It was garish.
Horrifying.
And about right for their jobs.
“Cannon Ford Austin lost his head, but luckily, the team found it. I don’t think we’ll be putting the defense attorney back together again.”
Chris stared at him.
That was…unprofessional even for him. Plus, it struck a chord in him that made him want to mourn the man, even though they weren’t on friendly terms.
No one deserved this.
“Tad bit harsh, Doctor?” Chris stated.
Elizabeth prayed that her ME left Miles Lane’s ME alone. Zane always did have an odd sense of humor, and they didn’t need inter-office wars.
“Not really. I once had to go before this shark. He tore me to shreds on a case, questioning my abilities. He was trying to get some criminal off. I figure if you lead a shitty life, you’re going to pay at some time.”
Elizabeth gently placed her hand on Chris’s lower back. His whole body seemed to change.
He let it go.
For her, he’d shut up.
“What else can you tell me?” she asked, patting Chris on the back.
“Well, there were no drugs in his system, he didn’t have any defensive wounds, and he was alive when someone took off his head with an ax.”
Elizabeth was curious.
“How did Bonnie subdue a man that was twice her size to pull that off? Hell! Cannon is twice my size, and I don’t know if I can take off a person’s head with one swing if they were coming at me.”
Zane continued by pointing at his torso. “The killer zapped him prior to the beheading. He was taken down that way, and then his head came off.”
She checked out the marks.
“So a Taser?”
“Yes.”
She wanted to know more. “Still, how was that possible?” she asked, pointing at the severed head.
Chris heard the confusion.
“If need be, I can clarify how it’s possible,” Chris offered. He knew Elizabeth was curious by nature, but she’d need to understand the details if she was going to use them to catch a crazy.
“Yes, please,” she admitted.
Callen was curious too.
Was it possible to decapitate someone with an ax? The person doing the swinging would have to be super strong.
Chris had plenty of cases like this before, so he knew without a shadow of a doubt, he could shed some light on the subject.
“Doctor Legend?” he offered, giving the man the floor first in case he wanted to do the deed.
“It would have to be really sharp.”
Chris shook his head.
“Actually, it wouldn’t have to be sharp. I saw a case like this once before while working with a different agent, Elizabeth.”
He had her attention.
“When the body is lying flat on the floor, there’s resistance to any kind of impact. So, when the killer swings—as long as the person doesn’t move—the floor acts as force pushing up on the victim, as gravity pulls the ax down. That allows the ax to go through the neck with little difficulty. Basically, since the body can’t move away from the oncoming object, it has to go through it. I can give you the formula…”
She stopped him.
Elizabeth could tell this was killing Chris. He was trying not to say anything, but she could see his face. The man was NOT happy, and it had nothing to do with Zane’s earlier comments.
“No, Doc, don’t think about it anymore, okay? I’ll take your word for it. Bonnie had him on his back, and she took off his head. Let’s leave it at that.”
Everyone got it. She was done making Chris think about the gruesome details. Maybe she should have left him in the outer office where he was insulated from this.
“Did she torture him?” she asked, hating that she had to continue in front of Chris.
He hesitated.
“What, Zane?” Callen asked.
“He was sodomized.”
There was that uncomfortable silence in the room. All the men had that look on their faces.
“Okay, so before or after he was dead?” she asked.
For the man’s sake, Callen prayed it was after. He’d been a victim of sexual abuse, and it wasn’t fun.
It still haunted him.
“After he was already dead. There were tears, but the flesh wasn’t pink. There was no rectal bleeding. His heart had stopped, and he’d likely bled out from his missing head.”
“And what did they use?” Callen asked, trying not to think about it.
Zane flipped through his notes. “The object was large.”
“Like an ax handle?” Chris asked, going there. “It would fit, be handy, and right up Bonnie’s alley.”
So much for him not having to think about it. It looked like he was still focused as he stared at the dead man on the table and visualized the horrific acts.
“I found a wood splinter, so I’d say yes. Why use more than the one tool you have with you?”
Elizabeth gave him the look.
Clearly, she wasn’t the only one in the room who needed sensitivity training.
Zane was missing the subtle clues of Chris being pale, the way he kept swallowing, and the way he was staring at the corpse.
“Anything else?”
“No, she didn’t mutilate him in any other way. I had my head tech pull the files on the last Bonnie case, so we could look for anything that might be similar. He kept his dick, there were no burn marks to his feet, and his tongue was intact. If this is her, she’s switched it up.”
Well, wasn’t that freaking dandy? Not only was she moving from a blade to remove the head, but now she was raping the dead.
Great.
Just when she didn’t think it was possible, Bonnie had traveled further down the sicko trail.
What was up with that?
“I wish I could give you more, Elizabeth, but there just wasn’t anything there.”
“And was there any trace?” she asked. “Maybe a fiber, a string, or fuzz? Something that would give us something?”
