wire.”
“Hard to swallow when it’s the parent killing his kids.”
Glock is one of the best cops I’ve ever known. He has loads of common sense, good instincts, and enough experience under his belt to know appearances can be deceiving. He’s tough and loyal, sometimes to a fault. Last January, when we were investigating the Slaughterhouse Killer case, he risked his job to support me after I was fired by the town council. Above and beyond the obvious, one of the things I admire most about him is that he will give his honest opinion—even when he knows it’s not what I want to hear.
“Are you telling me you think someone else came in here, shot them, and then made it look as if the father did it?” he asks.
“Sounds like a crazy theory when you put it that way.”
Glock looks down at the body, but I feel the weight of his attention on me. “When I was a stationed in North Carolina, this crazy fucker cut up his kids and put them in a Crock-Pot with sweet potatoes. Later, when the shrink asked the guy why he did it, he told him he loved them too much to let them live.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
He shrugs. “That’s my point. You can’t make sense of something that doesn’t, no matter how hard you try.”
I know he’s right. Crimes like this baffle the mind. They break your heart. They’ll tear you up inside if you let them. One of the old timers I worked with as a rookie once told me it’s the cops who spend too much time trying to figure it out who end up going the way of Amos Plank.
“You don’t want to get inside a mind like that,” Glock says. “Talk about a scary fuckin’ place.”
The slamming of the kitchen door garners my attention. I look over to see the coroner, Dr. Ludwig Coblentz, standing in the kitchen, holding a suitcase-size medical bag. Wearing a cream-colored windbreaker over a flannel pajama top and tan Dockers, he looks like a cross between the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy. But what he lacks in physical presence, he makes up for by being damn good at what he does. He’s one of five doctors in Painters Mill and has been acting coroner for nearly eight years.
“Tell me this isn’t as bad as what it sounded over the phone,” he says.
“It’s probably worse.” I meet him in the kitchen and we shake hands. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”
He sets his medical case on the kitchen table. “How many?”
“Seven. The whole family.”
“Good God.” With the quick hands of a man who is as comfortable with his tools as he is in his own skin, he opens the leather case, works both hands into latex gloves, then slips a plastic, apron-like gown over his jacket and ties it in the back. Bending, he slides his Hush Puppy–clad feet into disposable shoe covers, pulls a small black vinyl case from the medical bag and looks at me over the tops of his glasses. “Show me the way.”
“We’ve got three in here. Two in the yard. Two more in the barn.” Motioning for the doc to follow, I enter the living room.
He heaves a sigh that sounds as old and tired as I feel. “I’ve been coroner for a while now, but I swear to God I’ll never get used to seeing dead kids.”
“The day you get used to that is the day you stop being human,” I respond.
“Or find another line of work,” Glock adds.
The doctor goes to the nearest victim, the teenaged boy, and kneels, setting the case on the floor next to him. “Some additional light would be helpful.”
The work lights we set up earlier dispel much of the darkness, but they’re not bright enough for the kind of work the doctor needs to do. Crossing to him, I shine my Maglite onto the victim.
The doc glances up at me, his eyes huge and troubled behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Have you photographed the bodies?”
“We’ve got everything documented,” Glock says. “You can move them if you need to.”
Gently, the doc sets his hands on the boy’s head and shifts it slightly. From where I stand, I see blood- matted blond hair. The doc’s gloved fingers separate the hair revealing a neat, round hole the size of a pencil eraser a few inches above his nape. “This is the entry wound. This child was shot from behind.”
“Any idea what caliber of bullet was used?” I ask.
“I can guess.” He prods the scalp surrounding the hole. I see the pale flesh giving way beneath his fingers. Blood seeping from the hole, sucking back in when the pressure is released. “Judging from the size of the wound and the extent of skull fracturing, I’d say we’re talking about a small caliber handgun. Close range.”
“Can you be more specific than that, Doc?”
“Twenty-two caliber. Maybe a thirty-two.”
“Nine millimeter?” I ask.
“Maybe. I can’t say for certain yet.” With the same gentleness with which he would handle a newborn baby, he turns the boy’s head. Pink fluid leaks from the boy’s left nostril. “Exit wound might help narrow it down.”
My pulse kicks when I spot the hole in the wood floor. I look at Glock. “Get down in the basement, see if the slug went all the way through. I’ll keep my beam on the hole. If the bullet went clean through, you’ll be able to see the light.”
“You got it.”
I look down to see the doc once again turn the victim’s head. The left side of the boy’s face is purple with lividity. The doc presses two fingers into his cheek. “Livor mortis isn’t fixed.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means he’s been expired at least two hours, but not longer than ten. Livor becomes fixed after ten hours.” Once again he presses two fingers into the purple flesh of his cheek. “When I press here, the skin whitens, then refills. If he had been dead over ten hours, the livored area would remain stained.”
“Can you narrow it down any more than that?”
“Body temp will tell us a lot.” Turning, the doc digs into his tool bag and removes a pair of blunt-tipped shears. With the impersonal efficiency of the professional he is, he cuts away the boy’s trousers and underwear. Seeing the boy’s skinny, white body is unbearably sad. All I can think is that he should be alive. He should be laughing, teasing his younger brother, and annoying his older sisters.
“Kate?”
I jolt at the sound of the doctor’s voice, and I realize he’s handing me the clothes, waiting for me to bag them. Giving myself a mental shake, I go to my crime scene kit in the kitchen, dig out a large paper bag, snap it open. Back in the living room, I cross to the doc and hold open the bag while he drops the trousers inside. I jot the date, time and the name of the victim on the label.
“The body temperature drops between a degree and a degree and a half per hour.” The doctor slides a specially designed high-tech thermometer into the boy’s rectum. “This preliminary body temp will give you a ballpark idea of when he died. Once I get them to the morgue, I’ll get a core reading from the liver, which is more accurate.”
“Is it possible he lingered for a while after he was shot?”
“This child died instantly.”
The timer on the thermometer beeps. He withdraws it and squints through his bifocals at the reading. “Ninety point six.”
Quickly, I do the math. “That puts us between five and a half and eight hours ago.”
“Correct.”
I glance at my watch. “It’s six-thirty A.M. now, so time of death was probably between ten last night and twelve-thirty this morning.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Can I borrow your scissors a sec?” I ask.
“Of course.” He passes them to me.
I reach for the boy’s wrist, cut through the speaker wire, and drop the wire into a second evidence bag. “Quite a bit of bruising at the wrist,” I comment.
The doctor grimaces. “This poor boy struggled.”
“I need to bag his hands so the CSU can check beneath his nails for DNA.” When I glance down at the victim’s hands, I see that the fingers are claw-like and rigid. “He’s in rigor?” I ask.
