Once upon a pathology lab
Chapter One
"Boyd!" yelled Frankie from her lab. "Why is there what appears to be a decaying body in my lab?"
"Frankie, you're a bloody Forensic Pathologist!" yelled back Boyd. "What do you expect to find in your lab?"
Frankie sighed and wandered over to the dead girl lying on her examination table. She assumed that this girl had something to do with a new investigation unless Boyd had decided collecting dead girls was a good hobby… The girl looked as though she had drowned, although there was a stab wound to the stomach – possibly fatal, although Frankie couldn't be certain. There was one thing she could be certain of though: they weren't going to identify this girl from fingerprints or facial identification, the time in the water had mottled her body beyond recognition. At that moment Boyd, Grace, Spencer and the new girl, Hannah walked into the lab, each grabbing a coat and perching on a stool next to Frankie.
"Right Frankie, turn off that crap you like to play on the CD player, and then we can get started," began Boyd, half teasing.
Frankie stuck her middle finger up at him, but a smile on her pretty face showed that she got the joke…it was a long standing joke between her and Boyd. She did, however, turn off the 'crap' she was playing, and settled back down on a stool.
"So, who is she?" asked Grace, gazing with an almost maternal look at the dead girl.
"I don't know," replied Boyd. "That's why we're here."
"But she's not a cold case," pointed out Spencer. "Why are we dealing with it?"
"I'm getting there, I'm getting there Spence," continued the superintendent. "Ten years ago a woman named Joanna Morgan was found dead by the river Thames. She was twenty one at the time. There were never any arrests made at the time, but it was widely accepted that a girl she was counselling at the time, Alicia Grey, killed her because of an ongoing obsession with her. Alicia was never found, but there were no other suspects. Joanna was found with a note pinned to her chest…" at this point Boyd paused and handed around a note in a plastic evidence bag.
"Contaminated," read Grace, puzzled. "Was this ever followed up on?"
"Nope, the police assumed it was just a note from a 'very messed up teenage girl'," quoted Boyd.
"Must've been very messed up indeed to pin this to the chest of a woman who had never done her any real harm," sighed Frankie. "But this isn't Joanna Morgan, Boyd. What does she have to do with this girl?"
"Yesterday afternoon this girl was found in exactly the same place as Joanna Morgan, with a note pinned to her chest. It also said 'contaminated' on it, and handwriting experts have all but confirmed that the note was written by the same person. We still don't know who the girl is, but the river police who found her believe she may have been in the water for days, possibly weeks, which makes identifying her all the more difficult. And that is where we come in," he concluded. "If this is the same killer as Joanna Morgan, then we have two murders to solve. We'll go over all the evidence of the Joanna Morgan case and follow up on the other leads the police then didn't bother with. I think we can discount Alicia Grey as a suspect – she wouldn't have had any reason to kill this girl – but we should still find her, if possible."
Frankie nodded her agreement, as did the others.
"Do we know why Alicia went to see Joanna in the first place?" asked Grace.
"Yes…" said Boyd, pausing as he looked through the file. "She was pregnant apparently…she was thirteen at the time. Oh, and Frankie, Joanna's body will be over later, that okay?"
"Yeah, sure," nodded Frankie, turning her music back on, and getting down to work. "I'll let you know when I identify the body."
Grace waited for a moment in the lab, waiting until Boyd and the others had left. Frankie turned to look at her, knowing what was coming next.
"You okay Frankie?" asked Grace, doing her maternal act again.
"Yes…why wouldn't I be?" replied Frankie, not meeting Grace's gaze.
"I know Mel's death hit you hard Frankie…I just wanted you to know you can talk to me anytime you need, okay?"
"I know, Grace, I know," sighed Frankie. "But I'd rather just deal with it on my own…thanks anyway though."
It was very early in the morning when the blonde haired woman arrived at the Cold Case Unit. In fact, only Boyd was actually in the office when she arrived…
"Who the hell are you?" asked Boyd as she walked through the door. "And what are you doing in my unit?"
"Um, I'm Nikki Alexander," she began hesitantly. "I'm here about the dead girl."
"Nikki, you're in a cold case unit, we have a lot of dead bodies…any particular dead girl?"
"Frankie just said it was a dead girl, found by a river I think, and she wanted me to do a facial reconstruction."
Boyd snorted in disgust and muttered something unintelligible about that bloody woman running the unit! "Getting in some random blonde to do a 'facial reconstruction' on the girl!"
"She said you might be a bit grumpy this early in the morning," said Nikki earnestly, smiling reassuringly at Boyd. The look Boyd gave her told her she'd best just get down to the lab or else there'd be trouble…lots of it! "I'll just be off then…"
"Hang on a minute!" shouted Boyd. "I can't just have some blonde going down to the lab! Why did Frankie get you in anyway?"
"I'm a forensic anthropologist, if you want the correct name for it. I do a lot of facial reconstructions." She showed him her ID, resisting the temptation to tell him that actually blondes were a whole lot more intelligent than strange, bearded superintendents!