The Autopsy

Posted on Sun 27th Nov, 2016 @ 8:43pm by Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels & Colonel Horatio Drake & Commander Zachary Hunt

2,293 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Murder on the Silent Night Express
Location: Deck 83: Main Sickbay
Timeline: MD-01: 1600 Hours

As Drake walked down the corridor towards the Main Sickbay he was pondering two things. Firstly, how he had been on the station for nearly a month now and had only seen the Main Sickbay once, on his initial station inspection on the CO handover. Secondly, why he was getting so involved in this murder investigation. He knew the answer was simply to put off the humdrum and tedious station administration work that took up the majority of his waking moments these days.

He saw Hunt coming in the opposite direction just outside and met him with a nod. The doors swooshed open as they approached.

Kellian had already arrived in the infirmary and was trying not to pace the floor or drum his fingers on his PADD too obviously. Why the post-mortem examination results couldn't have been provided in a written report and emailed to him, he didn't know. He suspected that the CMO, who had a reputation for being somewhat ghoulish, simply delighted in going over the final aspects of the autopsy in person. The fact that she vaguely resembled his mother the last time he had seen her alive didn't help. By the time the two senior officers arrived, his thoughts were a jumble, some of them having nothing to do with the murder investigation. Seeing Drake and Hunt walk in was a relief.

"Ah," Doctor Addams said, looking up from the table as the officers walked in. "Enter freely, and of your own will. I have received the most thoughtful of presents -- a corpse with a story to tell!"

Nope, doesn't actually resemble Mom in the least, Kellian told himself and wondered why Addams hadn't become a medical examiner instead of a physician for the living. But he didn't go there. Instead, he stopped avoiding Addams' gaze and looked her in the eye. She still seemed far more merry than a doctor presented with a corpse ought to be, but that helped him do his job.

Hunt looked up at Addams, "Nice to see you again Addams. Please tell."

"Kris Kringle," Addams began, as Thing moved over to a control panel on the table and brought up a hologram of the corpse, "was a Dopterian, despite the anomalously Human name. He was entering early middle age, as demonstrated by the increase in 'crazies,' mottling of irregular shape and size, particularly at the joints." She turned from the hologram to the officers present. "We can examine the actual corpus delectare, if you prefer?"

"Go for it," Hunt said, "So how do we know it is murder then?"

"Ah, Commander," Addams said, opening her eyes wide and pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, as if flirting with the man. "One does not approach a banquet and demand dessert first!" She turned, leading them to a curtained alcove which contained a bed with a sheet-draped body on it. She stripped back the sheet, revealing the corpse's feet. "Note the many blisters on the palmar surface of the feet, extending up to the ankle," she instructed. She turned, and picked up a specimen bottle containing something which looked like a meter-long spaghetti noodle. "They are where the heads of Dracunculus medinensis, a humanoid parasite, protrude. They cause a deep burning sensation, which can only be alleviated by splashing water on the blisters. With this many, Captain Kringle was likely quite a cranky fellow."

"Oh!" Kellian blinked. "That explains the basin of water in his bedroom."

Hunt raised an eyebrow, "Pudding is always my favourite part," He paused. "Hang on, that seems familiar. I thought cases of this are very rare now? Unless I am thinking of something entirely different." His thoughts wandered off. "So if cranky Kringle didn't mingle with people very well, he probably had annoyed a lot of people?"

"Infestations such as this are exceedingly rare, Commander," Addams acknowledged. "The life-cycle of the parasite would mean that either everyone on the ship had it, or no one on the ship had it. Any half-decent Corpsman could look up the symptoms and treat it. So the probability is, Captain Kringle was likely deliberately infected... poisoned, if you will... and then kept in a state of agony." Addams paused, looking among the assembled officers. "But this is not what killed him."

Kellian's gaze flicked from Kringle's blistered feet, to Addams, and back to the feet again, horrified.

