Chapter 12
She stands a little further away and watches the action. They found her hiding place earlier than she thought. At least she was able to secure her laptop beforehand. When the coroner's car pulls up, she knows they've found her. She turns away, gets into the Suburban and drives off. She needs a plan.
Forensics is in the storage unit until late at night.
Max, meanwhile, has taken the woman's body, or what's there of her, to the coroner's office.
Danny is still reeling from the shock. Before he heads back to Steve's, he takes a detour to see Rachel and the kids. He just needs to see something different. It's good to just play with his son for a bit.
Catherine is already on her way to the hospital. When Danny later enters Steve's room, she is curled up on one of the visitor's chairs and has already dozed off.
He approaches the bed, sadly looking at his comatose friend.
"Hey, Pal."
Then he squeezes his hand, sits down in the second visitor's chair and stares ahead. He just can't get rid of the image of the naked woman without a head.
How could Lynn do such a thing? And how could he be so wrong about a person. He wouldn't have remotely trusted Lynn to kill anyone. After some time, sleep still overcomes him.
The ringing of a cell phone wakes Danny from his sleep.
"Williams," he answers sleepily. "Detective, good morning. Would it be possible for you to come down to autopsy?"
"I'll be right there."
He looks at Catherine, who has also just opened her eyes, and corrects himself.
"We'll be right there."
No sooner have Danny and Catherine entered the coroner's office than Max begins his remarks.
"So, the cause of death, as is readily apparent, is the gunshot wound to the chest. It's interesting that it's the same caliber as the bullet that hit Commander McGarrett.
As you can see, there is little bleeding on the neck, so we can assume that the head was severed postmortem. The cut shows no fraying or similar and is unusually smooth. Therefore, a rather sharp tool such as a machete or a sword was used.
Unfortunately, the time of death cannot be accurately determined by freezing.
But I guess it has been in the chest for a couple of weeks. There was a power outage there a week ago, which caused the chest to defrost and allow the decomposition process to begin. Later it was frozen again.
Unfortunately, the identification is complicated, the fingerprints are not in the database and for the identification via a DNA match I unfortunately lack a counter sample. Well, and without teeth. You know."
"Thank you, Max."
Catherine and Danny are about to leave again, when he remembers something else.
"Oh, wait a minute. I forgot one more thing. She has a tattoo under her upper right arm. An infinity sign with a bird."
Danny stares at him. That couldn't possibly be...
"Max, can I see that tattoo?"
Puzzled, the coroner looks at him.
"Of course." With his gloved hand, he carefully lifts his arm. Danny feels nauseous and has to stop himself from vomiting.
"Danny, what is it?"
He gasps. "This is Lynn."
"Are you sure?" Danny nods.
He still remembers it clearly. A few months ago they had played beach volleyball together and Lynn had proudly shown Steve, him and his then girlfriend Melissa her new tattoo.
"Okay, if that's Lynn, who's the woman Steve wants to kill?"
Still stunned, Danny and Catherine drive to HQ and bring Chin and Kono up to speed. They are also shocked when they hear who they found yesterday.
Forensics found the same DNA in the stash house and Lynn's house. Lynn's has since been filtered out. What remained was that of the 'wrong' Lynn. When they try to match the fingerprint or DNA through the computer, they get no result, as they did with the shooter. Another ghost.
The 'wrong' Lynn hasn't turned up anywhere yet. Neither in the hospital, nor anywhere else. Maybe she has already left Hawaii.
Stupid quack. He was only supposed to remove the cheek pads and now she looks like Frankenstein's monster. Well, he probably wouldn't disfigure anyone else so quickly. Thoughtfully, she looks in the mirror. She takes out a wide hair band and ties back her dark curls a bit. This would be a good way to hide the fresh stitches in front of her ears once the wound dressings are gone. As long as everything didn't turn green and blue, it should be fine. But she loses a little time anyway. Anyway, Steve is still in a coma, she would still do her job.