Lethal Fractures: Chapter 13
A/N: Kinda a filler chapter. Lots of scientific mumbo-jumbo that's not really mumbo-jumbo ahead.
One of Major Sonja Gracy's favorite things about being a forensic pathologist was that she got to keep very predictable hours. With the exception of when she was on-call with CID or the Air Force equivalent and had to respond to death scenes, there was rarely a need to get to work early or stay late. As such, she made an effort to have breakfast and dinner with her children whenever possible, and was proud that she could say it was only an infrequent event that kept her from either.
Normally, having breakfast with her kids was just that; three people who happened to be sitting at the same table while they ate. She read through her pathology and forensics journals, Maddie sometimes brought some reading material of her own, and Nate was often staring blearily into space. She couldn't even claim that she made breakfast, either; despite being the grandchildren of immigrants on either side of the family, both of her children were very much American, and as such, preferred Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Golden Grahams or Lucky Charms or some similar cold cereal to a real meal. Gracy, having grown up in a fairly German household, usually had a hard boiled egg, bread, and occasionally a slice of cheese.
Today, however, was a special day, for both the kids and for Gracy, and she decided to mark the occasion by making something the three of them could agree on: french toast, using some of the cinnamon raisin bread she picked up at Panera a few days before. For the kids, it was to prepare for the first day of school; for Gracy, it was to do something to keep her from running out of the house early in her excitement. Van Lester had stopped by her office before leaving the evening before to tell her that Captain Rodriguez's bones would be ready by the morning, and she was eager to see what the forensic anthropologist would find.
After feeding her children and sending them upstairs to get cleaned up and dressed in the clothes they had set out the night before, Gracy busied herself by packing the kids' lunches—another normal parenting task she preferred to do herself instead of hand off to the nanny—before heading upstairs to change. Knowing that she would be spending a good part of the day in the forensic anthropology lab, and thus in scrubs, she decided to forgo the uniform and just grabbed a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. She was sure most people would be surprised at how infrequently she, and many other medical officers, actually wore their uniforms. She would be willing to bet that Captain Rodriguez, having had been a vet, would probably also arrive at the office in civilian clothes before changing into scrubs.
"Mariana, don't forget to pick them up right at three, and then take them over to the pool. Swim team practice is from 3:30 to five on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and four to five on Tuesdays and Thursdays." She already dreaded the day, which she knew would come soon, when Maddie and Nate would have separate sports schedules. She had a hard enough time keeping track of things with her and a full-time nanny; she didn't see how working couples managed children as well. "After swimming, it's right back here, and no TV until homework is done. I should be home before six to start dinner."
"Mom, it's the first day of school," Maddie said, rolling her eyes. "We're not going to have any homework."
"You never know, Maddie. Maybe things take off to a quicker start in fourth grade." She kissed each child on the forehead, despite Nate's protests. "Be good. I'll see you tonight."
After a chorus of "Bye, Mom"s, Gracy watched them take off in Mariana's car—technically, it was Gracy's car, but she bought it for the nanny's use—before climbing into her hybrid SUV—which she was already contemplating trading in for something German made—and heading off to AFIP. As excited as she was to see what Rodriguez's cervical vertebrae would reveal, she didn't even take the time to muse about how fast her kids were growing up.
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"Okay, Van, I've been looking forward to this since you stopped by my office yesterday. Let's go look at some bones."
Dr. Van Lester glanced up to see one of his favorite pathologists in his doorway, her long white lab coat over a pair of navy blue scrubs. "You want to be a little bit more specific, Sonja? I've got quite the collection of bones here. I'll be glad to show you any of them."
Dr. Sonja Gracy rolled her eyes. "Very funny," she replied dryly. "Rodriguez's bones are ready, right?"
"I checked first thing when I came in," he confirmed with a nod. "By the way, I found that report you were asking about, the FA report on the Macintosh case. Atlanto-axial dislocation, counter-clockwise motion."
"Just like the others," she said as she accepted the piece of paper he offered.
"Just like the others," he echoed, nodding again. "And it was a relief to see that even as a second-year resident, Dr. Sonja Gracy knew the value of forensic anthropology."
She grinned. "I'm just relieved that I really did remember giving the FA the bones, and I'm not losing my mind."
"Well, I'm not qualified to speak as to the state of your mind, but I am qualified to speak as to the state of Rodriguez's bones, so let's see what we can find."
He led her through a maze of offices and 'autopsy' rooms—the anthropologists called them autopsy rooms, but as far as Gracy was concerned, you needed to have at least a vague interest in flesh to do an autopsy—before arriving at Lester's lab, a space that was almost as cluttered as his office, but fortunately better ventilated. This was where, after removing the larger bits of decaying or burnt flesh in the autopsy rooms, Lester set his bones to boil in vats of diluted bleach and meat tenderizer until literally nothing but bare bones remained. Then he would set them out in anatomical position on one of the long tables—there was currently only one free—and begin his analysis.
"I turned the boiler off when I came in," he explained as he opened the lid to the large pot that Gracy assumed contained the remains of Rodriguez's head and neck, "so the bones should be cool enough to touch by now." By 'touch', he meant with gloved hands; he had once given a graduate student a very stern talking-to about the effects of the hands' dirt and oils on bones.
