Cash leaned forward with anticipation. “DNA swabs show anything?”
“We swabbed literally everything, as usual. Found a couple of hairs with roots attached. Hair DNA indicated it was elk, beaver, Willy Grooms himself, Margie Brooksfield, and another hit on Samuel Grooms. Found some deer bones in the cabin too. Nothing else.”
“Interesting. Grooms must have been a hunter.”
“Trace tox on what little blood Grooms had left showed some blood alcohol content—but BAC scores after death can be unreliable, as fermentation could have produced a higher BAC score, and the additionof methanol to the circulatory system really screwed that up. Nothing else was found outside of those embalming chemicals. Electrophoresis analysis of spilled liquid in the kitchen showed that it was red wine with elevated levels of sucrose.”
Cash gave him a quizzical look.
“Sweet wine, like what you get at Communion,” Romanski elaborated. “We also analyzed the stomach contents, which showed that Grooms had eaten about two pounds of Communion wafers. But here’s something crazy.” He paused dramatically. “Judging by the progress of digestion, he had been fed wafers and wine for approximately three days before he died.”
“Jesus. That’s a hell of a lot of wafers and booze.”
Romanski nodded. “Like Dr. Huizinga noted, Grooms was killed by the injection of embalming fluids. The embalming messes up everything, but it appears that Grooms’s time of death was about five to six days before we arrived on-site. We managed to find a couple of wafers mostly intact,” Romanski clicked to the next photo. A circular, partially degraded wafer flicked onto the screen. He zoomed in. “See that?”
“It’s Baby Jesus.”
“Exactly. A nice little piece of art stamped into it. The other ones were stamped with lambs and crosses, but this is one that drew my attention.”
Cash leaned in to take a closer look. “The Communion wafers I’ve seen don’t usually look this elaborate. But that,” she added, “was a long time ago.”
“The other night, I did a deep dive to figure out where the Baby Jesus wafers were sourced. Did you know about two-thirds of all Communion wafers come from the Cavanagh Company, a big factory out of Rhode Island? It was the Cavanagh Company that sourced the wafers with the cross and lamb on them that we found inside Grooms’s stomach, which isn’t helpful, since almost all churches buy from them. However, this Baby Jesus wafer wasnotsourced by the Cavanagh Company.” Romanski held a suspenseful silence.
Cash rubbed her eyes. “Okay, get to the point: Who sells them?”
“It’s a convent in the town of Penne, Italy. Convento di Santa Chiara Offredusio—”
“Offreduccio,” Cash said, correcting Romanski’s mangled Italian, “one of the followers of Francis of Assisi. You sure about this?”
“Positive. They are the only ones who use this particular stamp for their wafers.”
“So someone brought them over from Italy.”
“Something like that.”
“Wow. Romanski, this is really good work. We can start looking for people arriving in Colorado with Italian passports, add that to our APB on four hikers decked out in camo.”
Romanski beamed. “No problem, Cash. You know me, I’m a problem-solver. Now for the foot.”
“Oh yeah.”
Romanski clicked and pulled up several pictures of Grooms’s foot. “Pretty gruesome. You’ll hear this from Dr. Huizinga later, but we’re pretty sure a Spanish boot was used to torture Grooms.”
“What the hell is a Spanish boot?”
“It’s a boot made of iron—a torture instrument from the Inquisition—that was placed on a foot and screwed in, which slowly compressed the foot while also driving spikes into his soles. It was only used on one foot—that’s why one of his feet is fucked up and the other is fine.”
“Holy shit,” Cash said.
“The holiest of shits.” Romanski grinned.
Cash rolled her eyes in response.
“Anyways,” Romanski continued, “blood-spatter patterns and pooling in eye sockets tell us that poor old Grooms also had his eyes scooped out antemortem—and after the boot was used on him. His vocal cords were also swollen… which indicates that he was screaming, a lot, during his last hours—or days—alive. His wrists were tied, and he pulled so hard on his bindings that he suffered torn ligaments.”
“That’s awful,” Cash said.
“Yeah, it’s all really macabre. I saved the best for last.… There were superficial lacerations to Grooms’s oral cavity. Dr. Huizinga asked me to look into torture implements based on these marks.” With a flourish of pride, Romanski clicked to the next slide. “A speculum oris—specifically, a Maunder’s screw gag—was used to force Grooms’s mouth open.”
“Oh my God.” The blood drained from Cash’s face as she came to a gruesome realization. “To force-feed him the host and wine.”
“Exactly. While he was dying, they were stuffing him like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
