“Hit us with it.”
Ben shared.
“He died between Friday night and twelve hours before we pulled him from the water. I’m going to say more toward the latter. That’s all I can give you. I’m putting his time in the water to be about a full day or more. There’s a twelve-hour margin of error.”
Well, shit.
That was a wide window.
“The water was about the same temp as his body, so it makes it look like he was in the water far less than he was. The skin bloating and the beginning stages of slippage tell me around twenty-four hours. That’s all I can say,” Ben admitted.
Well, it was something.
The person who did this had to have time to grab the man, break all his bones, and then dump him.
They would start running a timeline to see if they could lock that down.
Then, they’d start going through his schedule to retrace his steps. They knew when he sent his report to Gabe.
Whoever saw him last, might have an idea.
Or be the killer.
“Okay, so that covers COD, TOD, and tox. Anything you can tell us in comparison to the cop’s autopsy?” Gene asked.
The man opened the other file, and he shared what he could.
“He was in the water far longer. Again, I wasn’t able to do TOD, but he had become a snack for the sea life. That tells me hesank, he bloated and floated up, and sank again. At the bottom of the ocean, he was dinner. So someone is taking the bodies out, and dumping them. Because it’s rather shallow where we get the normal floaters.”
Ethan was making notes, and was curious.
“And as for the Fed?” he asked. “Did you find anything that might give us an idea as to where he was dumped?
Ben considered it.
“I’d say there is a good possibility that the killer dumped him out further, based on the temperature of his body while he was in the water. It’s colder the further out you go.”
That was interesting.
“We know he was around Friday as he worked his shift,” Gene said.
Oh, Ben understood.
So, he explained.
“Yes, but, last night, you saw the surf. A storm is heading here, and that weather comes first as rough waters, and then torrential rains with a side of winds. I think he was dumped, picked up in the rip current, and then settled on shore where you guys were. He may have been left out further, but the killer didn’t take into account the upcoming weather. That also might be why he had no predation to his body. The rip current is brutal for all living things.”
Gene weighed that in his mind.
And so did Ethan.
“So he’s learning,” Blackhawk said. “He’s getting better with each kill, trying to improve it, and by‘HE’, I’m just using that to describe the killer. I don’t have enough to pick the gender yet,” he stated, more for Gene than anyone else.
His partner considered everything he had heard, and was weighing it all in his head.
“So we have an individual who is learning from this, and that isNEVERgood.”
No, it wasn’t.