"Skull," he said unnecessarily as his purple Nitrile gloves pulled out the largest of the bones. "Minus the mandible and calverium, of course. I wish you pathologists weren't so eager with that bone saw. When I was a grad student, I had to testify in this case where the pathologist, in his quest to remove the brain, sawed right through the temporal fracture that caused the victim's death."
"Well, if you've got a better way of removing the brain whole, I'd be glad to hear it."
"Why would I care about an intact brain? No bones to analyze in there."
"Right," she said with a roll of her eyes. He continued to pull bones from the vat and arrange them on the clean plastic sheet on his table.
"Definitely a female skull," he commented, starting his analysis at the top. "The small occipital protuberance is the easiest feature to spot, but when you've looked at as many skulls as I have, you can start to see it in the features as well. Based on the features and the set of the jaw, I'd conclude Caucasoid as a rough guess, but I'm cheating right now and using my knowledge of her surname to say mixed Caucasoid and Mongoloid. All Hispanics are mixed Caucasoid and Mongoloid, as ethnically they are descended of Spanish colonists and Native Americans, but some have more Caucasoid features than Mongoloid, or vise versa. These days, there's a lot more interbreeding as well, so it's getting even harder to find a pure Caucasoid or Mongoloid or Negroid sample. Without using any measuring tools, I'm seeing a lot that is consistent with Caucasoid and not a lot of Mongoloid, so she's probably more Spanish than Native American, or there might be some more European ancestry than that."
"She was fairly light-skinned," Gracy commented. "Using my experience as someone born and raised in southern Florida, I's say she probably had a white mother. My first boyfriend was half-Cuban, actually. My parents didn't care much for him."
"Because of his ancestry?"
"They're college professors in southern Florida. They don't have a problem with anyone's ancestry. It was his motorcycle they didn't care much for."
"I never would have taken you for a girl who goes for the bad boy, Sonja."
"I ended up marrying an Army officer, Van. I think we can safely say the bad boy thing was just a phase."
"Heh," Lester muttered before returning his attention to the skull. "The Stryker saw cut is smooth and even, so we can conclude that she had a skilled pathologist remove her calverium."
"Thanks, Van."
He chuckled before continuing. "Good dentition, which isn't much of a surprise, given that she was in the Army, which requires full dental examinations every six months. No caries or fillings, so she probably brushed and flossed regularly, and teeth are straight, so she probably had braces as a teenager. Those facts are consistent with a higher socioeconomic status."
"As is the fact that she went to college and then veterinary school."
"Unfortunately, people don't carve their education histories into their bones, so we have to find other ways of reaching the same conclusion," Dr. Lester said dryly. "Now, as much as I'd love to go on about the skull all day—and will come close to doing for my full report—I'm sure you're more interested in the cervical vertebrae."
"Well, the brain wasn't consistent with death by blunt force trauma, so, yes."
"Well, in the anthropology world, the vertebral column begins with the skull. Specifically, the foramen magnum and the occipital condyles, which articulate with the atlas, the C1 vertebra." He talked her through with his complete examination of the base of the skull and each of the vertebrae in turn, giving her a more thorough explanation of each bump and groove of each of the small bones than she had had since she had her forensics fellowship years before. "Now, this is where things start to get interesting," he said. "So, in order, the occipital condyles, the atlas, and the axis. As you know, the atlas isn't a complete vertebrae, just a ring of bone, and what would normally be the vertebral body is actually part of the axis, the odontoid process. It's the relationship between these two vertebrae that allow us to nod our heads," he demonstrated a nodding motion. "As well as shake them. So, if it weren't for the atlas and axis, we wouldn't be able to say 'yes' or 'no'," he smiled thinly at his own words, making Gracy wonder if it was supposed to be a joke. "Now what we have here is a posterior dislocation of the odontoid in association with a fracture of the alar. Unfortunately, as the ligaments and the rest of the soft tissue have been boiled away, we can't see the direction of the ligamental tears, which would give us a better idea of the exact forces and directions of the break. When I can tell you, though, is that the break was to the counter-clockwise motion, as indicated by these fractures here and here." He pointed out the faint cracks in the sides of the first vertebra. "Now, if we take this to the scanning microscope…" Gracy stopped listening as he started to get into the minutiae of each of the microscopic fractures and the compressibility of the Haversian canals. It was only the silence that had fallen over the lab that told her that he was done.
"So, her neck was broken," Gracy said simply. The anthropologist gave her a long-suffering glance.
"If simple explanations got the job done, Sonja, you would be able to write 'brain stopped working' on all of your death certificates under cause of death. Yes, her neck was broken, by a violent counter-clockwise motion."
She nodded slowly. "There was one question we had about the mechanism of death," she said. "Is it possible to determine if the killer had been standing behind her or in front of her?"
"Hmm," Lester murmured. "I must admit, I've never thought about that, but it would make a difference, wouldn't it? In fact, that would be the difference between a right-hand dominant murder and a left-hand dominant murder. I don't have an answer for you right now, but I have a good idea on how we can get one. I'll give the guys over at the University of Tennessee Body Farm a call and see if they can do some experiments for me. Hopefully they have a left-handed grad student around who's willing to break the necks of a few corpses in the name of science."