Lights flicked on.
Tools hung on pegboards.Shelves held cans of gasoline and two-stroke oil.Several lawn mowers—the big ones that commercial landscapers used—were parked near roll-up doors, and the faintest hint of old grass clippings hung in the air.Tean’s breath steamed white in the sudden stillness.
Something—someone—lay on a cart.The figure was covered by a tarp.
Jem made a sound of disbelief.
“It’s not ideal,” Larsen said.“But we’re not exactly equipped for this kind of situation.”
“It’s probably the best option,” Tean said in a low voice to Jem.“They need to keep the body cold, and this place is isolated.”To Larsen, he said, “I assume the doors can all be secured?”
“We’ll keep this locked up until…” But Larsen didn’t seem to know how to finish that, and the sentence died away into nothing.
Tean squeezed Jem’s wrist and moved toward the cart.It had a low platform, so he knelt on the cold concrete.
Footsteps came behind him—Jem, moving closer.“I should do it.”
“Jem, it’s an ID.I can do it.”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.It’s creepy as fuck, and it’s not your responsibility.”
Tean glanced over his shoulder.Jem’s expression was tight.Some of the snow in his eyebrows and beard had started to melt from his body heat, and it glistened under the fluorescents.
“I’ve got it,” Tean said quietly.To Larsen, he said, “I’m a wildlife veterinarian.The training isn’t the same, but I have some relevant experience.”
Larsen nodded.
“Do you have a pair of disposable gloves?”Tean asked.
Larsen started to shake his head.But then he poked around on one of the shelves and, after a minute, produced a pair of nitrile gloves that he handed to Tean.
The tarp rustled as Tean drew it back.
Gerald lay supine on the cart.He was pale, and his eyes were half open.Beneath a heavy coat, he was still dressed in the suit they’d seen him in at dinner, but now blood stained the collar of his white shirt.More blood darkened his jacket.Head wounds bled a lot, so that wasn’t exactly a surprise.And a man Gerald’s age might have been using prescription blood thinners.
“Was there a lot of blood where he fell?”Tean asked.
“Some,” Larsen said.It sounded like a confession when he added, “It was difficult to tell.”He cleared his throat.“Is it him?”
Tean nodded.He checked Gerald’s hands.The fingers were spread, and when Tean touched them, they were stiff.Some of that was rigor.Some of that was the cold.Nothing helpful there in determining the time of death.Ideally, they would get the body temperature from the liver—or, barring that, rectally.But Tean didn’t have the equipment for either.
Scrapes showed on Gerald’s palms, difficult to see against the purple-black of settling blood.That same coloration showed on the undersides of Gerald’s arms—signs that Gerald had lain where he had fallen after he died, that no one had moved his body in that first critical period.The scrapes made sense if Gerald had fallen and tried to catch himself: hands instinctively spreading out.Rough concrete and thin skin would have accounted for the injuries.
Tean took Gerald by the shoulder and started to turn the man onto his side.The body was heavier than he expected, and Tean was used to having lifts and pulleys to help him.
“God damn it,” Jem said under his breath, but he crouched at the end of the cart, gripped Gerald’s leg, and helped Tean roll him.
“What are you doing?”Larsen asked, but it sounded more like professional curiosity than objection.
“I want to examine the injury,” Tean said.
Gerald’s thick gray hair was matted with blood, although Tean noticed that only a few dry flakes had transferred to the cart—probably dislodged by the journey from the site of the fall to the maintenance building.More blood had frozen to the back of his neck in patches like shiny scales.
Tean parted the hair as gently as he could, searching for the laceration.The actual cause of death wouldn’t have been the scalp wound—it would have been the damage to the brain as it rebounded inside the skull, or the swelling and pressure with no outlet that followed.But the lacerationcouldtell Tean where the injury had occurred.Almost universally, people who fell hit their heads on what was called the hat brim line: an imaginary line where the brim of a hat would rest.So, it was a simple matter of following that invisible line—
