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My mind obsesses over Malone. What he’s doing, what he’s thinking, who he’s with, and if he’s okay with what’s happened.
Is he truly disappointed in my choices to kill, or merely put-out by them?
The second, I can live with; I could even find a challenge in that. But the first would crush me.
My body craves his touch, and my heart bleeds in his absence.
Detective Fox, on the other hand, is nothing more than a handsome stand-in who considers himself pretty special.
“Mary Porter.” Moving through the doorway and crossing to the freezers at the back, I go to the door labeled 11A and break the seal that aids in stopping the decomposition of a dead body. Pulling the drawer out with a gentle tug until the table is fully revealed, I move to 13A and repeat my steps. “Edward Porter. Forty-seven and forty-nine years old, respectively. Married for twenty-five years this summer.”
“Invites had gone out for a big anniversary party.” Fox comes to a stop eight or so feet from where I stand and folds his arms across his broad chest. “The event was to be held at the Bridgeview Plaza. Black-tie event, catered at about a hundred dollars a plate. Live band, floating servers, professional photography. A little over a hundred and fifty invites went out, according to their now-adult daughter.”
“Interesting.” Dragging Edward’s table all the way from his chamber, I stand between the two bodies and pause as the door opens and the timid Doctor Kirk steps through.
“Good, you’re here.” I drop my hands into my pockets and study the second-year M.E. “Come on over and take us through the case, Doctor Kirk.”
“Er…” Startled by my quick instructions, he stumbles forward, passing the taunting Grayson, and hurriedly pumping antiseptic onto his hands. “Uh… okay. Detective Fox.” He nods at the first. Then the second. “Officer Grayson.”
Finally, he looks to the body on my right and begins.
“I’ve discovered, during the course of my examination, two gunshot wounds total, one each.” He clears his throat. “As you can see, Mrs. Porter was shot through the face. Down through her cheekbone and out through her jawbone.”
When Aubree steps forward and offers Kirk a pair of latex gloves, he takes them with hasty movements and not a single word of thanks.
Noted.
Slipping them on, he comes closer to Mary’s other side and works hard to stand tall under the mocking glare of two cops legions larger than him. “Official cause of death was blood loss, followed by asphyxiation.”
Finally, the smug grin on Grayson’s face drops away. “Asphyxiation?”
“She choked on her blood as it filled her airway,” Kirk explains. “I suspect she was rendered unconscious almost immediately. She would have been in shock, weak from blood loss. But her wound wasn’t fatal until the blood stopped in her throat and cut off her air.”
With his gloves in place and his confidence growing with each word spoken, he points down at Mary’s face in a way that implies his finger is a gun. “The angle at which the slug entered and exited indicates the weapon was held higher than her face and pointed downward. Entry here,” he points to the top of her cheek, “exit here,” the opposite side, where her jawbone was once intact but is now nothing more than a gaping hole, blown out the side of her face. “The slug then embedded in the top of her thigh, where it remained until she ended up in my autopsy room.”
Dropping his hands and starting forward, Kirk awkwardly shimmies around Fox and comes up on the other victim’s side. “Edward Porter. Forty-nine years old. Single bullet wound to the temple. Powder burn on his flesh, indicating the gun was held to his skin upon discharge. Entry on the left side here,” he points at the tidy bullet hole on Edward’s temple, “and exit over here.” He leans across the body and points at a wound similar to Mary’s.
The exit is never just a tidy circle, but a massacre the size of a baseball, made up of torn skin and shattered bones. Burned flesh, and gray matter that none of us ever truly enjoy studying.
“Tells me the gun was held up high and pointed down,” he finishes.
Frowning, Detective Fox shapes his fingers like a gun and considers for a moment. “Are you telling me, not only did Eddie raise his arm like,” he lifts his hand and points it toward Grayson in such a way as to raise his elbow and angle his finger-gun downward, “this—which is not at all natural, especially considering the Porters weresittingin a car,andMary, who stands at five-eleven, has a torso inches longer than the average woman—but then he shot himself at the same angle?”
Stepping toward the tables without warning, he snags the sleeve of my coat and tugs me in so fast, shock washes over my brain and renders me useless.
Turning his back to the wall of freezers, he twists us to face our audience, wraps his arm across my chest, and pulls me in until my ass practically sits against his groin and my back rests against his chest.
Raising his finger-gun, he points it down at my temple and sets my temper alight. “This angle is not natural, guys.”
“Uh, excuse me?” Finally collecting my wits, I duck out from beneath his arm and toss it away with enough force to make his body jerk and his hand slap the frame of the table. “You do not touch me, Detective Fox!”
I take a half-dozen steps toward a stunned Aubree, only to turn back to glare at him. “The fact I have to say so to a grown man, to acop, is concerning.”
“I was only showing—”
The wide glass doors open with a gasp, releasing the seal on what is a giant refrigerator. Then Detective Malone steps in first, with eyes that are searching, curious, but when they lock on to mine, change in an instant, from enquiring to murderous.
He takes in Fox’s guilty expression, then starts forward.
