"Another young woman" Hammerback sighed.
Danny just nodded his head. Sid Hammerback usually found a way to inject humor into something as horrible as death. But whenever he gets a little girl or boy on his slab, he just can't see the humor in it.
"What can you tell me about her?" Danny said.
"COD is exsanguination. She bled to death" Hammerback answered. "But this is what I found peculiar"
Hammerback took a magnifying lens and showed the corpse's right wrist to Danny. "The cuts weren't deep enough to sever an artery."
"So the slashes on her wrists didn't cause her death?" Danny said.
"See these bruises on her arms?" Sid showed Danny "Ante-mortem. Someone squeezed the blood out of her"
Danny looks at bruises. She seemed to have deep nail marks on her arms. "Someone sped up the suicide" he turns back to Sid. "They did find her with a young boy by her side. Maybe he was trying to revive her? Didn't know where to apply pressure?"
"How old is the boy?" Sid asked.
"About 11 or 12" Danny answered.
"Do those bruises look like a 12-year-old's hands to you?" Sid said.
"The husband maybe" Danny whispered. "Anything else?"
"I collected a sexual assault kit" Sid said "Found sexual activity, and more…"
"Define more" Danny said, crossing his arms.
"She had Chlamydia" Sid said. "The infection has pretty much spread to her rectum"
Danny made a disgusting face. "She does have a fiancé" he said "Maybe she gave him the disease, that gives him motive"
"Thanks Doc" Danny turns to leave.
"Hold on, there's more" Sid said. He turns the corpse on its side and shows Danny the victim's nape. "Found a sticky substance on her nape. And what appears to be a chemical burn"
Danny takes a peek at the victim's nape. He takes a swab and gets a sample. "Chemical burn is a circular pattern. I recovered a small circular piece of paper with this substance."
"The plot thickens" Hammerback said, his eyes peaking above his glasses.