to shoulders…blunt trauma around vagina, anus and inner thighs suggests rape…or multiple rapes.”
After Pena has been examined and photographed on both sides in the condition in which she was found, Lebowitz, using long thin surgical scissors, cuts away the bloody shower curtains. When he peels the silver packing tape off her lips and removes the panties that had been stuffed into her mouth, O’Hara can see the gap between Pena’s two front teeth that McLain couldn’t stop himself from pointing out in his wallet snapshot that first night in the station house. Finally Lebowitz severs the plastic ties that bind Pena’s wrists and ankles. It’s about time, thinks O’Hara. But by now rigor mortis constricts her body instead, and untethering her limbs does nothing to release them.
“The shower curtains are an inexpensive common style and brand-new,” says Lebowitz. “I’m not holding out much hope for them.” He slips the four sections of shower curtain, along with the ties, tape and panties, into a large plastic evidence bag and returns to Pena for a second, less obstructed, tour.
“Closer examination of the head shows trauma was induced by a single blow from a small hard round object and confirms the lack of skull fracture. If the assailant intended to torture the victim, the limited damage of the blow may have been intentional…the body is covered front and back with approximately sixty gouges made with a crude serrated blade…gouges range widely in size, shape and depth…body has also been repeatedly burned with a cigarette lighter and sliced with a second knife, although the number of slicing cuts and burns is significantly smaller than the gouges…the gouging alone would have taken several hours and caused considerable loss of blood, but not necessarily a fatal one, and although the victim has been subjected to overwhelming homicidal violence, there is no clear single cause of death…The lividity, or bruising, suggests the victim did not bleed to death…I think she was tortured until her heart stopped.”
O’Hara likes the sound of the city in Lebowitz’s shy voice and appreciates the way his mind and body work in sync—his cautious understated observations matched by the precise movements of his long fingers and hands. And unlike the ME at O’Hara’s only other autopsy, it’s not a performance. Lebowitz doesn’t seem to be playing himself in an episode of CSI.
“There are abrasions and bruising to the victim’s right wrist and abrasions to the fingertips and heel of the left hand. They could indicate the victim was dragged by her feet over pavement or other abrasive surface.”
Having completed a second pass of the body, Lebowitz takes out a rape kit and does bucol swabs of Pena’s vagina, anus and mouth, again noting the evidence of trauma to all three. He notices something caught in Pena’s teeth and examines it with a magnifying glass. “Chocolate,” he says, and scrapes it into another plastic envelope.
Lebowitz then takes a steel comb from the rape kit and runs it through Pena’s pubic hair, which strikes O’Hara as longer and fuller than the current fashion. Lebowitz packs the comb in another plastic bag, then scrapes and cuts Pena’s fingernails, hoping that like the pubic hair and packing tape, they may have snared some small part of her attacker. Having packed them away too, he points out the evidence of tearing in Pena’s anus and vagina and the bruising in her throat.
To some degree, all this is preamble. The autopsy itself, which consists of the surgical removal and weighing of Pena’s brain, heart, liver and other organs, is yet to begin. When Lebowitz makes a long incision just below the hairline on Pena’s forehead and with a brisk tug peels back her scalp, all six detectives, from O’Hara to the most hardened homicide guys, have seen enough and head for the exit.
In the waiting area outside, a shattered couple occupy one corner. Although they are nothing like what she pictured, O’Hara knows they must be Pena’s parents. Both are in their late thirties. The mother is tall and blond and looks eastern European, the stepfather compact and swarthy. His thick workingman’s hands lie palm-up at his sides. Only O’Hara stops. She introduces herself as the detective who spoke to them on the phone a couple of nights before.
“I have a son about the same age,” she says, “but I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. I promise you, we’re going to find the person who did this.”
Neither parent says a word.
From the ME’s office, Lowry and Grimes proceed directly to the Seven, where Lowry commandeers the table in Callahan’s office and calls in O’Hara and Krekorian.
“I hear you two have been on this for a couple days,” he says. “What you got for me?”
“I’ll let O’Hara tell you,” says Krekorian. “She caught it as a missing person Friday night.”
“I don’t give a fuck who caught it. I just need what you got. If anything.”
Lovely to meet you too, thinks O’Hara as she flips open her notebook. O’Hara had been under the impression that for seventy-two hours the case belonged to her and Krekorian, but clearly that’s not how it works when the media get this involved and a homicide gets jumped to the front of the line.
“The victim was last seen at three-thirty Thanksgiving morning,” says O’Hara, reading from her notes, “walking alone out of a bar on Rivington between Bowery and Chrystie. A place called Freemans.”
“They got bars on that godforsaken block now?” asks Lowry
“Three,” says O’Hara, “unless they opened another this morning. Not to mention a store that sells something called ‘sutlery’.”
“Military provisions,” says Lowry. “Sutlery are military provisions. Who has her leaving that bar?”
“The bartender, Billy Conway,” says O’Hara, pissed off at herself for bringing up sutlery and doubly pissed off that Lowry knew what it was. “Conway poured Pena and her girls trendy cocktails for four hours. At two-thirty, her friends pack it in, and Pena, who apparently was interested in a guy, stays. The hookup, as far as we know, doesn’t happen, but she stays for another hour and essentially closes the place alone.”
“So at three-thirty, our victim staggers alone onto the darkest block in lower Manhattan? Brilliant.”
“Except for the staggering part. Conway says she wasn’t visibly drunk.”
“He would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“So does a busboy we spoke to. Conway says that after her friends left, she switched from the fancy cocktails to a Jack and Coke and nursed it for an hour.”
“Is that how you sober up, Red, with Jack and Coke?”
“I’ve done dumber things,” says O’Hara, and feels a tap on her right foot from Krekorian, who is getting increasingly worried about the competitive edge to O’Hara’s responses. The nudge takes O’Hara back six months to a night she and Krekorian spent at a beautiful old bar on East Eighteenth Street. The place is called Old Town, but because of the stained glass in the windows, the high ceilings and the cool wooden booths that feel like pews, they’ve renamed it the Church of the Holy Spirits. In the spring they often repaired there after night shifts, particularly lousy ones. On one of those nights, the foul residue from the shift led to round after round, and after three or four Jamesons too many, Krekorian directly violated their unwritten rule not to tell each other anything about themselves they didn’t want to hear. “The