Addams moved the sheet higher. "Observe the patterned bruising around his genitals. This is called a ligature mark, and it is the distinctive pattern left when a cord -- in this case, likely ten-millimeter rope made of hemp, jute, or a similar plant fiber -- is used to restrict the flow of blood. The extent of healing within the bruise tells us that the constriction occurred forty-eight to seventy-two hours before death."

Kellian cleared his throat and fought not to wince. "A makeshift cock ring, do you think, or a method of causing him more pain?"

"It is, alas, impossible to tell if the injury was a result of solo or group activity," Addams said, flicking the sheet down and covering the Captain again, to Kellian's relief. "There were no traces of bodily fluids other than his own, but with the age of the injury, one would not expect there to be. And again... this is not what killed him."

The Doctor pulled up the sheet covering the corpse's left hand. "Records and callus patterns indicate that, like most humanoids throughout the Galaxy, Captain Kringle was right-dominant. However, his sinister hand is quite interesting." The doctor indicated reddened skin on the corpse's fingertips. "A short time before death... no more than two hours... Captain Kringle suffered electrical burns. They are partial-thickness dermal burns, and would have been quite painful, both at the moment of receipt and afterward. What you will not observe, but what is none-the-less present, is an incision in the opponens pollicis, the large muscle of the thumb."

Addams smiled, a macabre look of affection. "The reason you will not observe the incision is that in the same time frame, no more than two hours before death, someone used a dermal regenerator rather clumsily on the skin. They left a void, which would no doubt have turned into an abscess before long. If we examine the void, we find that it is the approximate shape and size of a tool tip.

"Therefore, it is my educated conjecture that Captain Kringle was holding something electro-mechanical in his left hand," Addams mimicked the posture, demonstrating, "while working on it with his right. His tool slipped, possibly as the result, or possibly the cause, of an electrical discharge which burned his fingertips. But this, too, did not cause his death."

"So someone has caused him all this pain...they must have really hated the guy. Can we get to pudding yet or still more to go?" Hunt smiled.

"Commander, let's not jump to any conclusions" Drake only half looked at the First Officer, his comedic approach to everything was starting to grate - there was a reason why Fleet Officers and Marine Officers were segregated for so long. "Doctor, am I right in presuming that none of the evidence or injuries, thus far, had to necessarily have been inflicted by a second party? In fact, this could have been a man who enjoyed rather strenuous sexual activities and was, at some point recently, in the process of... perhaps repairing something?"

"Yes, Colonel, so far that is the case. However, we now start getting into what Commander Hunt might call the meat... without which, there can be no pudding." Addams lifted the sheet higher, letting the assembled officers see the corpse's chest. "Superficial dermal burns. And the tissues below show extreme electrolyte disturbance. All of which is consistent with discharge of an energy weapon at point-blank range. But," she said, smiling her macabre smile again, "this is not what killed him."

"I must say, you do know how to keep the suspense up," Hunt said.

"Her middle name is Scheherazade, didn't you know?" Kellian muttered.

Addams glanced at Kellian, but forbore mention of her cousin, Scheherazade Addams, who was quite a lovely young woman, if you overlooked the extra arm. "If I simply skipped to the deadly item," she said instead, "that is all you would hear. You would not appreciate the full story that Captain Kringle has left for us to piece together." She let the sheet drop, and moved to the head of the bed.

"For this," Addams said, as she folded the sheet down from the late Captain's face, "we will need a hologram to understand the details." The face looked oddly flattened along the left side, clearly not symmetrical. "Computer, display Captain Kringle's skull, size to one-hundred-fifty percent." The enlarged skull sprang into being as a construct of faintly blue light, hanging in the air. Addams reached out, rotated the phantom object until the rear of it faced the officers.

