Molten Mud Murder Read online

  “No. I think some would have, but the tour director stopped them.” The cop made for the gap leading to the rocky hill.

  “Did the witnesses see anyone else in the vicinity?”

  The officer stopped walking and turned to face Alexa. “Some did, some didn’t.” She shook her head. “We’re still compiling the different statements.”

  “What happened next?” Alexa imagined a chaotic scene of foreigners trying to outdo one another with details.

  “I removed them from the scene. Called for ambulance and backup.” Officer Cooper folded her arms across her chest, the fabric of her short-sleeved blue uniform shirt stretched taut over thick arm muscles.

  Alexa leaned toward her. “Did you go down to the body?”

  “No. The ground around the pots is unstable. You can break through crust, fall into a new pot.”

  Why were people down there now? “So you left the scene unsecured?”

  “Yes,” Officer Cooper said, defiance in her voice.

  Alexa didn’t want to offend. “I’m sure you did the right thing.”

  “More people started arriving. I had to keep them from entering,” the officer added.

  “That’s good. That way, the scene wasn’t contaminated.” It sounded as if the young cop had handled everything by the book.

  “I got the tour group to wait in the bus until DI Horne arrived. Then I went to meet the ambulance. The EMTs had to lasso the victim to pull him out.” Her face paled, making her blue lips brighter by contrast. Alexa had seen a sprinkling of Maori women in Auckland with similar tattoos. Mary’s tattoo hadn’t been on her chin but on her shoulder, a strange and beautiful image, part bird, part fish, and part woman.

  “Did anyone take photos before they moved him?”

  Officer Cooper nodded. “I did a livestream video. And we have many from the tour group.” Her lips pressed together again, perhaps aware she had shared too much, and she started down the steep rocky hill leading to the people in protective jumpsuits. Alexa noticed one of the jumpsuits was Detective Inspector Bruce Horne.

  Uh-oh.

  A commotion above postponed their reunion. Two men, one clicking a Nikon with a gigantic telephoto lens and the other sweeping the scene with a TV 6 video camera, called out “G’day. Can we ask some questions?”

  “Leave the area now,” barked Horne. “Officer Cooper, why did you leave your post? Escort these men immediately.”

  “But,” said the young cop, looking at Alexa, “she asked me to show her the scene.”

  Horne turned to Alexa, recognition dawning. “She is not authorized to be shown the scene. What were you thinking?”

  “It’s my fault,” Alexa said. “I showed her my card.”

  “What card?” Horne’s eyes burrowed into Alexa’s, and once again, heat rose to the surface of her skin.

  “My American Forensics Association card.”

  “Your what? Officer, show these men out and stay at your post.”

  The officer speared Alexa with her eyes and scurried up toward the media.

  “Don’t talk to them,” Horne added. “There will be a press conference at five o’clock, and they can ask questions then.”

  “Yes, Senior.”

  “Thank you for perhaps compromising the scene,” was Horne’s greeting as he turned back to Alexa. His left cheek was smudged with mud, and so were his gloved hands. The tall police officer standing next to Horne scrutinized Alexa. The third man stood silent, watching. “You aren’t suited up,” Horne added. “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to offer my expertise. Pro bono.” Horne was right; she should be suited.

  “Things are under control.” The man’s blue eyes flared. “We’re about to attend the autopsy.”

  She decided to hold ground. Or mud. “Extra set of eyes and ears can’t hurt.”

  “Is she qualified, sir?” This from the other suited-up man. “My wife…”

  Horne ignored him and turned to the remaining officer. “Rangiora, go stand on the platform. Make sure no one else approaches.”

  “Right,” the officer answered and cast a glare at her.

  Alexa barreled on. “The heat of the mud accelerated rigor mortis, right?”

  “We’ve determined that,” the man next to Horne said. He was early thirties, marshmallowy in his white jumpsuit, and sweating. “We’ve just been given clearance. Geologists had to poke about, determine whether it was safe to be down here.” An exploding missile of mud spattered his booties. He took a step away from the roiling pot. “They set up caution ribbon to mark where it’s not safe.”

