“Yes,” Felicity replied.
“Doctor Sanders,” I said, returning the nod. “Sorry we interrupted your lunch.”
“No need for you to apologize,” she replied with a quick smile. “Detective Storm, however, is a different story.” Making a half turn, she peered over the top of her glasses at Ben. “You know, we’re still waiting on the labs. Neither of the postmortems is finished yet, so I don’t know exactly what it is you want from me. I already gave you the preliminary findings.”
“Yeah, I know,” he told her. “I was thinkin’ maybe you could just fill us in on the high points so far to get Row here up ta’ speed, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Which victim would you like to start with?”
“Either one is fine. You pick.”
She shook her head then repositioned her glasses while shuffling a pair of file folders. Flipping open the first one, she turned and started walking toward the far wall. As we followed her across the room she began to recite, “Foster, Emily. Caucasian female, approximately twenty-three years of age. Height one hundred sixty-five centimeters, weight fifty-nine kilograms. As you already know, the apparent mode of death was desanguination. In layman’s terms, she bled to death.”
The doctor stopped at the bank of stainless steel doors and quietly perused the file in silence, lifting a page, then another, with her free hand. After a moment she closed the folder and tucked it under her arm before quickly donning a pair of latex gloves and inspecting the tags on the doors. Finding the one she sought, she reached out and yanked the shiny rectangle open.
Before continuing, Doctor Sanders turned to me with a questioning look. “Since you are here, Mister Gant, I assume you intend to do whatever it is you do by way of…”
As her voice trailed off uncertainly, Ben offered, “Just call it Twilight Zone, Doc.”
“I was thinking more along the line of unconventional forensics,” she replied.
I gave her a nod. “I think that’s pretty much why they asked me here.”
Doctor Sanders was no stranger to my facility. She had witnessed me channeling victims on more than one occasion-in this very autopsy suite, in fact. While she was far more inclined to stick with tangible scientific data as opposed to the supernatural riddles that often came of such episodes, she also wasn’t one to completely dismiss me out of hand.
“Will you need to touch the body?” she asked.
“That’s hard to say,” I shrugged. “But, yes, it could happen.”
She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew another set of gloves. “Then you’d better put these on.”
“I might need skin to skin contact for what I do.”
“Even so, I’m going to have to insist that you put them on.”
Rather than argue the point, I accepted the gloves and complied, stretching the latex over my chilled skin with much less expert dexterity than she had earlier displayed.
We stood to the side in a loose semicircle as Doctor Sanders took hold of the handle that was formed into the end of the metal drawer. Before she could start to pull, however, Felicity spoke up.
“Aye, just a second.” Without offering a single word of explanation, my wife reached into her jacket then withdrew a handful of the salt packets Ben had given her, which she then stuffed into my pocket. Once she was finished with that task, she took my left hand into hers and stripped off the latex glove. “I’ll watch after this one, then,” she told the doctor as she interlaced her fingers with mine and tightly locked her grasp. Then she nodded and said, “Go ahead.”
“Whoa…” Ben interrupted. “Just a sec… That’s just the salt. Don’tcha need to dance around and say a poem or something?”
My wife shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?” he pressed. “Isn’t that what ya’ did last time? I know it’s been a few years but, remember? Didn’t you do that thing where…”
My wife cut him off with her sharp appeal. “Let me worry about the WitchCraft, then. Okay?”
“Jeez, yeah, okay,” he surrendered. “I’m just makin’ sure.”
“And your concern is appreciated,” I told him.
“Aye, it is,” Felicity added, her tone somewhat softer. “But this situation is different. Trust me.”
“Yeah, okay. You’re the Witches,” he said with a shrug. “Go ahead, Doc.”
A few seconds later, the full suspension drawer came outward with a metallic rattle as the doctor held tight and slowly stepped backward. Underscoring the louder noise was the soft ball-bearing hiss of the rollers beneath. The combination of the sharp and dull sounds joined together in a disharmonious clatter that tried its best to glance from the tile walls but was quickly swallowed by the chilled air as if it had never existed.
Emily Foster’s corpse lay naked and prone in the shallow, tray-like drawer before us. Her skin was pallid in a way I had never recalled seeing in the past. The hooked loops of the sutures that stitched her torso shut formed stark dotted lines along the oversized Y incision. Subcutaneous ink outlined a stylized black swan tattoo on her upper arm that stood out like a surreal cartoon against the ashen color of her cold flesh. Dark hair framed her expressionless face, supplying yet another harsh contrast for the overall comparison.
Corpses were always pale. I’d seen more than my share of them, so I knew that. Still, there was something peculiar about Emily Foster’s ghostly complexion. After a long moment of staring, it dawned on me that she was missing the normal markings of lividity I had grown accustomed to seeing on dead bodies-the dark postmortem “stains” left where blood would begin to pool in response to gravity soon after the heart stopped beating. Of course, since she was all but devoid of blood, it only stood to reason they wouldn’t be prevalent.
“You okay, Row?” Ben asked.
“Yeah…” I replied. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Felicity gripped my hand tighter, and I gave her a quick glance. Whether or not I succeeded in reassuring her I couldn’t really tell.
“Okay, Doc. Give us the rundown,” Ben instructed.
Doctor Sanders stepped around to the far side of the drawer then drew her index finger along an impression in the dead woman’s ultra-pale flesh. “As you can see there are obvious ligature marks around her ankles.” The medical examiner traced her finger farther down the top of the foot, continuing her recitation. “They bear across the lower ankle and upper foot at an inward slant, continuing into the arch. The depth and angle of the indentations would seem to indicate significant additional stress being applied to whatever was used as a binding. There are also both antemortem and postmortem abrasions as you would expect.”
An eerie sort of calm had settled over me immediately after the body had been rolled into view. While I still had the makings of a headache taking random shots at the back of my skull, they were nowhere near the intensity to which I had become used to coping with at times like this. Over the years, excruciating pain and deafening screams had become the norms associated with my curse, especially whenever in close proximity to a victim. But, for some reason, such was not the case today.
I certainly didn’t want for either of those plagues to befall me again. However, the fact that they were strangely AWOL had me more than just a bit unsettled. I actually began to wonder if I had finally been granted my wish to be rid of this bane. But, if that was the case, even I had to admit the universe had certainly picked an inopportune time to smile upon me.
Doctor Sanders continued, moving up along the body as she spoke. “Examination showed no evidence of vaginal or anal tearing, and the rape kit came back negative. In fact there was no evidence whatsoever of sexual activity either consensual or non-consensual.”
“That’s because this wasn’t about sex,” I blurted.
“You gettin’ somethin’?” Ben asked, perking up at my sudden pronouncement.
“I’m not really sure.”
“Whaddaya mean you’re not sure? Either ya’ are or ya’ aren’t.”
“You know better than that,” I explained. “Things don’t seem to be happening for me like they usually do, but I just know this wasn’t about sex.”
“Do ya’ know, like hinky hocus-pocus know, or are ya’ just speculatin’?”
“All I can say is that my gut feeling is the killer had no sexual interest in the victims.”
“Well, for the record the Feebs disagree with ya’ on that.” Ben pulled out his small notebook and thumbed