"Blunt object trauma," Addams said, indicating two areas of fractured bone. "Consistent with a forehand and then a backhand strike with an elongated metal object -- a candlestick, perhaps, or a pipe. But the damage is only the primary impact damage. We find no swelling, no hemorrhaging, no contusions, which means that the blows were delivered postmortem. So this, too, did not kill the Captain."

Addams rotated the skull again, returning its face to their view. "You will note the fracture of the zygomatic bone, and its disarticulation from the maxilla," she said, indicating the smashed right cheekbone. "Here, finally, we have the cause of death, though not directly."

"Would a punch to the jaw do that, or was this too caused by a weapon?" Kellian asked.

"Excellent question," Addams said. "The pattern of the fractures indicates that it was a flat surface which inflicted the trauma. Again, this is only informed conjecture, but here is what I believe happened. There is a weapon favored by Dopterians. A semi-autonomous weapons system, actually. They call it an interceptor. I believe that this weapon discharged, striking Captain Kringle in the chest. He fell, striking his face against something solid... a table, perhaps, or a desk. The force of the blow, and the momentum of the rest of his body, caused the fatal wound..." She adjusted the hologram, displaying shattered vertebrae. "He broke his neck, severing the nerves which cause the heart to beat, the lungs to supply blood. He was dead before he was struck in the head with an improvised weapon. This combination of injuries clearly indicates that there was someone else present... someone with malicious intent."

"That low and slow of a fall would have been enough to break the vertebrae this badly?" Kellian asked, pointing at the C-1 and C-2. "Also, can you demonstrate whether the beam weapon wound was self-inflicted or inflicted by someone else?" He was certain that Addams could, but she hadn't mentioned it yet.

"Those things will require more extensive holography," Addams said, restoring the sheet to cover the corpse's face. She patted his shoulder fondly, and moved around the table toward the curtain. "Shall we return to the other room?" The question, evidently, was rhetorical, as she swept aside the curtain and led the way.

"Hello, my dear Thing," she said, placing her hand on the table next to her Zeta Reticulan spider. It moved up her arm to sit on her shoulder, and she smiled, worked the controls for the hologram. "Let's take your questions in reverse order." A Dopterian skeleton appeared above the table in a standing position. A floating weapon appeared at a small distance from the skeleton, and discharged. "The penetration and angle of the tissue damage to the chest suggest that the beam was fired from slightly above the point of impact. If we presume that the weapon used was, in fact, a Dopterian interceptor, average beam strength for such a weapon suggests that it was fired from a distance of 120 centimeters. This is consistent with the burn marks seen on the dermis. 1.2 meters is beyond average Dopterian arm length. This suggests a second party, though it is impossible to say for certain because of the semi-autonomous nature of the weapon." Addams looked around to be sure everyone was following.

"So it's possible that all we can prove is the identity of whoever delivered the blunt-force trauma to the back of Kringle's head. What about the damage to his zygomatic bone? That looks odd," Kellian said.

"About that," Addams said. She touched the holographic controls again, and a desk was added to the image. As the floating weapon fired, the skeleton fell forward and to the side. The side of its face struck the desk, shattering the zygomatic bone and jarring the head in the opposite direction of the body's momentum. "If Captain Kringle was rendered unconscious at the moment of the blast, his muscles would not have been resisting the torque applied by striking the table or desk. That would lower the force required for the vertebrae to shatter and sever the spinal cord."

Addams sighed. "The only thing which we can definitively say was the work of another person was the bludgeoning of the corpse. It is very difficult to strike yourself in the back of the head with any force; even more difficult when you are dead."

"Attempted murder is the most that can be proved, then, unless we can demonstrate that someone other than Kringle fired the weapon," Kellian concluded. "This is shaping up to be quite the interesting case."

Colonel Horatio Drake
Commanding Officer

Lt. Commander Zachary Hunt
Executive Officer

Lt. Commander Chlamydia Addams, MD
Chief Medical Officer

Lt. (jg) Kellian Michaels (NPC)
Security Investigations Officer

 

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