"Coffee?" Chief Medical Examiner David Robbins offered as Sara and Grissom entered the morgue.
"Real coffee?" Sara asked. "Not that premium, grown in the mountains, yuppie $80 a pound stuff?"
"Guilty," replied Robbins, handing Grissom a cup.
"No thanks then."
"Your choice," Robbins shrugged.
"Doc, could you tell us a little about the Anna Dole case?" Grissom asked, taking the lead.
"I thought that was Eckley's? I gave him the findings weeks ago."
"He handed it off to us after he got called to testify on a federal case. I assume you have copies?"
Robbins rolled his eyes before moving toward his filing cabinet. "You think I'd give Eckley my notes?" He rummaged around in the cabinet for several minutes, as Grissom sipped his coffee and Sara grew increasingly uncomfortable. Handing Grissom a folder, he asked, "You want to see the body?"
"You haven't released the body?" Sara asked.
"The case is still open. Anyway, the parents haven't requested it at either."
Grissom looked up from the file, his reading glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. "Isn't that odd?" he mused, turning to Sara. "Hypothetically, if you were a mother, wouldn't you want to bury your child?"
"Hypothetically, you should be asking Catherine."
"Good point. Okay, David, let's see the body."
Sara's breath caught in her throat as Robbins pulled the slab from the drawer. The full-sized sheet covered a small bundle, centered neatly. She had forgotten exactly how small a six-week-old baby was.
"You have a cause of death?" Grissom asked.
"It's difficult with a baby this young," Robbins began. "You start by ruling things out. No fractures, no internal bleeding, no bacterial infections, no viral invasions." He checked his clipboard. "Toxicology results back—no detectible toxins, no poisons, no pharmaceuticals, legal or otherwise. No evidence of lead poisoning."
"That leaves what, then?" Sara asked, hoping Robbins wouldn't decide to uncover the body. Unfortunately, he did just that in response to her question.
"Smothering, drowning, and S.I.D.S."
"Water in the lungs?"
"No. The lungs were a little underdeveloped for a child of this age, but not seriously. Probably due to a slight prematurity."
"Check for petichial hemorrhaging?"
"Of course," Hall replied, opening one of the child's eyes. Sara looked away as Grissom leaned in for a closer view. "No hemorrhaging."
"So that rules out smothering?" Sara asked.
"Not exactly. You see, telling the difference between S.I.D.S. and its cousin S.I.M.S.—"
"S.I.M.S.?"
"Oh. Sudden Infant Murder Syndrome. Sorry, just a little coroner humor," he explained. "S.I.D.S. babies don't have petichial hemorrhaging. They stop breathing at the end of a breath cycle. Basically, the mechanism that tells them to breathe stops function, so when they exhale, they just don't inhale again. We don't know why. On the other hand, the breathing of a child who's been smothered has probably been interrupted mid-cycle. Hence the hemorrhaging."
"Then why is it hard to tell the difference? Either hemorrhaging or no, right?"
"Not necessarily, Sara. You see, in a smothering case, it is possible that the killer interrupted the child's breathing cycle after an exhalation. It could look like a S.I.D.S. case." He rubbed his bearded chin for a moment before adding, "I have a colleague in Germany who is doing a study on how many cases of S.I.D.S. are actually smothering. She estimates the figure to be as high as 10%."
"What would make someone do that?" Sara asked, barely realizing she had voiced her thoughts aloud.
"There's a theory," Grissom replied. "That some women, especially women who have difficult deliveries, don't bond properly with their babies. They see them as foreign bodies, even parasites."
"Or they have a hard time differentiating the baby as a separate person, no longer part of themselves." Robbins added. "In England, a woman who kills her baby within a year and a day of the birth cannot be charged with anything more than manslaughter. Some psychiatric circles believe that women who kill their infants are actually committing a form of suicide."
"Thanks David."
"Sure. The coffee's that good, right?"
"For the information."
They left the morgue and Sara was glad to escape the smell of death and mocha chino.
"So what now?" Grissom asked.
"You're asking me."
"It's your case."
"In that case, patience grasshopper." Sara smiled at him before focusing her gaze on the clock on the wall behind him. "Can we get Maggie Danver in a room?"
"I'll call Brass."
