Well, shit.
That was a pain in the ass. That cut off a whole avenue of investigation. The last thing Gene liked was flying by the seat of his pants.
Ben got his attention.
“BUTI found some interesting things.”
Gene was curious, and he was keeping what Corbin found in the back of his head.
“What did you find, exactly?” he asked, hoping it was, indeed, big.
Ben shared.
“He had plant-based trace all over him. We found white sage inside his mouth, along with traces of it on his skin. Whatever was smeared on him had it in it. The substance is tar-like, but not tar. It didn’t come off easily. I tried a test patch to see what would remove it on his feet. It was greasy butNOTgreasy. In it, there was calamus, cedar, and althea root, along with something akin to a sap from a tree found here on the island.”
Gene was making notes, but this aligned with exactly what Corbin had shared with them. Apparently, both MEs were on their game.
“So witchy shit?” he asked. “Sage is something ritualistic and goes along with the markings, right?”
The man nodded.
“I mean, that’s more your area. I do the facts, but in this case, he was covered in it. So much so, that it didn’t wash off in the water.”
Gene didn’t like any of this.
Not.
At.
All.
Ritualistic cases were a bitch to deal with, and whenever they got them, someone got hurt.
Like an agent.
Despite that feeling in the pit of his stomach, Gene pushed on.
“So how about TOD?” he asked. “Hit us with what you know because I need to figure out how these men were taken, and if there’s no tox, there’s no defined path.”
The man was honest.
And the agent wasn’t going to like that.
“It’s safe to say that the killer was trying to make this difficult.”
Gene lifted a brow.
“Explain.”
He did.
“The water temperature screwed with time of death. I can give you a general range, due to the bloating and how his skin was behaving out of the water, but not a direct time. If you expect me to pinpoint it, you’re about to be disappointed.”
Well, that was a norm in his life. If he had a dollar for every time an ME couldn’t give them TOD due to weather, especially up North, he’d be rich.
For now, they’d take what they could, and work around it.
Beggers couldn’t be choosers.
