As I lift her arm I notice that on top of her wrist is a peculiar whitish linear burn about three inches long and so fine it’s as if she were scorched by a fiery spiderweb. It wasn’t noticeable when her arm was raised over her head, so I’m just now seeing it, and I wonder if her right hand was near her hair when it got singed. If so, what did she come in contact with? Marino takes photographs, and I show him that the right wrist and hand are as rigid as iron.

“Yet rigor’s only moderately advanced in her right elbow and shoulder.” I lift her arm again to demonstrate. “It’s barely noticeable in other small muscles and not apparent anywhere else including her left arm.” I move that too. “I assume when Investigator Barclay checked for a pulse, the wrist he touched was her right one.”

“I’m going to ask him,” Marino says. “But that’s the only thing that adds up. And from that he decided she was in full rigor all over.”

“She’s not, and it would have been even less advanced a few hours ago. She would have been limber except for this.” I indicate her right hand and wrist. “And I’m reminded of what we see in an electrocution when the victim touched something like a hot wire—and that’s what the white mark looks like on her anterior wrist. It looks like a burn from touching something extremely hot, the kind of burn you get when you scorch yourself on the red-hot burner of a stove.”

“But a burn wouldn’t give you instant rigor,” Marino says. “And that’s what this is even though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it in person before.”

A cadaveric spasm or “instant rigor” supposedly can occur when the death is preceded by a violent expenditure of energy that depletes muscles of oxygen and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). And the result is rigidity. The phenomenon is rare and believed by many experts to be apocryphal. But for sure something odd has happened here.

“So if her right hand was in contact with an electrical current,” I tell Marino, “theoretically this could cause the muscles to continuously contract or clench, to go into what’s known as tetany.”

I pull the body partially on its side, just enough to check the back for livor mortis, or the settling of uncirculating blood due to gravity. I see only a slight pink blush. When I press down my thumb, the skin still blanches. Livor is in the early stages, and this also is consistent with her not having been dead very long.

There’s also no question that when she landed on the ground she was either shirtless or her shirt was bunched up. Her back has the scratches and abrasions I’d expect in a bicycle accident, and there’s dirt on her white sports bra.