“There was a ton of trace on him, but so far, my team hasn’t processed it all. If we find something, I can promise that you’ll be the first to hear about it.”
She could live with that.
What choice did she have?
Chris spoke up, “And you swabbed every inch of him and his head?” he asked.
“We swabbed everything. We didn’t find anything out of the normal—as of yet.”
Chris was staring at the severed head and something was bothering him.
“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asked.
There was no reply.
He didn’t look so good and that was saying a lot, considering what he did for a living. She’d seen him at his worst, and he was getting close to that point of no return.
“Chris?”
“What about his nose? Did you check it?” he asked out of the blue.
Zane nodded. “We swabbed him, and we came back with the normal particulates.”
Chris moved closer.
No, this was off.
He could feel it.
After you did autopsies almost every day for twenty years, you had a second sense for certain things, and this was one of those moments.
His gut was warning him.
Elizabeth, long ago, had told him to always listen to his gut. It would never be wrong.
Chris moved even closer to the head.
Zane held out his arm to stop him.
“Doctor, I’ve been told by Gabe that you can’t touch the body,” he stated as Chris was too close to just be getting a glimpse.
Heads would roll if he even came in contact with the victim’s skull.
“We need to run this cleanly so when Bonnie goes to trial, there’s no question that it’s not been tainted.”
Ethan stood in the doorway listening to his wife get the details. His heart broke for the man. This had to be hard. Ethan was going to make it as easy as possible for him.
“I’ll cover for him, Doctor Legend. Chris, what are you thinking?”
“Bonnie likes to play games, right?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth stated. “Why?”
“She left you that list, but what if you didn’t see it?” Chris asked. “What if you missed the message on the refrigerator and it was never found?”
Elizabeth thought about it.
“Then I couldn’t play the game the way she wants me to participate.”
“So what do you think she’d do?” he asked, staring down at his deceased brother-in-law’s face.
Callen knew exactly what that crazy bitch would do. “She’d have a backup plan in place to force Elizabeth into the shit mess. There was no way in hell she’d risk her walking away from this.”
Exactly.
“Yeah, I completely agree, and I think I see what her plan B was,” he admitted. “Doctor Legend missed something.”
“What?” Zane asked. “That’s impossible. There’s no way we could have…”
She cut him off. “Quiet. Let him do his thing. You’ve been an ME a lot less time than he has been, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then learn from this.”
They all moved closer.
“Can I have a pair of gloves?” he asked.
Zane handed them to him. “What do you see that I didn’t?” he asked.
Chris pulled them on.
“Look,” he said, touching a slight bulge on the side of Cannon’s nose. When he pressed on it, there was no give. To show them, he touched the other side. It gave way.
That was…odd.
“Did you check inside his nasal cavity after the swabbing?” he asked. “Where the cartilage meets the bone?”
Zane hadn’t.
“We swabbed, but I didn’t explore, Doctor Leonard. I had no reason to do it. I didn’t even notice that bulge. You have eyes like a hawk.”
Yeah, and two decades of playing in the dead under his belt.
“Give me a pair of forceps.”
Zane looked over at Ethan. “This is touching. I’m not comfortable breaking the rules, Deputy Director.”
Before he could say something, Elizabeth got it. “Give me the forceps,” she stated. There was no way she was letting her best friend dig in his brother-in-law’s head.
Not.
Happening.
It was time for her to take one for the team, and she was more than okay with that.
She pulled on gloves and they made a snapping sound. “I’m ready.”
“Go in at a forty-five degree angle,” Chris said. “Feel anything? You should be hitting it about now.”
She did. “Yes, there’s something there. I can feel it.”
“Try and pull it out, but move slowly or you’ll lose it,” Chris instructed.
She did what he had instructed.
Penelope was there with a circular tray to catch whatever was about to come out of the dead man’s nose.
“What is it?” Ethan asked, as soon as his wife had it free from his nasal cavity.
“It’s a saint in a sinner,” Elizabeth mumbled.
She dropped it onto the glass circle to get a better look. She’d never seen it before.
“I’m not super religious,” Zane offered. “Who is it?” he asked.
Callen didn’t know.
Ethan either.
She had her suspicions, and with the list on the fridge, she might just be right.
Elizabeth pointed at a tech by the one computer. “You! I need you to run a search on the patron saint of lawyers and put it up there.”
He began typing.
An image popped onto the screen.
It matched.
“It’s Saint Ives, ma’am,” the tech offered. “He’s definitely the patron saint of lawyers.”
And that was how Bonnie planned to get her to play. It would have sucked had she missed that jumble of words on the refrigerator. Now she had confirmation of what was coming. It would have wasted time to take that medal to some Catholic church for the information.
“Lawyer, teacher, doctor, friend, enemy, and family,” she said, softly.
Already, she was beginning to process it.
“That was a good catch,” Ethan said. “Excellent work, Doctor Leonard.”
Ethan wasn’t surprised he’d seen it. Chris was a rockstar in the morgue.
