“You been beating up the subjects, Angie?”
“That only works premortem,” Anjali replied. “I took these ten hours apart. When you brought him in, he didn't have bruises . . . except for a subtle hemorrhage in the facial area that could have been caused by the fall. But he was lying on that side of his face when found, and the pooling of the blood might have obscured the contusions. When he was brought to the morgue and placed sunny-side up, the blood redistributed.” She removed the X-ray they'd been examining. “When I was doing an FP fellowship, we had a Jane Doe come in with no apparent external trauma, except for a slight hemorrhage in the strap muscles of the neck. By the time the autopsy was over, there were two obvious handprints on her throat.”
“Couldn't he have banged himself up when he fell?”
“I thought you'd say that. Take a look at this.” Anjali slid another X-ray onto the light box.
Bartholemew whistled softly. “That's his face, huh?”
“It was.”
He pointed to a crack along the temple of the skull. “That looks like a fracture.”
“That's where he landed,” Anjali said. “But look closer.” Bartholemew squinted. On the cheekbone and the jaw were smaller, fainter fault lines.
“In the case of a blow and a subsequent fall, the fracture lines caused by the fall are blocked by those caused by the initial blow. An injury to the head caused by a fall is usually found around the level of the brim of a hat. However, a hard punch to the face usually hits below that.”
The fracture at Underhills temple radiated out toward the eye socket and the cheekbone but stopped abruptly at one of these hairline cracks.
“The subject also had extravasation of red blood cells on tissues around his jaw and ribs.”
“Which means what?”
“It's a bruise that didn't get to happen. Meaning there was trauma to that tissue, but before that blood could break down and go black and blue, the subject died.”
“So maybe he was in a fight before he decided to jump,” Bartholemew said, his mind running fast with possibilities.
“You might also be interested in this.” Anjali passed him a microscopic slide with tiny filings on it. “We dug them out of the subject's fingertips.”
“What are they?”
“Splinters consistent with the railing of the bridge. There were some wood slivers caught in the tails of his jacket, too.” Anjali glanced at Bartholemew. “I don't think this kid killed himself by jumping off a bridge,” she said. “I think he was pushed.”
* * *
When Daniel heard sobbing, he immediately assumed it was Trixie. In the days since they'd heard the news about Jason, she would dissolve without any provocationat the dinner table, while brushing her teeth, staring at a commercial on television. She was so firmly entrenched in memory that Daniel didn't know how to pry her loose and bring her back to the real world.
Sometimes he held her. Sometimes he just sat down next to her. He never tried to stop her tears; he didn't think he had that right. He just wanted her to know that he was there if she needed him.
This time, when the crying began, Daniel followed the sound upstairs. But instead of finding Trixie sobbing, he turned into his own bedroom to find his wife sitting on the floor, hugging a knot of clean laundry against her. “Laura?” She turned at the sound of her name, wiping her cheeks. “I'm sorry . . . it's wrong, I know . . . but I keep thinking about him.”
Him. Daniel's heart turned over. How long would it be until he could hear a sentence like that and not feel as if he'd been punched?
“It's just...” She wiped her eyes. “It's just that he was someone's child, too.”
Jason. The immediate relief Daniel felt to know that Laura wasn't crying over the nameless man she'd slept with evaporated as he realized that she was crying, instead, for someone who didn't merit that kind of mercy.
“I've been so lucky, Daniel,” Laura said. “What if Trixie had died last week? What if... what if you'd told me to move out?” Daniel reached out to tuck Laura's hair behind her ear. Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value. Maybe it would be like that for the two of them. “I would never have let you go.”
Laura shuddered, as if his words had sent a shock through her.
“Daniel, I . . .”
“You don't need to cry for us,” he said, squeezing her shoulder, “because we're all going to be fine.” He felt Laura nod against him.
“And you don't have to cry for Jason,” Daniel said. “Because Jason deserves to be dead.”
He hadn't spoken the words aloud, the ones he'd been thinking ever since Laura had taken that phone call days before. But this was exactly the sort of world he drew: one where actions had consequences, where revenge and retribution were the heartbeat of a story. Jason had hurt Trixie; therefore, Jason deserved to be punished.
Laura drew back and stared at him, wide-eyed.
“What?” Daniel said, defiant. “Are you shocked that I would think that?”
She was quiet for a moment. “No,” Laura admitted. “Just that you said it out loud.”
* * *
The minute Bartholemew entered the digital photo of the footprints on the bridge into his software program
