Remember, too, the jury has not seen the autopsy photographs. I saw them before court started up at Becky’s desk. Autopsy photographs have a surreal quality. These, in particular, are Frankensteinian. The girl had skin like a lake of milk. She is lying on her back completely nude. Her body is perfectly proportioned. Her breasts ripe and full, her belly just creating the curve of womanhood. Her long muscular limbs ending in pretty hands and feet, her toes slightly pointed and painted pink.
All of her is iridescent in death under the coroner’s strange strong light. Juxtaposed to her nubile beauty are the long, gruesome incisions curving across her chest and abdomen all the way down to her pubic bone. Huge staples, inches long, close these incisions crudely. A stained wooden block under her neck props up her head. Battered and beautiful. A gory red hole is, indeed, where her right cheek should be. There is no exit wound. Black burns cover her sweet face, as though a welder torched it. Blood and fluid have dried around her nostrils and her ears. More blood is clotted … it mats some of her hair and covers her scalp. The longer pieces of her mane swirl around her head on the aluminum table like a silver blond halo.
Presenting, Miss January, the Grim Reaper’s Centerfold of the Year.