He set his laptop in front of them and showed them the headline.HOSPITAL NURSE ‘SUFFOCATES OWN MOTHER WITH PILLOW’.Marcus chuckled at that.“I like how they put those tiny little quotation marks.That way they can claim they made it clear it was a quote.They weren’t saying she did it, just reporting what others had said.”
Kate scanned the article.According to the blurb, Maricela Santana, thirty-eight, was accused of suffocating her mother Jelena, sixty-three, with a decorative pillow on the couch of their home in Hyde Park.Though she had called to report that her mother wasn’t breathing, investigators grew suspicious when medical examiners placed the time of death at two hours prior to her phone call and noted the body had been moved to a sitting position.Further examination discovered fibers in the elder Santana’s lungs that matched the throw pillow.
“So, this is another justice killing,” Kate said.
“Sure, looks like the killer thought that,” Whitaker agreed.
Kate raised an eyebrow.“You don’t agree?”
He shrugged.“I’d bet my badge Hammond killed Gene Parker, but I wasn’t involved with the Santana case.I read about it in the news, and the media definitely condemned her, but I don’t know for sure myself.”
“Any reason why you’d doubt it?”Marcus asked.
“Well, Jelena was old.I mean, notthatold, but she had been ill for a long time.Lupus, kidney failure, cancer: she was an invalid at the time of her death.My grandfather was on supplemental oxygen for the last nine years of his life, and… I never would have done anything, but I thought sometimes that maybe shutting off his oxygen would be a mercy.”
“To quote a sometimes-funny sitcom my wife likes,” Marcus said, “‘Cool motive.Still murder.’”
“Yeah, I know.That’s why I said I would never do it.But maybe Maricela felt differently.She was a nurse, so maybe she had to see a lot of old people suffer and hear them talk about how they wish they had been allowed to die.Maybe she saw her mother suffering the same fate and didn’t want to let that happen to her.”
“Well, we’re not investigating Jelena Santana’s death,” Marcus said.“We’re investigating Maricela Santana’s death.And now we know for a fact that this killer is going after people who break the sixth commandment.”
Kate’s phone rang.“The medical examiner’s office,” she told them.
She’d called the office on the way to the precinct about the murder weapon and left a voicemail.She answered and put the phone on speaker.
“So, your murder weapon,” the ME said, “was apugio.In both cases, although I can’t officially say so until I file the report on Maricela Santana.”
Kate frowned.“It was a what?”
“Apugio.Or something very much like it.”
“Take pity, doctor, on us poor uneducated souls,” Marcus said, “and tell us what apugiois.”
“It’s a Roman dagger.It was carried as a sidearm by Roman shoulders and supplemented thegladius.It was notable for being much shorter than a gladius—blade about six or seven inches long—but just as wide, over two inches in most examples, and sometimes as wide as three inches at the base.Like the gladius, it was a thrusting weapon and would be used… Well, pretty much exactly like the killer used it, for short, swift thrusts to the heart or other vital organs.”
“Could it be a reference to Jesus?”Whitaker asked.“He was stabbed in the side, right?”
“Yes, but with a spear,” Kate said, “and he was also nailed through his hands and feet.Some of the commandment killings have featured allusions to the stigmata, but not this one.”
“I might have an answer for why this weapon was chosen,” the ME said.
“Go ahead.”
“Because it’s very good at stabbing.”
Kate lifted an eyebrow.“Yeah, knives tend to be good at that.”
“Some knives,” the ME said.“Others aren’t very good.Kitchen knives, for example, aren’t very good at stabbing.They’re excellent at slicing, shitty at thrusting.When we get bodies that died from kitchen knives, the wounds are always ragged, like they were torn open.The killers are usually caught because they slice the shit out of their hands when they use that weapon to stab.”
Kate recalled Rosalyn Pierce with her bloody hands, her husband Donald with his baker’s dozen of ragged wounds.“So, this weapon does the job better.Cleanly.”
“It does.It’s a perfect choice if you’re a smaller, weaker person who wants to quickly dispatch a larger, stronger person.”
Now that was something.“Are you saying our killer was smaller and weaker than the victims?”
“Yes.The upward angle of the thrust was intentional, to pierce the heart, but in order to get it right, the killer would either have had to drop to their knees or be shorter than five-foot-two.”
“And weaker?”
