from where she was sitting right now.
That day he was yelling, waving a sign and pointing a camera like a weapon:
DOWN WITH RACIAL PROFILING. POLICE PIGS ARE WHITE SURPEMACISTS.
He’d been cuffed and hustled out, and as they’d closed the door and she’d resumed her lecture, she’d heard him screaming, “Sow it, you’ll reap it!”
From Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech, taken from the Bible. Grace was just Catholic enough to have felt immediately guilty.
She’d never seen him again. Palm Springs police had taken her statement, but they hadn’t needed her to testify: He’d pled guilty and spent three days in jail for disturbing the peace. A month ago. And now he was dead.
She turned back to the file and studied the crime scene photos. Bartholomew had been reduced to looking like a charred piece of meat, the arrow still embedded in his chest.
She’d seen plenty of crime scene photos. She could get through these.
She looked up as the door opened and Salzer came in with a bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
He nodded and sat. Grace turned the page and read the report.
“Tracking?” She twisted the top and took a gulp of water.
Salzer nodded. “The way they think it went down, Bartholomew was driving, and he was either surprised by the perp there, or they rode out together. My guess? The UNSUB was in the car, directing him. Bartholomew parked badly and left his door open when he got out. By the time he entered the field, he was in a major hurry to escape whoever was after him. The police found a scrap of his tweed jacket on the barbwire, where he tore it. He stumbled, at some point, and when he got up, his stride was uneven, shorter. He’d injured himself, apparently, when he fell.”
She took another drink. “How about footprints, did they get anything they can use?”
Salzer shrugged. “It’s not in the coroner’s file if they did. The official cause of death was massive blood loss due to a direct arrow hit to the heart, and thermal injuries.”
“Thermal injuries?” She took a long swallow of water and wiped her lip.
“Yeah, Grace, he was still alive when his body was set on fire.” He got up. “Ready to take a look?”
Chapter 7
The short answer to that would be no, she thought.
A wave of nausea washed over her and she felt her skin grow clammy. Salzer stared at her sharply.
“You okay?”
“I think it’s the heat.”
“It’s cooler in there.”
She nodded and followed him in. The autopsy viewing suite was a windowless room, filled with two empty tables, stainless steel sinks, metal filing cabinets equipped with scales for weighing and measuring the cost of death.
The body lay under a thick white plastic sheet on a metal table that was raised on the edges to catch fluids. Salzer hesitated briefly, as if to issue a warning, but Grace knew no warning from him could soften the images she was about to see. There had been fire in Guatemala. And death.
She nodded and Salzer slipped the sheet free. The odor of burned flesh permeated the room. “I’ll be right back.”
She went into the hall and leaned against the wall. Gradually the walls stopped moving. She went back inside and closed the door behind her.
He offered a box of gloves and she took a set and put them on, as if stepping into the hall was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe in that room it was.
The body lay on its back, claws pointed toward the ceiling, blackened arms frozen over its head as if trying to protect the face from the accelerant that was about to be dumped onto its dying body, but the face was curiously intact. The hair had been burned off, along with the eyebrows and ears, but in the shape of the brow and the slope of what was left of the nose, the face was still recognizably human.
Especially in the shape of the mouth, open in a frozen scream. The scalp had been cut open in a coronal incision from ear to ear and closed with white stitches. White thick stitches also closed the Y chest incision. The
That day he was yelling, waving a sign and pointing a camera like a weapon:
DOWN WITH RACIAL PROFILING. POLICE PIGS ARE WHITE SURPEMACISTS.
He’d been cuffed and hustled out, and as they’d closed the door and she’d resumed her lecture, she’d heard him screaming, “Sow it, you’ll reap it!”
From Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech, taken from the Bible. Grace was just Catholic enough to have felt immediately guilty.
She’d never seen him again. Palm Springs police had taken her statement, but they hadn’t needed her to testify: He’d pled guilty and spent three days in jail for disturbing the peace. A month ago. And now he was dead.
She turned back to the file and studied the crime scene photos. Bartholomew had been reduced to looking like a charred piece of meat, the arrow still embedded in his chest.
She’d seen plenty of crime scene photos. She could get through these.
She looked up as the door opened and Salzer came in with a bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
He nodded and sat. Grace turned the page and read the report.
“Tracking?” She twisted the top and took a gulp of water.
Salzer nodded. “The way they think it went down, Bartholomew was driving, and he was either surprised by the perp there, or they rode out together. My guess? The UNSUB was in the car, directing him. Bartholomew parked badly and left his door open when he got out. By the time he entered the field, he was in a major hurry to escape whoever was after him. The police found a scrap of his tweed jacket on the barbwire, where he tore it. He stumbled, at some point, and when he got up, his stride was uneven, shorter. He’d injured himself, apparently, when he fell.”
She took another drink. “How about footprints, did they get anything they can use?”
Salzer shrugged. “It’s not in the coroner’s file if they did. The official cause of death was massive blood loss due to a direct arrow hit to the heart, and thermal injuries.”
“Thermal injuries?” She took a long swallow of water and wiped her lip.
“Yeah, Grace, he was still alive when his body was set on fire.” He got up. “Ready to take a look?”
Chapter 7
The short answer to that would be no, she thought.
A wave of nausea washed over her and she felt her skin grow clammy. Salzer stared at her sharply.
“You okay?”
“I think it’s the heat.”
“It’s cooler in there.”
She nodded and followed him in. The autopsy viewing suite was a windowless room, filled with two empty tables, stainless steel sinks, metal filing cabinets equipped with scales for weighing and measuring the cost of death.
The body lay under a thick white plastic sheet on a metal table that was raised on the edges to catch fluids. Salzer hesitated briefly, as if to issue a warning, but Grace knew no warning from him could soften the images she was about to see. There had been fire in Guatemala. And death.
She nodded and Salzer slipped the sheet free. The odor of burned flesh permeated the room. “I’ll be right back.”
She went into the hall and leaned against the wall. Gradually the walls stopped moving. She went back inside and closed the door behind her.
He offered a box of gloves and she took a set and put them on, as if stepping into the hall was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe in that room it was.
The body lay on its back, claws pointed toward the ceiling, blackened arms frozen over its head as if trying to protect the face from the accelerant that was about to be dumped onto its dying body, but the face was curiously intact. The hair had been burned off, along with the eyebrows and ears, but in the shape of the brow and the slope of what was left of the nose, the face was still recognizably human.
Especially in the shape of the mouth, open in a frozen scream. The scalp had been cut open in a coronal incision from ear to ear and closed with white stitches. White thick stitches also closed the Y chest incision. The
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