Her body isn’t even close to being completely off the path, but I’m bothered that their impulse was to move it at all. I wonder if this is what they habitually handle at home, perhaps when their mother is in a drunken stupor or passed out cold on the floor.

I gently touch the wound to the back of the head, spreading the irregular ragged edges so I can see the slender threads of tissue bridging. They’re a clear indication this isn’t an incised wound caused by a weapon with a sharp edge. I tell Marino that the scalp and subcutaneous tissue were split by a crushing force over a bony prominence of her posterior skull.

“So she must have been alive when she got that or she wouldn’t have bled out,” he says.

“But she didn’t bleed out very much, which suggests she didn’t survive very long. The scalp is incredibly vascular,” I explain. “There would be a lot of blood everywhere had she survived long enough to move, to walk around or try to run from someone.”

I continue working my fingers through her hair, checking for boggy tissue or fractures. There are no other injuries to her scalp or skull, not that I can feel or see, and I ask Marino to bring a hand lens from my scene case. I hear him step away. Then he’s opening drawers, and next he’s back with the magnifying lens. I use it and a flashlight to get a better look at Elisa Vandersteel’s right ear.

“No abrasion, charring, stippling or any other sign of injury,” I inform him. “I’m seeing only dirt and dried blood, and I’m not likely to know what caused the bleeding until we get her into the CT scanner.”

Placing my hands under the back of her head, I lift it a little. I turn it to the right, and there’s dried blood in her left ear too.

“If she’s an electrocution, why would she have blood in her ears?” Marino asks.

“Ruptured eardrums are the most common cause.” I open her eyes wider.

I check them for burns, for hemorrhages, and the blue irises are becoming cloudy. Sliding the long thermometer out of the incision in the abdomen, I wipe off blood so I can read the calibrations. Elisa Vandersteel’s core body temperature is thirty-four degrees Celsius or ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit, and that would be about right if she’s been out here for several hours.

“And her rigor’s beginning, which is also consistent with that. I can feel a little resistance as I move her neck.” I show Marino. “But her right hand and wrist are completely stiff, as Investigator Barclay noted earlier, and it’s beginning to make sense.”