  Okay, Ms. Quick-to-Judge. That’s why the caution tape is irregularly placed.

  Alexa looked down to make sure she was on terra firma.

  “Clever crime scene. Any evidence thrown into the pots has been eaten by acid,” the unidentified man added. A new rivulet of sweat rolled down his forehead into his left eye. He pawed at it and appraised Alexa. “And you are?”

  “Her name is Ms. Glock,” Horne said. “She’s a visiting dentist.” Both men moved toward her.

  She was impressed Horne had remembered her name. “I’m not a dentist. One of my degrees is in odontology. I’ve worked forensics for ten years. Most of them with the State Bureau of Investigation. In North Carolina.”

  “I’m Kit Byers, forensics investigator from Auckland,” mystery man said. “Did you say Glock?”

  “Yes.” Here it comes.

  “Like the gun?” asked Byers.

  “Bull’s-eye.” The Glock 17 was the most widely used law enforcement pistol in the world. Alexa was used to the question, bored by it, really, and had a ready list of comebacks.

  Horne’s eyebrow shot up, and a smile appeared and disappeared lightning quick.

  “What evidence have you gathered?” Alexa asked, hoping they’d keep talking. She nonchalantly pulled one Ked, formerly white, from mud she was slowing sinking in and stepped back. The heat and smell made her light-headed.

  DI Horne’s phone rang; he stepped away.

  “A clean footprint cast. Soil samples,” Byers said. “The victim’s hands were duct-taped behind his back, so we have what’s left of that. Duct tape was used around his mouth too, but that melted away. ”

  “I know duct tape.” Alexa wondered if the murderer left prints on it. “Has anyone been reported missing?”

  “No,” Byers said, glancing toward Horne and then checking his phone.

  “Were they able to fingerprint the body?” Alexa rushed to ask questions while Horne was occupied.

  “The duct tape prevented the hands from clenching, so the fingertips are damaged,” Byers answered, shuffling from one foot to the other and taking another look at his phone. “A few partials survived. Not enough to run.”

  Alexa thought about how burn victims were often recovered with clenched fists—pugilistic pose was the official term—which occasionally preserved fingertips. “Was he dragged down here or thrown from the platform?”

  “Evidence supports he came down of his own volition.”

  “No signs of struggle?” Alexa looked around. Surely, the man didn’t dive in voluntarily. Close to the pots, the ground was oozy, but farther away, the soil was dry, impressionable.

  “Just there.” Byers pointed a few yards from the mud pot. That area had caution tape too. “And further drag marks from the mud to where the emergency medics pulled him over here.” Another taped area.

  “How long was he in the mud?”

  “Rigor mortis was maximal. Six to eight hours.”

  “Signs of putrefaction?” Alexa asked. Enzymatic decomposition was a secondary way to gauge time of death.

  “Hard to tell,” said Byers. “Place stinks even without a cooked body.”

  The DI rejoined the pair. “Hard to tell what?”

  “She
’s asking about putrefaction.”

  Inspector Horne’s eyebrows went up.

  “I’d like to stand in during the autopsy. Help out.” She looked from Byers to Horne. “The teeth will be key.” She kept going. “Since the fingerprinting didn’t yield results, dental configuration is the next quickest way to procure an ID. Was a stabilizer spray used before the body was moved?”

  “A what?” Horne asked.

  “I’ve heard of that, but we don’t have it,” Byers said. He turned to Horne. “It’s a new product that forms a cast over a vic’s jaw and prevents damage during transportation.” His phone beeped, and before he answered, Byers took a breath and said, “If she’s qualified, I need to head back to Auckland, Inspector. My wife is on bed rest and taking medication to stop premature labor.” He checked his message. “But the labor isn’t stopping.”

  Alexa couldn’t believe her luck. She looked at Horne. Again that intense stare. Followed by a slow nod.

  Yes.

  * * *

  Fifty minutes later, Alexa was suited up and standing at the foot of the naked mud pot man. Cloying formaldehyde and eau de cooked flesh overwhelmed her olfactories, whisking her back to her first autopsy.

