Today's Reading
"Seven years ago," Cassie said, "Ross Tignon was the primary suspect in three murders in Florida. Then a fire broke out in his home."
An image formed in my head. Ross Tignon's wife, Beverly, being pulled from the blaze, her face soot-covered and her curly blond hair singed a charcoal color. But her husband did not appear to have such good luck. I remember examining the stretcher that ferried Ross Tignon's burned body out to the coroner's van.
"I'm not following," Dr. Ward said. "Your suspect—he was in that fire?"
I pictured the stretcher, Tignon's body atop it. "There is a pose the human body takes when it has been scorched," I said to Ward. "The muscles constrict, hands drawn close like a boxer about to throw a punch. 'Pugilistic' is the word coroners use. But that expression is unnecessarily dramatic. The posture is simply based on the constriction of muscles as the body is burned at temperatures over two hundred degrees."
As I spoke, creases formed along Ward's forehead. First confusion. Then disgust.
"You thought your man Tignon was dead?" the doctor said.
Which brought an immediate question to mind. If Ross Tignon had been killed yesterday here in Texas, whose body had we found seven years ago in the Florida fire?
Cassie took out her iPad. "You interview the neighbors?" she asked Hollings.
"A real estate agent owns the place over there," he said, pointing in the direction of the cul-de-sac. "He said the victim moved in two years ago. Didn't call himself Ross Tignon at all. He was Bob Breckinridge to the neighbors."
Tignon had set up a false identity. Bought property with it. Lived here in hiding.
A second question arose. Why kill a man who was already presumed dead?
"Any sign of a blond woman?" I asked. "Late sixties? Tignon's wife?"
Hollings shook his head. "No, this guy lived alone."
I glanced down. The victim's dress shirt was unbuttoned and spread open, revealing the source of the blood. A cavity had been carved be tween his xiphoid process and his waist.
My eyes moved up to Tignon's chest.
Something was marked there. Carved into his skin six inches above the area where he was cut open. But when Dr. Ward had flipped the body, blood had smeared across Tignon's torso.
"The deputy took pictures," Ward said, following my gaze. "From before I laid him back down. We figured that's why you're here."
We were here because Cassie had received a text from our boss, Frank Roberts, at 5:03 a.m.
I've got you and Gardner on the 7:30 from Jacksonville to Dallas.
But Frank had only received word about Tignon's fingerprints popping up on a body in Texas. Nothing more. This is why Cassie had been handicapping those odds on the drive here. She was estimating the chance of two different men with the same prints.
But this wasn't that. This was the same man. My suspect from 2013.
I walked toward the door. Deputy Hollings had moved only two feet inside, as if keeping his distance from that oval of blood would ward off something evil.
Death has a smell, I thought.
It is more than the acrid odor of rotten eggs. Or the stink of blood and urine as they leave areas in the body designed to hold blood and urine in place. This smell is something invisible, something that comes from those who look on. From coroners, lawyers, and cops. From the imaginations of men and women who see bodies like this and entertain thoughts like, "If it could happen to him, it could happen to any of us."
I don't get these thoughts. When I was younger, my mother told me that my mind "just worked differently than others'." That my affect was simply "a bit lower than normal." And that this could be a good thing. It would offer me clarity when others became reactive, scared, or angry.
But there were other effects, too.
Things my mother had not described. Things you had to live through.
Last week in the office, I had been inside a restroom stall when two agents came in to wash their hands. "When he's on a case," the first man said, "it's a wow. I mean, a real wow. But in social situations. . .well, I think we're not supposed to say the r word anymore, right?"
"No, we're not," the second man said. "You mean retard, right?" He laughed. "Whoops, I said it."
When I emerged from the stall and saw the agents' faces, I knew they were speaking of me.
...
