With the adroitness of practice, Ippolit ignored the mental image of the Ocelot major with an armful of flaxen game birds and addressed the issue at hand.
"The patterning of blood suggests that the limbs were removed shortly before death. The face and genital apparatus, shortly after. No blood stains at the site; the operations were conducted elsewhere. The bones were sawn off cleanly. Surgically."
Ippolit drew in a long, silent breath.
Conducting the autopsy had been...difficult. He'd seen his share of dead bodies. A few other people's as well, he would guess. Stabbings, shootings, poisonings, strangulation. It was rare that it got to him.
But this...
Some would call it inhuman. The worst was that it was the most human thing there was. Animal brutality he could handle. That was sane. Killing in rage was rational.
The attention to detail. The obscene parody of care. The long, tender knife strokes flensing the flesh of his face from the bone.
It had crawled into him like a stench, suffocating him, gagging him like a corpse's stiff fingers down his throat.
Alone in the cold room with the dead man, Rakitin had begun to shake.
And then...something strange. Nothing had changed, but it was different. As though something in the air had shifted, not precisely relief, but an interruption in the procession of pain. Like a cool hand on a fevered brow.
His nausea had subsided, and Ippolit felt, for the first time in a very long time, as though he were not alone.
Where there had been horror, there was solemnity. Where there had been revulsion, there was sorrow.
There was a dignity to a man's death that no other could rob from him.
The rest of the autopsy, carried out with clinical exactitude and steady hands, had felt like funeral rites.
Ippolit had felt a strange, fleeting urge to place coins over the dead man's eyes.
"Petechiae and bruising on the unburnt portions of the neck suggest strangulation as the means of death. Time of death is estimated at five hours before the explosion."
As though thought could summon, as he spoke, he felt that even flow of calm sadness descend again, like mist after a night of rain, or a friend's hand on his shoulder.
"Blood and urine test positive for sedatives. This would explain the apparent lack of a prolonged struggle, though the severity of the burns makes it impossible to be certain.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-03-29 09:28 am (UTC)"The patterning of blood suggests that the limbs were removed shortly before death. The face and genital apparatus, shortly after. No blood stains at the site; the operations were conducted elsewhere. The bones were sawn off cleanly. Surgically."
Ippolit drew in a long, silent breath.
Conducting the autopsy had been...difficult. He'd seen his share of dead bodies. A few other people's as well, he would guess. Stabbings, shootings, poisonings, strangulation. It was rare that it got to him.
But this...
Some would call it inhuman. The worst was that it was the most human thing there was. Animal brutality he could handle. That was sane. Killing in rage was rational.
The attention to detail. The obscene parody of care. The long, tender knife strokes flensing the flesh of his face from the bone.
It had crawled into him like a stench, suffocating him, gagging him like a corpse's stiff fingers down his throat.
Alone in the cold room with the dead man, Rakitin had begun to shake.
And then...something strange. Nothing had changed, but it was different. As though something in the air had shifted, not precisely relief, but an interruption in the procession of pain. Like a cool hand on a fevered brow.
His nausea had subsided, and Ippolit felt, for the first time in a very long time, as though he were not alone.
Where there had been horror, there was solemnity. Where there had been revulsion, there was sorrow.
There was a dignity to a man's death that no other could rob from him.
The rest of the autopsy, carried out with clinical exactitude and steady hands, had felt like funeral rites.
Ippolit had felt a strange, fleeting urge to place coins over the dead man's eyes.
"Petechiae and bruising on the unburnt portions of the neck suggest strangulation as the means of death. Time of death is estimated at five hours before the explosion."
As though thought could summon, as he spoke, he felt that even flow of calm sadness descend again, like mist after a night of rain, or a friend's hand on his shoulder.
"Blood and urine test positive for sedatives. This would explain the apparent lack of a prolonged struggle, though the severity of the burns makes it impossible to be certain.
"In the anal cavity, there was a yellow rose."