Hesitantly, Felipe nodded. “What do you know so far?”
“He’s been dead a while if liver temperature and rigor mortis are any indication. Over a day. He has a cauterized wound on his neck over the carotid artery. The burn looks perimortem. On his forearms, he has a series of lacerations in various stages of healing, and they appear to be from being bled with a scarificator. I haven’t looked at the words on his chest yet, but the nastiest wound is what looks like the skull fracture on his left temple. I can’t confirm that’s what it is until I do the internal examination, but it feels like a fracture.”
“Can you tell what came first?”
“The wounds on his arms. Some have to be at least a week or two old. I would guess one of his errands was selling blood to someone. In terms of his death, I’m fairly certain the head wound came first. It had hours to swell and bruise before he died. I doubt he was conscious after.”
Felipe braced himself before pulling back the shroud to stare at the wound. Stepping back a pace, he pantomimed swinging a bat. “The attacker was taller than me. Something heavy and blunt?”
“That’s what I thought. A candlestick holder or a paperweight. I’ll know the shape better after the autopsy.”
“So DeSanto confronted whoever hired him, they start to argue, and the killer whacks him over the head. He passes out and ultimately dies. It was a crime of opportunity, not planned like the others. That would explain why there was no cursed toy involved.”
“That isn’t all. They also cut his neck. It’s right over his carotid artery, though they tried to cover it by cauterizing it. If you look closely, you can see irritation around the wound.”
Felipe shook his head. “I feel like I’m having déjà vu. I know you haven’t done the internal examination yet, but you think he was drained of blood, don’t you?”
Oliver nodded. “I don’t know what killed him first, the head injury or the blood loss, but it was probably a close thing. The wounds on his chest are the most upsetting part. Are you sure you want to see them?”
When Felipe nodded, Oliver slowly folded the shroud back further to reveal the ragged wounds beneath.
“Christ almighty,” Felipe whispered, staring down at DeSanto’s body. Grabbing the Kodak from the bench behind him, Felipe took a picture of the wounds. Unlike the first message left on Enoch’s body, which danced and disappeared as they watched it, the message on DeSanto had been burned into his flesh. The only consolation was that he was certainly dead when it was done to him.You’re next. Magic must die.Considering he was dumped at their backdoor, Oliver supposed they should take the threat to mean they were getting close.
“What do you think made these?” Felipe whispered, running a finger over the darkened and indented channels that formed each stroke of the letters. “They look like pokerwork.”
“Pokerwork tools are usually narrow.”
“You’re right. These are finger-sized.”
Oliver didn’t want to think about the implications of that too deeply. “I have one last wound to show you. This one is the most telling, I think. You see how his mouth is open? Look inside.”
A gasp escaped Felipe’s lips as he leaned closer. “They cut out his tongue. Why would they do that? No one else was missing pieces.”
“I don’t know, but whoever did this decided to do so while Tony was already in rigor. They forced his jaw open and cut his tongue with scissors. You can see the marks on—” The words died on Oliver’s lips as he stared at the empty space whereTony’s tongue should have been. Dead men can tell no tales if they don’t have a tongue. “Someone on the committee did this.”
“The Mutual Aid Committee?”
Oliver nodded, his blood running cold. “When I confessed to being a necromancer, I specifically said that I wake people up and ask them what happened to them right before they died. Whoever killed DeSanto didn’t want him telling us who did it.”
“If you woke him up, would he notice the missing tongue?”
“Probably. It depends how long they’ve been dead. The longer the time, the less they notice, but he would be hard to understand. It would be… disturbing for you to hear. If I wake him up, I’m not going to do it in front of you. I’m not—”
“You’re not going to do it.” Oliver raised his gaze at the command in Felipe’s voice. “I won’t let you. You nearly died tethering Mrs. Cutler. I’m not letting you hurt yourself. There are other ways to figure out who did it. I still have the ledgers from the Guttenberg Club and the things I found in DeSanto’s room. Promise me you won’t tether him when I leave.”
“I promise I won’t, but I do need to finish his autopsy. If you want to work in the bedroom, I can let you know when I’m done.”
Regret and sorrow softened Felipe’s features as he stared down at DeSanto’s body. Before Felipe could leave, Oliver caught his hand and pulled him closer. Hugging him tightly, Oliver only let him go when the knot in Felipe’s breast loosened.
“We will figure out who killed him and the others. I promise,” Oliver said when Felipe pulled back.
“I know. I just need one thing from you before I go: the names of everyone who’s on the Mutual Aid Committee.”
***
Felipe realized ten minutes too late that he should have said he would work on the case elsewhere. With DeSanto’s autopsy going on right outside the door, Felipe was trapped. Normally, he would hide away in the basement apartment and work for hours on end, but knowing he couldn’t leave combined with the itch in his healing burns made it impossible to focus. Felipe eyed the window. He had already contemplated climbing onto the sill and shimmying out into the alley, but knowing that was where DeSanto died took the fire out of that plan. Grabbing the stack of dues lists from the Guttenberg Club off the desk, Felipe sat in the center of the rug and arranged them around him along with Oliver’s list of committee members. There were a few people whose names he didn’t know, but it was a start. Felipe flipped through the lists with a groan. Far too many men liked expensive books, but at least he could set aside the more recent lists as the old men at the club said Enoch had gotten in trouble for stealing a journal from a college about seven years ago. Unfortunately, experience showed people weren’t always good at remembering dates, so he focused on the lists from 1887 to 1893.
In the dues list from 1893, he found Percival Appleton, but when he looked further back, he joined only the year before and never as an auxiliary member. Felipe skimmed each list a half a dozen times, searching for each member of the Mutual Aid Committee in turn. He was about to take a break and stretch when he spotted a familiar name scribbled out in the 1889 dues list. Morris Holbrook was listed as an auxiliary member, and his name had been nearly blacked out with the wordEXPELLEDwritten next to it. Felipe double-checked that year’s list against the one from 1890, but no one else had been labeled that way. Members had been labeled asLapsedorLeft, but no one else had been expelled.
