim is Sara Watson, Senator Wilde’s niece.”
    â€œOh. Sorry to hear that.”
    â€œUs too,” Dana sighed. “We recovered her body up by the Warm Springs Reservation, and due to the proximity of the body dump to the tribal lands and in case there is a tribal connection, Nate has agreed to help us out.”
    Kristen nodded and unzipped the body bag to reveal the corpse, still coated with dirt and apparent lime residue. She collected several samples of the soil from the victim and from within the body bag before requesting Henry’s help in hoisting the body onto the examination table.
    Dana and Mac secured the possible evidence items as Kristen handed them over, while Nate photographed the autopsy. Kristen somberly dictated her findings, or lack of them, into the micro- phone. Sara’s case had been in the paper for some time now, and it always made it a little more difficult on all of them when they knew something about the victim and the family. She made note of the caesarean scar on the victim’s abdomen, consistent with what she expected to find on Sara from childbirthing. Kristen also documented a substantial scar on the left knee from a previous surgery. Mac confirmed from the reports that Sara had knee surgery after a skiing accident.
    After the initial examination of the feet, legs, and torso, Kristen turned her attention to the head and neck area. She noted some purple and blue striations on the neck, making a verbal note into her dictation device that she needed to check