What? she wondered, absently reaching down to scratch Mikado behind his ears.
Maybe nothing.
And yet, it seemed odd. Out of place. And those little details that didn’t fit sometimes were a clue.
Or else she was making a mountain out of a molehill.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
And, she thought, probably not the last.
Chapter 6
Reed drove the short distance to the town of Pooler, where he met with Dr. Maren Ito at the state crime lab. She escorted him into the morgue, with its soaring ceilings, bright lights, and high windows, her steps purposeful.
Petite in stature, her black hair pulled severely away from her face in a tight bun, Dr. Ito wore rimless glasses, a pressed white lab coat, and a no-nonsense demeanor as she displayed Billy Huber’s lifeless body, which was lying supine on a metal gurney.
“The body’s already been scanned,” she said, as Reed viewed the corpse.
Tan lines were visible on Huber’s arms and neck, his thin torso white, ribs visible, graying hair swirled across his chest. His brown eyes were open, a silver growth of beard covering sunken cheeks and a defined jaw. Along with the wounds from his fall off the ladder, there was the usual Y-shaped incision on his torso and the neat slice across the top of his skull that cleaved his thin, stringy hair.
“I’ll work on the preliminary report later today,” Ito said. “It’ll be a while for the blood work to come back, but here’s the rundown: William Huber was dead at least forty-eight hours before his body was discovered. Looks like he fell off the ladder. His internal injuriesand broken pelvis, tibia, and ribs are consistent with a fall, as is his brain bleed. Contusions on his upper arm and shoulder.”
“He landed on an upturned rake,” Reed said. Huber’s shoulder and upper arm had been impaled on the curved tines.
She nodded. “His right wrist is broken. But,” she added, glancing up at Reed, “here’s the interesting thing: It wasn’t the fall that killed him. His jugular was sliced by a sharp instrument of some kind.” She pointed to the obvious cut to his throat. “A knife possibly, something with a very sharp blade, almost like a scalpel.”
“We haven’t found a weapon yet. Still searching.”
“Look for a long, slim blade, something that would cut clean and deep.” She motioned to the back of Billy’s head. “And also, see these injuries?”
“Hard to miss.”
“They’re from where he supposedly fell against the tiller blades, but they’re inconsistent with how he would land naturally.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I think someone deliberately forced his head onto the blade either very soon after, or right before, his throat was sliced. There are bruises along his jawline where someone held him. Hard enough to break the blood vessels under the skin. Like this.” Standing at the head of the table, she placed her gloved hands on either side of the dead man’s face and lifted his head from the table. “See?”
“I do.”
She was nodding, agreeing with herself, the overhead lights reflecting in her black hair. “This was no accident. Someone was very determined to see Billy Huber dead and viciously so.” She set Billy’s head down gently, then stripped off her surgical gloves. “I’m no psychiatrist, but I’d be willing to bet that whoever did it was very, very angry.”
“You think a crime of passion.”
“Just my guess, but either slamming his head against the blade or slicing his throat would have killed him if the fall didn’t.”
“You’re thinking the murderer enjoyed killing him.”
“Again my medical degree isn’t in psychiatry.” She looked up at Reed. “But this”—she gestured to the table—“was literally overkill.” She stepped back from the table. “Seen enough?”
More than, he thought, as he left the modern building with itsglass walls and manicured grounds. He climbed into his Jeep, where the interior was sticky and hot and a yellow jacket, which had somehow found its way inside, was slamming itself against the windshield in a vain attempt to escape. He lowered the windows and waved at it until it flew away.
Putting on his sunglasses, he called his partner, Sol Augustin. She’d drawn the short straw and been temporarily assigned as Reed’s partner.
“Hey,” she answered. “You still in Pooler?”
At five-ten and as athletic as she’d been as a basketball player for the Georgia Bulldogs, Sol could be intimidating to some. She was smart and competitive. And had her secrets. A bit of a mystery. She kept things close to the vest, though there were rumors about her, police gossip that suggested she was hard to get along with and sometimes “out there, if ya know what I mean.” Reed did. The talk was that she had some kind of ESP, something deep inside that would cause her to be intense one second, then seemingly almost lost when the wave of foresight or whatever it was washed over her.
