Chapter Twenty-One

After the interview with Goldie and Cameron, Raven made her way to the autopsy suite. She entered the door code and walked in to find Dr. Rita Sandbourne waiting for her to start the autopsy on Clyde Darling. Rita was there with a morgue assistant, a slender boy with horn-rimmed glasses who she introduced as LQ Buckner. Both he and Rita were wearing light blue scrubs in preparation for the autopsy.

Rita hugged her so tight that Raven felt as if her bones would break. When she finally let go, she held Raven at arm’s length and gave her a good look. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’ve been back for a while,” Raven said. “Just never thought I’d be back here.”

“Sorry, but you’re needed, sweetie,” Rita said, gesturing to the body of Clyde Darling.

The body lay on a gurney wrapped in a white sheet knotted closed at both ends. The gurney was parked next to Rita’s antique porcelain autopsy table, the one she used for special cases. Rita wasn’t normally sentimental, and often irreverent, but she did have this one quirk that she seldom spoke of, and that was to be extra careful and respectful to those who left this world in a way she thought both painful and terrifying. They got the porcelain autopsy table.

“Let’s get to it,” Rita said. “I think I have a set of scrubs for you, Raven.”

They left the autopsy suite and went into a small dressing room with several lockers. Raven shrugged out of her jacket and jeans, donned the scrubs, a disposable gown, and a hair bonnet along with a set of plastic sleeves. She ended her preparation by pulling on a set of latex gloves. It wasn’t like she was going to touch anything, but Rita liked to be thorough. Didn’t want cop hairs ending up on her dead bodies.

“You haven’t been around, Rita,” Raven said as Rita adjusted a heavy plastic apron over her slim form before pulling on a pair of knee-high rubber boots for when the bodily fluids started to flow. Raven didn’t plan to stick around for that part. She would hold on to her own boots, thank you very much.

“I was trying to give you and tall, dark and handsome some space,” Rita said while looping the straps of her mask behind her ears. “Both you and Billy Ray went through a lot last year. I didn’t want my face taking you back to somewhere neither one of you wanted to go.”

“It would have been great to see you.”

She felt pressured to lie because she and Rita had been close friends before Lovelle entered the picture. But Rita was right. Her face at Chastain’s would have burst the illusion of Raven’s new life like a soap bubble.

“Sure,” Rita said. “That’s why instead of waiting for me at the Toulouse scene, you bullied April into letting you take a peek under that blanket.”

Raven kept her mouth shut.

Rita waited a moment or two then said, “Never mind. April’s good people. I won’t say anything, but please don’t do it again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Raven said. “After this, there’ll never be another chance to.”

“So, you plan to leave us high and dry once you get what you want?” Rita asked.

“I’m out when I find Noe,” Raven said, a stubborn note in her voice.

“Selfish much?” Rita replied, only half joking.

“You don’t need me. You’ve got Breaker.”

Rita looked at her as if she had just lost her mind. “Do you see him anywhere around here? Bodies showing up all over the place and Mr. High Fashion hasn’t seen one autopsy. Says he can get what he needs from the reports.”

And that’s exactly what worried Raven. Breaker wasn’t for homicide. Some people were born to it, but not him. He may have been a good cop in major crimes, but Raven sensed that he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. He would never stand for watching the ME crack open the chest of a child.

LQ was adjusting the lens on a Nikon camera when they returned to the autopsy suite.

“You didn’t get pictures before the X-rays?” Raven asked.

“Yes, I did, but I just want to practice. I’m interning with Dr. Sandbourne.”

“So, when you grow up you want to be just like Rita?”

He gave her a withering look. “I’m twenty-six.”

“Hey,” Rita said. “Don’t get him riled. We need him. Come on, focus, LQ.”

She walked over to him and together they grabbed the sheet and counted to three before lifting the body onto the autopsy table. They untied the sheet, going slow, rolling the body until it was free. Clyde was brown, lean and strong-looking except for the gaping wound at his throat.

“This one’s different,” Rita said.

“How so?” Raven asked.

“Not washed,” Rita said. “Not even attempted. See all the blood?”

How could she not? His face looked like he had bathed in blood. Raven could not only see it, she could smell it. She had heard some describe the smell as iron, or steel. Maybe there was a scientific explanation for that. And sure, she smelled that, too. But the smell of blood reminded her of graves, gardens going to seed. She didn’t smell iron, but decay, death and rot. For her, the scent of blood called to death like nothing else. Raven stepped closer to the gurney.

“Usually the Sleeping Boy victims come to me as clean as a newborn after its first bath. But this boy is different. Blood still on his face, soil on his hands, dirt under his nails. That’s why I had them bagged at the scene.”

“Enough for soil samples?”

“Yes. Before you ask, I also had LQ collect the dirt beneath the nails, the soil, too. Everything’s already at the lab. Don’t count on getting it back too soon. You know how long these things take.”

“What about the kid they found at Memorial? He was dirty,” Raven said.

“With dirt from the scene,” Rita said. “But nothing else. He had been cleaned prior.”

Raven stepped back to let LQ snap pictures of the full length of Clyde’s body.

“Maybe he couldn’t get Clyde clean because he had trouble dealing with him and Noe,” Raven said.

“Let’s hope it was enough for him to screw up and let Noe get away,” Rita answered.

Rita tucked an earbud in her ear from a pair of Bluetooth headphones. She started a recording app on an iPad, said Clyde’s name, age and case number.

