Today's Reading
I evaluated the statement. Then walked exactly five feet inside and stopped.
The place had an open floor plan with an island situated in the center of a combined kitchen and living room. A pool of blood spilled out from behind it.
A man was crouched there, a disposable crime scene coverall wrapped around his wide frame. "You two must be the federals," he said. He weighed roughly two hundred and eighty pounds, and his hands went first to his knees and then his hips as he stood.
"Terry Ward."
"Dr. Ward?" Cassie asked, confirming we were speaking to the medical examiner.
"That's what they call me."
The doctor had blinked when Cassie asked the question, and my eyes moved to his medical kit on the kitchen counter. It looked like a cleaned-up tackle box, once used for fishing. Shoved into it was a pair of forceps, bent at an angle, with only one loop, on the grip side.
I took in the wrinkled skin around Ward's knuckles. He was sixty-five or seventy.
"Ashland doesn't have a full-time ME?" I asked.
Ward narrowed his eyes, and Cassie glanced at me.
"Cervical biopsy forceps," I said, motioning at his kit. "I assume you were an obstetrician."
"That's very perceptive," Ward said. "I'm retired. Came here as a favor."
"And we're glad you did," Cassie said. "We always appreciate local cooperation, don't we, Agent Camden?"
I made eye contact with Cassie. "Yes," I said to Ward. "Yes, we do."
I crouched a foot from the dead man, who lay face down on the tile. Without touching the body, I could tell it had achieved rigor by late last evening and was now coming down the other side, the muscles softening in what's called secondary flaccidity.
But Cassie was staring at something else.
The victim's shirt was bunched around his sides, as if unbuttoned in the front. Cassie lifted the edge of it. There were blood drops on his left sleeve that moved up instead of down, defying gravity.
"Did you flip the body?" she asked.
"I had to," Ward replied. "I had to confirm he was dead."
The blood under the man's legs formed a meandering oval that ran under the refrigerator. I studied the dark liquid. The average adult body holds five quarts of blood, and there were at least four on the floor.
"I put him back, though," Ward said. "Exactly as I found him."
"Yes. Thank you," Cassie replied. Her brown eyes connected with mine, and her lips turned up.
I smiled back. Ward had turned the body to inspect the man and then laid him back down, redunking him in his own blood.
I placed one hand on the victim's shoulder and the other on his waist. Pushed him until I had his body up on its side, like a book on a shelf. Stared at a face I knew all too well.
Ross Tignon.
A man I had hunted years ago. I had only stopped hunting him because he turned up dead...years ago.
The screen door clicked, and Hollings took two steps inside. "So you knew the guy?" he asked. "The dead fella's got a history with y'all?"
Statistics filled my head. The three women Ross Tignon had murdered back in March of 2013. The precise depth in centimeters his knife had plunged into their skin.
"'Cause the computer spit out his name when we took his prints," Hollings went on. "Then we saw the confusion with him being listed as dead already."
Confusion was the wrong word.
...
