“Holy shit.” Noah wanted to say he'd never seen anything like the bodies in front of him now. But he had.
His first year as an agent, he’d come across a case like this. It had been written off as an animal attack. He was putting the pieces together now. He'd known mentally—he’d been told—wolves were everywhere. But he hadn't quite believed they were in Miami Dade. Apparently, he'd been wrong, because that “random animal attack” sure looked a damn lot like what he was seeing in front of him. And he knew this one had been caused by a wolf.
“GJ?” he asked, wondering if she could tell anything else about the slashed corpses of Marks’ people—the ones he’d helped capture and drag back here. Damn, this made his stomach roll.
“This was not accidental,” she replied.
Noah added, “It’s not a full moon,” thinking maybe he was funny.
But GJ turned and narrowed her eyes at him. Apparently, he was not funny.
“No.” The word dripped with scorn, and he wished he could dial back what he’d said. Too late.
He didn’t follow that thread anymore, but he’d just learned for certain that the full moon/werewolf thing was not a thing. Noah switched topics. “How do you know it's not accidental?”
The scorn disappeared and GJ turned fully academic, pulling a small pen from her pocket. Noah quickly realized it wasn't a pen at all, but an extendable pointer, as though she might not always be prepared for a raid or an enemy combatant capture, but she was definitely always prepared for a lecture.
“This here and here.” She moved the tip of the thin baton to motion where she was indicating. “Do you see how this cut is a true cut? The whole thing looks like a shred, but it’s not.”
He nodded. Deep, knife-like gouges covered the body, flaying the flesh open for all to see… and smell.
“Do you see that they maintain even spacing across?” GJ looked up and, when he nodded, she continued. “Often, if the hand comes around in an uncontrolled motion—” she demonstrated with her arm extended, “—the fingers splay out wide. Then, as they rake—as they make the cut—they get closer together. But this—” She moved the tip of the pointer along the line of the cuts, “—indicates this was a controlled slash. It wasn't a fling of a hand. Whoever did it intended to slice.”
Noah started to move away, look around, thinking she was done.
“Also—” the pointer moved, hovering just above the surface of the wounds again.
Yes, he thought. As a forensic scientist, she would not touch anything.
“—here, here, and here. Those are strategic. Look at the cut into this arm.”
The bulk of the limb was hanging by threads of tendon and muscle. The bone was intact, but clearly scored. Noah fought a shudder thinking of how sharp those claws must be to cut that deep, that cleanly. He didn’t let GJ see his concern or his revulsion. He just looked where she’d instructed.
“This one went for the brachial artery. And it definitely hit it.” She motioned him to step back carefully and then turned, now using the pointer to motion along the ground. “You can see the arterial spray.”
He added in what little he knew. “So the heart was still pumping when this slash was made?” It might have been the first cut, he thought.
“This was fatal and intended that way.” GJ didn’t mince words.
Noah nodded, catching on. He ventured again at putting in his own two cents. “The brachial artery is pretty difficult to hit if someone's defending themselves, right?”
She grinned, as though she were proud of her student, despite the fact that he had a handful of years on her. Then again, maybe she was older than she looked. “I was wondering if you'd see that. Whoever did this was someone they knew.”
“Well, one of the soldiers obviously got down here. So why didn’t he—or she—help them escape? Why kill them?”
This time, GJ stepped back, probably removing herself from the blood spatter and forensic evidence. Turning around, she asked, “Where would they go … when they escaped?”
“Any of the tunnels,” he commented, because it seemed obvious to him. “Whoever killed them knew enough to get down here. Well, unless they dropped in through the trap door. But that was guarded by two of our people, who claim no one came through.”
“True.” It seemed he’d hit the end of GJ’s knowledge and she, too, was no longer explaining but looking for answers. She checked the entrances to the tunnels, but the floors had been packed hard through decades of use. Footprints would be difficult to find…
“We’re probably out of luck on tracks,” Noah commented, then forgot he shouldn’t be funny and added, “ unless somebody had managed to step in mud just before leaving the room.”
GJ looked up at him, startled. And they spoke at the same time.
“Or blood.”
Now they pulled out phones, snapping on the flashlights and looking for tiny details.
The light that had been set up in here for GJ’s inspection didn't reach every corner. And Noah looked down one tunnel as carefully as he could while GJ talked him through. Or maybe she was talking to herself.
“I don’t see footprints in the blood spatter. Which is interesting. That’s another thing that makes me think they knew the killer. He or she had enough time to take a very deep cut and step out of the way of the spray before coming back for the open body slash. But if they even stepped a little in it, it should create a track… Damn, I wish I had luminol.”
Even as she lamented her lack of supplies, he saw it. “Holy shit! Here.”
Boot tracks.
Not a full track, only the corner of one edge of a shoe. But it was definitely blood. Or at least, he was almost sure.
GJ came over from where she was inspecting one of the other corners and added her light to the faint impression of tread that Noah had managed to spot. He would have said he was proud of himself, but he kept quiet, letting GJ do the real work.
He watched as she aimed her light forward some set amount and waved it in a nearly perfect arc. It took him a moment to realize she had calculated the distance of the stride and was looking for the next step.
“There!” But instead of illuminating what she’d found, she shined the light directly at her own feet and gingerly stepped around, determined to not ruin the scene. She was preserving even evidence she might not have yet found.
“Unless they're trying to throw us off the scent, whoever it was left this way.”
“Well, one of them,” Noah added, before realizing he should have asked.
GJ shrugged. Even with the blood highlighting a portion of the heel, the rest of the footprint was gone. The floor was simply too hard to make an impression, and there was no dust to leave a negative.
He heard the trap door open over him and watched as Will Little seemed to kneel down, his head nearly coming through the hole. “Find anything?”
“Yes!” GJ hollered back, as she was already a good distance down the tunnel.
“Can I drop down?” Will asked him, and Noah wanted to ask him if he actually could. The old man did not appear spry. But even as the thought passed, Noah watched the white-haired man lithely swing down, hang from his fingertips, and then drop the last few feet. The small grunt as he landed was the only thing that attested to his age or ability.
“What do you have?”
But GJ asked her own question. “Are Christina and Walter still on with Westerfield?”
Will nodded and Noah felt his heart sink. The conversation going on that long couldn't be good. But he didn't have time to dwell as Will pressed them. “Find anything?”
GJ slowly emerged from the tunnel, walking on her tiptoes, still avoiding unknown evidence. As she reached the center of the room, both she and Noah looked to Will, who was giving the bodies a once-over with a weather eye.
She looked to Noah, as if to ask if he'd come to the same conclusion she had.
He hadn't. He was not a forensic scientist. He understood what she’d said, but he hadn’t figured any of that out for himself. Not fully.
“Well, that's bad news, isn’t it?” Will asked.
GJ stopped a few feet away from him.
Noah felt his body freeze at her next words.
“It is. I’m fairly confident it was one of your people who did this.”