  Rex Hospital. Twenty-three years old and she had nose-dived. She understood the science behind a faint. Blood or drills or saws or bad news can slam the brakes on the pumping heart, reducing blood flow to the brain. Peripheral vision and hearing diminished. Sweatiness or clamminess. Room sway.

  Crash.

  Her boss at the lab had noticed her tendency to avoid autopsies and cornered Alexa until she had explained.

  “Get over it. Fainting is empathy for the tenuous hold we have on life. The fainting self should be forgiven,” the doctor had said.

  Forgiveness.

  As if it were easy. I haven’t even forgiven my own mother for dying on me.

  Alexa appreciated Dr. Winget’s philosophy from way back when but now scanned the bleak room for a nearby bench in case she’d need to sit quickly. Burn cases like this were hardest. She involuntarily tensed, feeling the taut scar tissue from three reconstructive surgeries on her back protest. She’d been thirteen and even after twenty-four years, pain and despair flashed, forever close to the surface.

  Detective Inspector Horne had introduced her to the pathologist, Dr. Rachel Hill, who had merely nodded at Alexa and continued readying her instruments.

  Mud man, stretched out on stainless steel, was lobster red and swollen from the waist down: moderate belly fat, scar on right thigh, knobby-kneed, slack calves, long feet, ten toes.

  The body had been washed; all traces of mud were gone.

  Belly button on up, a farmer’s tan gone awry, the skin tone segued from red to purple to fiery to blistered and peeling to denuded. What once was a face was a blackened skull with sunken sockets, missing nose, and a gaping hole with oddly protruding gray teeth.

  Alexa kept her face expressionless. Horne was staring, gauging her reaction. She gave him a nod of assurance and went back to studying the cadaver.

  Shoulder joints and humerus were blackened and exposed. Skin on the top sides of the forearms was hanging in strips. The hands, which had been bound by duct tape behind his body, seemed to have been somewhat protected from the thermal heat.

  The tall, red-haired Dr. Hill put a Nikon away, pulled on gloves, goggles, and mask, and started talking into a tape recorder in a thick Scottish accent. “Badly burned body. Caucasian male.” She abruptly turned off the tape recorder, pulled her mask down, and looked at Horne through her goggles. “I’m reminiscing,” she said.

  One of Horne’s eyebrows rose.

  “The eight-year-old lad who was rushed to the hospital from Kappi Thermal Park,” the doctor explained.

  “Two years ago, right? He died.”

  “After twenty-four excruciating hours. The boy climbed the barrier fence and jumped into a hot spring. Skin had peeled off his body before he even got to the hospital,” she said, her voice softening. “There was nothing they could do to save him.”

  Jeez.

  “Witnesses said he slipped, just playing around. It was Boxing Day,” Horne said. “But this guy was dumped in.”

  Alexa, who had been holding her breath, let it go in a rush. Her scarred back muscles tightened, and she forced them to stretch by clasping her hands behind her back and straightening her arms as far as they would go. She hated boiling water.

  The doctor eyed Alexa, readjusted her mask, and turned the tape recorder back on. “1.78 meters, 86 kilograms. Scar, 5 centimeters, above right knee. No visible tats. Approximately forty to fifty years old.”

  “How can you determine his age?” Horne asked, staring at the ravaged body.

  The doctor gave Horne a patient smile. “I’ll be able to tell with more accuracy when I examine the rib cage. The sternal end of the fourth rib will determine age. But for now, I’m going by pubic hair color, skin elasticity, and results from the X-rays we took prior to the autopsy. Slight arthritis in left knee is consistent with someone aged forty or older.”

  She began scraping each nail of the victim’s right foot into evidence bags. Then the left foot starting with the big toe. “Fingernails are typically a better source of trace evidence, but look.” She gently set the left foot down and moved to the victim’s left hand. “The fingernails are deformed by the heat,” she said. “Useless.” She examined the wrist and then reached for tweezers. “I removed the duct tape binding the hands earlier. Looks like this was under the tape.” She held the tweezers to the light and stared at a fragment. “Maybe glass?”