“We’re on now, Raven,” she teased. “Watch your mouth.”

“Any idea how long he’d been dead when they found him?” Raven asked.

“The mayor found the body when he was leaving for work, around seven thirty a.m.,” Rita said. “By the fact that rigor was over and there’s no bloat, I’d say maybe a couple of days.”

“So that gives us a window of late Friday night or early Saturday morning?”

“Thereabouts,” Rita said. “Goldie and the chief already been calling me asking about it. But you all know that I can’t pin it down to the minute.”

Rita had a clipboard in her hands and was examining Clyde’s body. There were no bruises, marks, or anything on his torso or arms that indicated a struggle, just the blood spray from the stretched and gaping wound from ear to ear where the veins from Clyde’s neck lay tangled and bulging.

Raven tore her eyes from Clyde’s neck. “What’s that wound on his forehead?”

“No clue,” Rita said. “Maybe a hammer, but I’m not sure. This one looks like it came from one massive strike. A lot of damage.”

“To the skull and the brain?” Raven asked.

“On some of the victims,” Rita said. “Especially the smaller ones. And I’ve noticed that the amount of damage depends on where the wound was.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the wound was right in the middle of the forehead, there was more skull damage. Off to the side, there seemed to be less.”

“Couldn’t that still be a hammer?”

“Maybe,” Rita said. “But it just bugs the shit out of me because sometimes the blow appears so perfectly dead center, like one blow. I’ve already had an X-ray taken of this boy’s head to get a better understanding of skull damage. I won’t know about the brain until I can get it out of his head. Dissection will give me a better look.”

Rita had moved to the head of the table and was massaging Clyde’s scalp, feeling for more wounds. Later, as she slowly waved a UV light over Clyde’s body, she said, “Doesn’t hurt to double-check. Just like the other ones, no semen, though it looks like this poor soul pissed himself.”

Raven’s stomach knotted. She didn’t need to hear that. “Anything else on the body that we could use?” she asked.

“You’ve got the blanket.”

“I’ve already heard that the blankets aren’t unusual. You can buy them anywhere. No foreign fibers or hairs on them in the other cases?”

“Not that I heard, but of course you’re going to want to check the case files.”

“You’ve seen a few of these, now, Rita. Have you any idea how this happened?”

“I have some. I tried to tell Detective Breaker, but he was so squeamish he wouldn’t even hear me out. Told me to stick to my job and he’ll stick to his.”

“I’ve got a strong stomach. Spill it.”

Rita looked over at her and said, “Remember the last time we traded theories?”

“I do,” Raven said, smiling. “Almost got me thrown in jail. Talk to me.”

Rita laughed. “Same old Raven. Fearless.”

“Not fearless,” Raven said. “These murders started without yours truly.”

“Okay, you first,” Rita said. “What are you thinking?”

“I think that whoever killed these boys hit them in the head first to stun them, probably a hammer, but maybe not. Which makes me think why not just cut their throats?”

“How would he get them to sit so still and wait patiently for a knock upside the head?”

“Maybe he tied them up?” Raven said.

“You’re losing your touch, Burns,” Rita said. “No ligature marks around the wrists. And there would have been bruising because they would have struggled like mad, especially with someone walking up on them with a hammer.”

“Surprised them, maybe?”

“Had to be a hell of a surprise to make them sit still for this,” Rita said.

“Then the victims knew the perp, trusted him. Anyway, he stuns them first, slits their throats and bleeds them out?”

“Probably by hanging them upside down. The other victims were completely exsanguinated. Now they had ligature marks around the ankles.”

“Like an animal,” Raven said. “Any idea what he used to cut their throats?”

“How about a big fucking knife?” Rita said with a dry chuckle.

“What happened to watching your mouth?” Raven said.

“I was just kidding, you know that. Besides, some things require the kind of cussing my pipe-smoking granny did.”

She stepped away from Clyde’s body, pulled off her gloves and threw them in a biohazard container. She picked up the iPad and started swiping through photos.

“The neck was pulled back, and the killer cut their throats starting at the left ear, most likely using a curved, flat blade. Something very sharp. Like this.”

She showed Raven an image of a wickedly long knife that curved into an exquisitely sharp tip. It was beneath a heading that said slaughter knife.

“So the killer is slaughtering these boys,” Raven said, confirming her worst fear.

“That’s what I think.”

“But why? Why the stunning? Why not just slit their throats?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to see them suffer,” Rita said.

“Washing them, wrapping them in new blankets. Like he cares about them. But on the other hand, he’s killing them. Some sort of sacrifice?” Raven said.

“To what?”

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “Anger? Revenge?”

“I thought you had to sacrifice to a person, or an entity, not to an emotion.”

“I’m just grasping, Rita. I got nothing.”

“Have a seat, sweetie,” Rita said as she was grabbing a face shield.

“I wasn’t planning on staying.”

Rita turned around, found another face shield and handed it to Raven. “Oh come on,” she said. “I’ve given you your space. Keep me company. Besides, your favorite parts are coming up. I’ll catch you up on the cases for the next couple of hours, and maybe we can swap more theories just like old times.”

Rita pulled on a fresh set of latex gloves. “I’ll never understand these fuckers, which is why I’m glad that you’re back. Do what you do, Raven. Find this bastard before he kills another kid. Find your nephew before he ends up on my table.”