“Okay, so my ME is super smart, and I am proud to work with him—even if I had to dig in some dead man’s head.”
Ethan patted Chris on the back.
Zane was appalled.
“I can’t believe I missed that,” he said. “I never miss things like that.”
“Experience wins every day,” Elizabeth stated. She and Chris had been through a shitload of cases together. Honestly, she wasn’t shocked he found it either.
Chris pulled off his unused gloves. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get some air. Thanks.”
Chris headed out.
Fast.
Ethan watched him go.
“Is he okay?” Zane asked. “That’s not like Doctor Leonard at all.”
The answer to that was a resounding no. He was far from okay, and they all knew why.
“He’s staring at a man who resembles his dead wife,” Elizabeth stated. “It has to hurt on so many levels. This was likely soul crushing to him.”
Zane got it.
Now he wished he hadn’t made the earlier comments. He felt the need to rectify that.
“Want me to go talk to him? You know, ME to ME? Maybe I can make him feel better.”
That wasn’t what he needed, and she knew it. In fact, letting the man near him would be detrimental.
Elizabeth pulled off her gloves. “Ethan and Callen, will you go get the two US Marshals ready? I feel like hurting someone.”
They knew what that meant.
Elizabeth was going to go find Chris.
And fix his heart.
Only, she shouldn’t do it alone.
This was a job for the family.
In the men’s room, Chris hit his knees and puked up his guts. It was violent, it was painful, and it did nothing to alleviate the pain in his heart.
Everything purged from him as he couldn’t keep himself from being sick. Today, he’d faced a demon that was going to take him down. While he never had to see Cyra on the morgue table, seeing her brother was more than enough to break him.
In his mind, he saw her.
He pictured the burnt flesh.
Chris saw the ash and charcoal as her bones were broken to rest her flat.
It was all there.
In her brother, he saw his wife’s death, and it sucked.
Badly.
Oh, yeah, and that he was likely there because of him and his job in the FBI too. He was one more victim to Christopher Leonard’s life.
This sucked.
There was the sound of the stall door opening behind him, and he didn’t have to look over. He could feel her hands on his back. Then he heard her whisper in his ear.
“I have you. We’ve got this together.”
Chris continued to be sick.
It drained him.
By the time he was done purging everything in his body, it felt like someone had shoved a straw into him and sucked him dry. It was a horrible feeling.
Physically.
Emotionally.
He was empty.
The last few months had been a battle, and Chris was exhausted from them.
As his best friend helped him up, she brought him to a sink and turned on the cold water.
Chris was flushed.
“I’ve never gotten sick in autopsy. I’d like to keep my record.”
She knew why he was a mess.
She wiped his face with cool paper towels as he braced his hands on the edge of the sink.
“As I was doing that…”
“You saw Cyra.”
He glanced over at her. Of course she knew what was devouring him f
rom the inside out. The woman he’d once cared about as a lover, and who was now his closest family saw through it all.
The tears came.
It was brutal.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” she said, needing to help him through this. They’d come a long way. Neither was going down to Bonnie.
Not on her watch.
Chris slid down the wall and let the emotions come. The entire time, Elizabeth held his hand. When he looked up at her, he was a mess.
“Just when I think I’m done mourning her, I see something and it starts all over again. As much as he hated me, I wanted Bethe to have him in her life. I know what it’s like to be alone in the world, and I didn’t want her to feel that.”
She ran her hand up and down his arm to offer him some comfort.
“You’re not alone now.”
Well, there was that one miracle.
“I’m sorry I broke,” he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “I shouldn’t have…”
“Shut up, Christopher. You’re allowed to feel. Do you know how I know? I just spent over a month crying in bed as I gave up. You’re allowed to mourn. You’re not done with it. That’s all. One day, it’ll stop hurting. I promise.”
He stared into her icy blue eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over Cyra. She was my one shot, even if I wasn’t hers,” he admitted. “She was my one, and now it’s over.”
She got that.
Sometimes a soulmate didn’t feel it back.
She thought about Dakota upstairs. He’d been sure. She hadn’t wanted that life—with him. That had to hurt him on some deep level. She thought about the repercussions.
Crap.
Now she was going to have a hard time kicking his ass around the room.
There went her fun.
“How do I move on?”
“You don’t until you’re ready. When Charlie died, I cried for weeks. When my mother passed, I didn’t cry at all. You feel what you feel. No one will tell you it’s wrong.”
Elizabeth dropped her arm over his shoulder and let him rest his head on her.
“I owe you one,” he said.
“People who love you don’t keep score, Newton,” she admitted. “But since you’re offering…”
He lifted his head in curiosity and stared at her. She never asked for anything.
Ever.
“What?”
“Can you cut this damn cast off my arm? It’s driving me bat shit insane. Free me from this hot pink mess.”
Revenge has Come (An FBI/Romance Thriller Book 19) Page 16
