Read Online I Am Death by Chris Carter - Free Book Online Page A

Garcia lifted a hand. ‘Are you saying that her internal organs were also damaged? I mean, due to torture?’
    ‘One was,’ Doctor Hove replied. ‘And that’ll finally bring us to the cause of death, which baffled me throughout the entire post mortem examination until I examined her
brain.’
    Doctor Hove’s words seemed to chill the air inside the autopsy room even further.
    ‘Her brain showed signs of being damaged?’ Garcia asked. His eyes moved to Nicole’s head. ‘With no visible external trauma? Was her cranium injured?’
    ‘No. Her cranium was intact.’
    Garcia raised his eyebrow questioningly.
    Doctor Hove retrieved two sheets of paper from the instrument table behind her and handed one to each detective. ‘What caused her death was oedema of the brain.’
    Garcia frowned at the sheet. ‘Wait a second, Doc, isn’t oedema some sort of swelling?’
    ‘Well, swelling is a consequence of it,’ the doctor clarified. ‘More precisely, oedema is an excessive build-up of fluid in the body’s tissues, which will often cause
swelling and can result in further damage. It’s most common in the feet and ankles, but it can occur anywhere in the body – the lungs, the eyes, the knees, the hands, and in rarer
cases, the brain.’
    ‘So you’re saying that her brain swelled up because of fluid excess?’ Garcia again.
    ‘That’s correct.’
    ‘What sort of fluid?’
    ‘Her own blood.’

Thirteen
    Garcia looked at Hunter, then at the body, then back at Doctor Hove.
    ‘She died due to an excessive build-up of her own blood inside her brain?’ he asked. ‘And that was induced by the killer? How?’
    ‘By keeping her upside down for long enough,’ Hunter answered in a subdued voice. ‘That would explain the difference in restraints from her wrists to her ankles. They needed to
be stronger to be able to hold her body weight.’
    ‘Correct again, Robert,’ Doctor Hove agreed, moving closer to the head of the examination table, and resting her hands by Nicole’s ears. ‘If you understand the process,
oedema of the brain isn’t very difficult to achieve. You see, it all rests on the difference between arteries and veins. Arteries are thick-walled vessels that carry blood away from the heart
and into the organs of the body.’ Like a medical professor addressing her students, she pointed at Nicole’s chest, and then moved her hand away, spreading her fingers at the same time
as she explained. ‘Even upside down, the heart will continue to distribute blood through the arteries just as strongly as it would right side up. That blood travels with a lot of pressure,
due to it being forced into the arteries by the pumping of the heart. So, right side up, upside down . . . it makes no difference. Blood will always travel with the same force away from the heart.
Veins, on the other hand, are thin-walled vessels that carry blood from the organs of the body back into the heart for repumping. They have essentially no pressure in them, and they rely on
gravity, inertia and the force of skeletal muscle contractions to help push blood back to the heart.’
    Doctor Hove coughed to clear her throat before continuing.
    ‘With no skeletal muscle contractions happening inside the skull, if you reverse gravity by placing someone upside down for long enough, blood will still travel normally from the heart,
through the arteries, and into the brain, but it will cease to travel through the veins back to the heart. So what you have is a build-up – blood coming into the brain, but not getting
out.’
    The doctor paused, the look on her face just a little more somber than a moment ago.
    ‘With a build-up of blood in the brain, after a while blood will start to leak from the capillaries, accumulating inside the cranium, increasing pressure, and causing the brain to swell.
And with that comes a hell of a lot of pain – head, ears, eyes, nose . . . every heart pump would probably feel like thunder was exploding