My smile fades. “The camera doesn’t belong to them?” I open the door wider and gesture for Keith to enter.
“No. Manes said he’s never seen it.” Keith steps into the kitchen. “Manes has no interest in pursuing any possibility that Craig’s death was anything other than an accident.”
“But if we find the owner of that camera, the footage could show who dumped Marty’s body.” I turn the deadbolt and lock the door. A quick look confirms the front door is still open, and a nice evening breezecirculates the warmer air. Theo’s warnings float through my mind like ghosts.
Despite his assessment of Keith, I don’t feel endangered.
Pressing his lips into a straight line, Keith shakes his head. “He acted as if it was local police business, and I should mind my own.”
“I’m sorry.” I scrunch my nose. “I received the pictures from the county examiner.”
“Of Craig?”
I nod.
Keith’s gaze goes to the wine bottle on the counter. “Did I catch you before you had a chance to pour that out?”
Bashfully, I shake my head. “It’s one thing to view postmortem photos of a stranger. It’s another thing to view them of someone you know—knew. Do you want to see them?”
He stands motionless, staring at my computer. Taking a deep breath, Keith’s stance changes. His broad shoulders pull back, and he straightens his spine. “Yeah, I do.” He moves his focus back to the wine bottle. “I’m not much of a drinker, but maybe I should have a glass too.”
“Just a little to take the edge off. No blacking out.”
“Yeah, I’ve never done that.”
“I don’t recommend.”
With our respective wine glasses, we sit side by side at the kitchen counter, our shoulders touching as I move my laptop between us and lift the screen. It’s gone dark, but I quickly enter my passcode and the screen illuminates.I click the arrow and take us back one frame. “This is the first picture.”
It was the one with Craig’s face obscured. His corpse is laid out on a long metal table.
Keith takes a gulp of air. “Shit.”
“Did you see him? Before the funeral?
He nods. “He was embalmed, but there’s only so much they can do. Serena didn’t want him to be remembered that way. Still, this” —he points to the screen— “this is before. It’s worse.”
I turn toward Keith and lay my hand on his forearm. “If you don’t want to see?—”
“I do, Jill. We’re a team. You look at these pictures through your lens, and I’ll use mine as a detective, not as a brother.” His nostrils flared. “Because even if I didn’t like Craig and thought he was a piece of shit, I would never wish this on him.”
The next picture zeros in on Craig’s torso. Austin mentioned discoloration. A body will begin to bloat in as early as three days. After a week, the shade of the flesh changes from green to red. That red can be extremely dark, appearing almost black. Blood begins to decompose, and the organs accumulate gas.
“A lot of color change,” Keith observes.
“He wasn’t only exposed to the air, but he was also submerged in the water-filled ditch.”
“Yeah, even with an unsure timeline, the water affected his decomposition.”
“You know, it reminds me of the work Liam, my research partner, and I did recently with particulars on drowning victims. For one of our shows, the victim waspurposely submerged, her airway filling with water, not allowing her to breathe. That wouldn’t have been the case with Craig. His submersion came after his death.”
I click on the photo, enlarging it, analyzing the colors of his flesh. The dark, stretched skin is consistent with the presumed timetable of his disappearance. However, I can’t help but also notice the damage his body endured.
“Look at his injuries.”
Questions float through my mind, yet we both remain silent.
Did the injuries cause his death, or did they occur after his death?
