Average build, medium complexion, 5’4”, brown eyes.
• Healthy, no known family history of illness.
• Nurse, King’s College alumni.
• Willed that her body be donated to help future medical professionals.
Avery paused at the attached photo and held it up to her companion, finally able to ask what she’d wanted to since first seeing one. “Is this some sort of lithograph?”
Lahiri smiled. It was genuine, kind. “It’s called a photograph. I think it probably came about a little after you went under, to be honest. Maybe a few years—a decade at the most. Not this quality or level of detail, mind you, but…its predecessors. It’s become a rather indispensable tool for investigations.”
Avery turned back to the file, examining the picture of the woman. There were other photos of some bruising, even how they’d found her in the car. The subject matter should have been unpleasant, but the technology that made the photograph possible was far too fascinating to Avery for the content to quite register. Photo—from the Greek—for light, and graph—to write or record. “I’d heard rumors in some of the scientific circles in London about some mad Frenchman.” She couldn’t keep the smile from creeping its way into her expression. “Capturing reality with the power of the sun. Heliography, he’d named it.”
“If only he could see the fruits of his labor now, eh?” Lahiri mused.
She had a brief feeling of camaraderie with the inspector, marveling at how the world had grown in its wonders, but it cheered her.
The coroner noted all bruising acquired in the car crash had been postmortem. Avery ran her tongue along the edge of her top teeth. “She was dead before the crash…” She pursed her lips and flipped further through the report. “Olea europaeaL., dihydrogen monoxide,Salvia verbenaca,Ginkgo bilobaL.,Curcuma longa,Melissa officinalis,Thymus vulgaris, andTriticum aestivum… Well, that explains the smell. Rotting ginkgo seeds.”
“My wife has me take ginkgo biloba. Says it will keep me sharp.” He leaned a little in the doorway. “What’s the rest of them—preferably in a language that hasn’t been dead for centuries?”
Avery shot him a somewhat irritated glance before looking back at the report. She took a slow breath and remembered the patience he’d shown her. “Olive oil, water, wild sage, turmeric, lemon balm, thyme, and…wheat?”
“So someone made some spicy porridge and shoved it in our victim’s brain. Why?”
Avery had her theories, but none worth speaking aloud. Instead, she made a query of her own. “What do you know about the black market for organs, Inspector?”
“Human or fey?”
“Either, I suppose.”
The inspector shrugged a little. “Not much offhand, but I could dig something up for you.”
Avery shook her head. “No, that would draw attention. I have quieter means I can employ, provided they’re still around.”
“You think someone’s selling organs?”
“I know we are missing a brain, and I’m not precisely sure when orhowit went missing. I also know a human brain would be a rare commodity in such a market, and depending on the state of it, it could fetch a rather high price, wouldn’t you say?”
Inspector Lahiri could not argue with this point.
“Gid—Lord Blackthornmentioned there had been no incisions prior to the intern’s autopsy; did we have anyone check for glamours?”
“We weren’t able to see the body until well after any would have dissipated. Besides, most glamours can’t survive even a surface-level injury to the subject—theyopened her head up. Student testimony claims no signs of previous incisions, but they’d really have no way of knowing once the saw started.”
Avery flinched. The mere thought of saw on bone made her teeth hurt, and so she pulled her lips inward to lightly bite on them in an odd self-soothing fidget. “Turn around, Inspector, I’d like to give her as much dignity as possible—even in death.”
“I can wait outside,” Lahiri offered, taking a fluid step past the threshold and allowing the door to close behind him.
Satisfied, Avery pulled back the sheet covering the rest of the body. She studied both the victim and the report in her hand. According to thecoroner, her bruising was consistent with a low-impact car crash, though he noted she had not been wearing her safety belt, hence the lack of the telltale crossbody bruise.
Avery understood she was still new to these more modern technologies, but a healthcare professional blatantly ignoring a safety measure did strike her as odd. Unless, of course, she hadn’t been the one driving. If her death had not in fact been an accident, as was likely given her missing cerebrum, then it was possible her accident could have been staged to prevent suspicion. The killer, in that case, might not have known she’d made plans to donate her body in a manner that would expose them.
And if this theorydidhold any water, then it was possible this was not their first organ harvest—just the first to benoticed.
Avery paused, taking note of what she’d first dismissed as a bruise across the woman’s left breast, just above the heart.
There were letters—words, a tattoo:Rache ist süß.
