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“The lashings would have come next?” Jack asked. “You said something metal was tied to the end of the whip.”
“Definitely metal. I pulled some rust and small slivers from inside the wounds for analysis. I don’t know for sure it was a whip though. Could have been a belt. But from the length of the cuts across his back I’d say the weapon was a DIY project. Where the metal dug into the skin and sliced was probably six to eight inches long. Rough-edged and rusty. Your guess is as good as mine on what it could be.”
Jackhmmedunder his breath and said, “Give me a place to start looking. Where was he killed? Not at the place where we found his body.”
“By the rate of decomp and the greenish tinge to the body, I can tell you he’s been dead around two days. It’s Friday morning so that’s going to put his death early Wednesday morning.”
“This type of torture would’ve taken time. The planning of it. The tools. But they wouldn’t want to hold him for too long. So maybe he disappeared Monday or early morning on Tuesday.”
I picked up John Doe’s arm and turned it over. “You can see by the bruising around the wrists and the raw scrapes that they cuffed his wrists and then tied them above his head, most likely when they whipped him. The broken hands didn’t work with the cuffs though. His hands would’ve slid right through and he’d have dropped to the ground before they could finish the lashes.”
“Christ, people never cease to amaze me.” Jack ran his hand over the top of his head. “He was relatively clean when we brought him in. If he’d been killed outdoors there would have been a lot more debris and dirt covering his body. Especially if he’d taken a fall to the ground.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I found tree bark along with the rust and slivers of metal in his back, and I found larvae in the open wounds giving me a decomp time consistent with a body who’d spent a few hours outside, but if he’d fallen to the ground after his hands slipped through the restraints, there’d be dirt and other debris embedded in the skin. He wasn’t killed outdoors in my opinion. But they kept him upright somewhere, similar to how we found him.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He’s got ligature marks around the neck, but not deep enough to cause strangulation. The splinters I found in the buttocks and backs of the legs are different than the tree bark embedded in the skin. I can tell you he died standing or in a vertical position, tied to a rough wooden beam of some kind with a natural fiber rope around the neck, torso and thighs. All of his remaining blood is pooled at his feet and lower legs, so he would’ve been standing when they removed the genitals and let him bleed out.”
“The location of death would have to be somewhere in the county,” Jack said. “Far enough from the drop site but not too far away. It’s never good to piss in your own pool. There’s no reason to leave him where they did otherwise. So we’re looking for a place large enough to hold several men and various tools for torture. They’d need privacy and it would need to be relatively soundproofed. It also needs to be a place with exposed wooden support beams. Piece of cake.”
“We’ve got those buildings in the warehouse district,” I said. “Some of them go vacant from time to time. And we’ve got barns.”
“Which would be on private property,” he said, looking up at me with serious eyes. “What I want to know is how they got him. Like you said, he’s a big guy.”
“I didn’t find an initial blow that might have rendered him unconscious. There’s nothing to indicate how he was incapacitated. There’s no defense wounds that I can see, and his body is too battered to see any puncture marks from a syringe, even under the light. But that’s how I think they did it. I’m willing to bet I’ll find something in the tox screen.”
“Or maybe he went willingly with his attackers,” Jack said.
“It’s a possibility. If he is Reverend Oglesby then all they’d have to do is tell him someone was in trouble and he’d go with them.”
“What about the brand?” Jack asked, putting the fingerprint card inside an envelope and sealing it up.
“The brand is the only wound on the body that occurred post-mortem,” I said. “In fact, by the lack of blood and the consistency of the skin tissue around the burns, I’d say it was inflicted a good while after death. Like it was an afterthought, or something they’d forgotten to do.”
“So it could have happened after they tied him to the tree for us to find.”
“I’d say that’s likely. Let me get an inking of it for you to take with you. It’s an unusual symbol.”
I used a warm wax mold to take an impression of the brand, and peeled it back gently. I set it aside on wax paper, and once it dried we could run multiple copies to pass out to Jack’s other officers.
“I’ve seen enough animals branded in my life to know they used a branding iron for this. They’d have to get it specially made. I should be able to run down some leads on that.”
Jack’s phone beeped in a series of shrill tones that made me jump, and he pretended not to notice my skittishness as he answered.
“Sheriff Lawson,” he said.
I blocked out what he was saying and studied the wax impression. It was a shield with what looked like a sword on the inside, and on top of the sword hilt rested a five-point crown. It wasn’t a symbol I recognized, but it reminded me briefly of something that Richard the Lionheart might have worn during the Crusades. Jack’s back was turned, so he didn’t see how my hand shook when I reached out to trace the outline.
I took a step back and flexed my hands into fists before walking over to the big stainless steel sink in the corner. I scrubbed with antibacterial soap until I was red and pruny. John Doe was going to have to be put on ice for a few hours. If I didn’t get some rest I was likely to cut off my thumb with my scalpel. I could catch twenty minutes of sleep, sitting in my chair with the lights on, and that would be enough to get me through the rest of the day.
I was just pushing the body back in the refrigeration unit when I heard Jack say, “That was Officer Cheek again. They found tire tracks at the back of Reverend Oglesby’s house and a couple of drops of what looks like blood. I think we need to go pay a visit to Reverend Thomas and get a better idea of timeline. It looks like we have a dead preacher on our hands.”
Chapter Six
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was on Queen Mary Avenue, only a few miles from the funeral home. I rode in the front seat of Jack’s cruiser and fiddled with the heater. My coat was bundled around me and my scarf was wound up over my chin and mouth. I could never quite get warm, but Jack sat beside me in only his flannel shirt, so I figured it must just be me.
“When did Reverend Oglesby join the church?” I asked Jack.
