“Are you kicking me out after dessert? Tell me now, and I’ll prepare for a broken heart.”
“We’ll see.”
I grinned.
Dinner was divine. I polished off two helpings and assisted Dominique with cleanup. We fell into easy conversation, discussing work mostly. Dominique shared his frustrations about having students at his elbows every time he turned around, expressing how they slowed him down and made it difficult to adhere to a proper schedule.
“I was not made to teach. I’m too introverted for that. Stuck in my ways.”
“I bet you do fine.”
“Did Delmar get back to you?”
“He did.” I sighed. “It was a dead end. The science behind fragrance extraction is fragile and complicated. Considering the only sample we have is on a rapidly decomposing flower, he can’t help me. Even if he could extract something, the rose itself would compromise the sample since it has its own fragrance.”
Dominique frowned. “I’m sorry he couldn’t be more helpful. Did you get my report for Ford Carrigan?”
As we finished in the kitchen and moved into the living room, I tugged my phone from a pocket. “Did you send it?”
“Yes.”
Dominique moved to the curio cabinet and poured drinks as I scrolled through my email. “Shit. I didn’t notice it came through.” The document was pages long, so I glanced at Dominique. “Did anything stand out that I should know about?”
He placed the drinks on the coffee table and retrieved a folder from on top of the bookshelf before sitting beside me. “Here. Have a gander.”
“You brought Ford’s file home?” I flipped through the pages, skimming blocks of text and examining the diagrams, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might give our case a new direction. I’d learned to parse medical terminology long ago.
When I got to the images and measurements of the spike and its insertion point, I cringed and closed the folder. “Nope. Still can’t look at it. Why would someone do that?”
Dominique softly laughed. “Because it sends a powerful message.”
“It sends a painful message.” I smacked him playfully with the folder. “And don’t make fun of me. Find something useful with all these DBs so I can solve this godforsaken case and make Rue proud.”
Dominique sipped his drink and stared at the closed folder for a long moment with a look of contemplation. “You want my personal feedback?”
“Desperately.”
“All right.” He removed the file from my hand. “I’ll give you something, but it may not help much.”
He opened Ford Carrigan’s autopsy report to the exact page I didn’t want to see. When I groaned, he squeezed my thigh. “Stay with me, Detective.”
“I’m trying. I was hoping for a kinky night, but this is killing the mood.”
Dominique smirked. “If you think I’m mean now…” He placed the open file on my lap and stood, retrieving two more folders from the top of the bookcase. “It’s about to get worse.”
When he rejoined me on the couch, I read the labels on the new files. Navis Kordestani and Jesse Vargas. “Should I ask why you have all my victims’ reports on hand? I mean, it’s convenient but a little odd.”
“I don’t usually take my work home with me, but sometimes it’s necessary. This case is important to you. Hence, it’s important to me. I’ve been reviewing the autopsies more thoroughly. Looking for errors or things that were left behind unintentionally.”
“And?”
He opened Jesse’s report to where he’d recorded the information about the spike and did the same with Navid’s. He lined them up side by side on the coffee table.
“Remember how you asked me about the precision involved in stabbing a man between the ribs and lodging the spike directly into the heart.”
“Yeah. You said that when done postmortem, it wouldn’t have been difficult to hit the heart on a first try while avoiding the ribs altogether.”
“Correct, and I stand by that theory. In your next two victims, the spike penetrated the penis.” He indicated a close-up photograph. I unconsciously pressed my thighs together, feeling a phantom sting.