  Horne appeared grateful when his cell phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” he said, quickly leaving the room.

  Next, the doctor plucked and bagged a few pubic hairs, murmuring into the tape recorder. She then stepped to the head and began probing. “No hair left on the skull,” she said after a moment. “Melted away.”

  Her hands continued doing what looked like a scalp massage as Horne returned.

  “Doc, I gotta go.” He turned to Alexa. “If your credentials check out, you’ve wormed your way into a temporary contract.”

  “They will.”

  “Come to the station when you’re done. There’s a press conference at five.”

  The DI left, and the doctor gave Alexa a puzzled look. Her eyes were magnified by the goggles and looked like sky-blue discs. “There is significant cranial trauma. I feel a fracture.” She manipulated the skull with both dexterity and gentleness. “X-rays will confirm it.”

  “You think he was dead before he was thrown into the mud?”

  “It’s possible, but I won’t know until I check his lungs.” Dr. Hill’s gloves were covered in blackened ooze. She whipped them off and threw them toward a hazmat bin. “Who are you again?” She slipped on a pair of clean gloves.

  “I’m Alexa Glock, forensics investigator.”

  “From Auckland?”

  “Yes. Well, no. How long do you think he’s been dead?” she asked, steering questions back to the victim.

  “Tricky. The temperature of the mud accelerated rigor mortis. At the shoreline, it was ninety-seven degrees Celsius. Taking this into account, I’d estimate time-of-death window is between nine p.m. and midnight.”

  Why didn’t America adopt the metric system? Alexa quickly calculated: ninety-seven degrees Celsius was two hundred four degrees Fahrenheit. Almost boiling. “Any idea what was used to fracture the skull?”

  “I’ll know more when I examine the X-rays. Let me get on with this.”

  “Did any of the duct tape around his mouth survive?” Alexa asked, ignoring the doctor’s hint. Some tapes, especially those rated for attics and kitchens, could withstand heat to two hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

  “It melted. What was left was damaged by acid.”

  “I’ll need dental X-rays. Can we take those before yo
u proceed?”

  “Done,” the doctor responded. “Pick them up on your way out.”

  Using a scalpel, Dr. Hill made a diagonal incision from each singed shoulder meeting in a V at the sternum and continuing down to the pelvic bone, explaining her movements into the recorder. She then ripped the blistered, blackened skin back on each side to expose the rib cage. Alexa’s stomach churned up a bit of egg.

  The autopsy took two more hours. The man’s individual organs were removed one at a time and weighed. “Interesting,” Dr. Hill said. “The high temperature of the mud pit started to dry out the organs.”

  Congealed blood and tissue samples were taken from each and meticulously labeled for testing. When Dr. Hill finally got to the lungs, she looked at Alexa. “He was dead before he was thrown in. Look.”

  The lungs were clean—no muck—indicating the victim had not been breathing when he was thrown in.

  “Let’s see when and what this man ate,” Dr. Hill said. The stomach and intestines were opened and explored. An escape of ghastly stink, like gangrene, assaulted Alexa’s nostrils, and she flinched.

  “Steak and chips for his last supper,” Dr. Hill shared, bagging some and shaking her head. “Won’t be able to use them to determine death like normal. They continued to cook postmortem.”

  For a change, Alexa wasn’t hungry. “Last supper. Sad.”

  Dr. Hill left the victim’s belly and moved on to his blackened head, first re-examining it externally and then making an incision at what was once the hairline, peeling what was left of the parboiled skin forward, exposing his skull, and finally, using a high-speed oscillating saw, revealing the brain. What would the inner workings of the mud pit man reveal? And why did someone kill him?

  Alexa completed a postmortem dental chart on the victim as the doctor disappeared to check X-ray results. Of note was one gold alloy replacement, upper left molar, which survived the extreme heat of the pots, an untreated cavity in the lower left molar, and evidence of teeth grinding. A few minutes later, Dr. Hill raced back in, excited to have news that Alexa would have to keep to herself for a few hours.

  She had a funeral to attend at St. Faith’s Anglican Church.