Allison Brennan - Cutting Edge

But Duke wasn’t part of the team. He didn’t feel it in his core, where he still dreamed of a normal life. Perhaps he was flawed, not a true Rogan like his father and his brother. All he knew is he couldn’t do this, couldn’t be part of Kane’s unit .

He looked his brother in the eye. “I’m going back to the States. If you need me, call.”

Kane stared at him. Something crossed his face, but Duke was too emotionally drained to register what Kane silently told him .

A curt nod. “Call J.T. He could use you.”

Duke didn’t know if he would. He started to walk away .

Kane said, “I love you, brother.”

It had taken a few years before Duke realized that Kane respected him, understood his decision, and didn’t think he was weak, no matter what Duke thought of himself. Duke had made peace with what happened, as much as he could-though the face of the dead boy haunted him at times. Times like now.

Duke stared at the Colt in the drawer. His hand shook. He hadn’t fired a gun since that dark morning.

He slammed the drawer shut, the Colt untouched, and left his office.

Nora and Pete arrived at the medical examiner’s office just before noon. She said to Dr. Keith Coffey as he escorted them into the main autopsy room of the small satellite facility, “I appreciate you expediting the autopsy so we could be here.”

In a little over an hour, the Department of Fish and Game would arrive at Butcher-Payne to start searching for the ducks, and Nora wanted to be there. She’d spoken to the director and he was putting together a team and gathering the necessary equipment. She’d also talked to Dr. Thomsen, the veterinarian who spent one morning a week at Butcher-Payne, and he was bringing a prototype microchip reader to hopefully aid in identifying the ducks.

“I started as soon as we prepped the body,” Coffey said. A basic autopsy took about an hour, not including screenings and bloodwork, but a case as volatile and sensitive as this one-with a physically delicate corpse-needed to be handled exceptionally carefully and thoroughly.

She and Pete pulled paper booties over their shoes and masks over their mouths. She pulled on gloves; Pete stood back. She didn’t comment, knowing her partner hated autopsies. She’d told him he could go to headquarters, but he insisted. “You’ll need me at Butcher-Payne when Fish and Game starts searching,” he’d said, and was right. They were going to need every free body to track the ducks.

The smell in the small autopsy room was clinical and unpleasant, but not intolerable. The forced air circulation kept everything cooler than a typical room, aiding the dispersal of any particularly foul odors. Dr. Coffey’s assistant-a young, petite Asian woman-was working on a tray of tissue samples with her back to them.

Coffey had already incised the body. He said to Nora, “Check out the box.”

She walked over to the forensic evidence dryer-essentially a big box with HEPA filters to preserve and protect evidence. It was used primarily to dry clothing prior to storage. The only three things in the box were jeans, male underwear, and a pair of athletic socks. The jeans were stained with something that could be blood, and the underwear and socks definitely looked stained with blood.

“From the vic?”

“Yep,” Coffey said. “I didn’t notice at the crime scene because his body was wet from the fire suppression, but as soon as I pulled off the jeans I realized we were dealing with murder. They tested positive for blood.”

“This looks like a lot of blood.” Only an unusual amount of blood loss could account for this much blood. “Are you sure this is only blood? Not-” She didn’t know what else it could be. “Maybe something from the fire?”

“The jeans are burned, but not substantially, and as you can see I turned them inside out.”

Nora actually hadn’t noticed that until the M.E. mentioned it. The stains had seeped through, and nearly every inch of the jeans above the knees was saturated.

“I tested several samples. Only type A-positive, which matches the vic’s blood type. It’s common, but I suspect most, if not all, the blood is from his body.”

“But no shooting? Stabbing?”

“Nothing that tells me what caused that much blood. Except-”

He hesitated.

“What?”

Coffey spoke carefully. “The injuries are inconsistent with a stabbing-no plunging knife. No internal organ damage. And on the surface, I can’t tell whether the injuries were life-threatening-the fire damage is too extensive to get a good gauge on the depth. However, I can tell you that he was restrained.”

He picked up a rubber-tipped pointer and lightly touched Jonah Payne’s wrists. “You can’t see the damage easily on the surface because his hands were burned, but see here? I peeled away the charred skin and there is damage to the muscles.”

He motioned for Nora to walk around to the other side of the table. “We have to be gentle, but I want you to see his back. I’ve already taken pictures.”

They carefully turned the body onto its side. “There’s some sort of indention,” Nora said. “From the beginning stages of rigor.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why isn’t it purple or black? If he was supine for a few hours, then there should be pooling on his back.” There was a faint purple hue, but it wasn’t the right color.

They eased the body back on the table. “You’re right, there should be. I looked everywhere on this body, there is very little pooling, and what there is, is only on the back-but it’s not visible to the naked eye.”

“Did it evaporate or something? Because of the heat?”

“The fire didn’t last long enough to cause such extensive blood loss, and even if it had, I would have seen a discoloration on the muscles where the body had been during the early to middle stages of rigor. I examined the cuts. They’re shallow-they only look deeper because of skin splitting.”

Pete paled and stepped back. “Skin splitting?”

Coffey nodded. “In the heat of the fire. But I’ve looked at every external inch of this body and I don’t believe any of them are more than an eighth of an inch deep. And that’s stretching it.”

“What are they caused from?” Nora asked.

“That’s almost impossible to tell because of the fire damage. Some sort of knife, thicker than a razor blade, but beyond that I can’t give a more accurate example.”

Nora stared at the body. “There’re at least thirty marks on him.”

“Thirty-eight that I can positively identify. No apparent pattern, except that the majority of them are on the arms. Only six are on the torso.”

Nora asked, “Were you able to determine whether he died in the fire or before?”

“I haven’t looked at the lungs yet.”

Nora let the M.E. do his job, watching him, focusing on the process so she didn’t have to think about the victim and who he had been.

“Hmm,” Coffey said.

“What?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Nora stepped forward, though she didn’t know what she was looking for. The insides of the recently dead were messy and the organs almost indistinguishable to a novice. But when Coffey pulled out a large organ, Nora recognized it as the lungs.

“See the lungs? No internal smoke damage. The throat isn’t burned, at least to the degree that it would be if he were breathing when the room filled with smoke.”

“That makes me feel marginally better,” Nora said. “Then how did he die? These?” She gestured to the knifelike incisions on the torso and arms.

“I honestly don’t know.”

Coffey continued with the autopsy, and Nora refrained from asking too many questions.