Cutting Edge: A Novel of Suspense

by Allison Brennan

  Without comment, Kane popped the cartridge from the boy’s weapon and pressed the end into Duke’s hand. It was warm. The pungent scent of gunpowder whiffed into his nostrils.

  “Three rounds missing. Three rounds hit Webs.”

  Kane let Duke’s hand go, turned, and disappeared into the darkness.

  He expected Duke to follow.

  A second later, Duke did.

  He paused next to the body of the boy, but just for a moment. A child sent to be a killer, given no choice in growing to be a man.

  Duke followed Kane, neither speaking. Five minutes after the team rendezvoused they were airborne.

  When they landed outside Mexico City three hours later, Duke told Kane he was going home.

  “I understand,” Kane said.

  Duke turned, certain Kane didn’t understand. Maybe couldn’t.

  “It’s war, Duke,” Kane said.

  Maybe it was Duke who didn’t understand.

  “You could be one of my best.”

  Duke closed his eyes. Men like Kane were necessary to battle evil in the world. He finally realized what his brother had been doing, who he was. Kane was too smart, too focused, too disciplined to not understand the stakes, and casualties like the boy were unavoidable. Kane’s men were too intelligent to blindly follow a leader. They were all in it together.

  But Duke wasn’t part of the team. He didn’t feel it in his core, where he still dreamed of a normal life. Perhaps he was flawed, not a true Rogan like his father and his brother. All he knew is he couldn’t do this, couldn’t be part of Kane’s unit.

  He looked his brother in the eye. “I’m going back to the States. If you need me, call.”

  Kane stared at him. Something crossed his face, but Duke was too emotionally drained to register what Kane silently told him.

  A curt nod. “Call J.T. He could use you.”

  Duke didn’t know if he would. He started to walk away.

  Kane said, “I love you, brother.”

  It had taken a few years before Duke realized that Kane respected him, understood his decision, and didn’t think he was weak, no matter what Duke thought of himself. Duke had made peace with what happened, as much as he could—though the face of the dead boy haunted him at times. Times like now.

  Duke stared at the Colt in the drawer. His hand shook. He hadn’t fired a gun since that dark morning.

  He slammed the drawer shut, the Colt untouched, and left his office.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Nora and Pete arrived at the medical examiner’s office just before noon. She said to Dr. Keith Coffey as he escorted them into the main autopsy room of the small satellite facility, “I appreciate you expediting the autopsy so we could be here.”

  In a little over an hour, the Department of Fish and Game would arrive at Butcher-Payne to start searching for the ducks, and Nora wanted to be there. She’d spoken to the director and he was putting together a team and gathering the necessary equipment. She’d also talked to Dr. Thomsen, the veterinarian who spent one morning a week at Butcher-Payne, and he was bringing a prototype microchip reader to hopefully aid in identifying the ducks.

  “I started as soon as we prepped the body,” Coffey said. A basic autopsy took about an hour, not including screenings and bloodwork, but a case as volatile and sensitive as this one—with a physically delicate corpse—needed to be handled exceptionally carefully and thoroughly.

  She and Pete pulled paper booties over their shoes and masks over their mouths. She pulled on gloves; Pete stood back. She didn’t comment, knowing her partner hated autopsies. She’d told him he could go to headquarters, but he insisted. “You’ll need me at Butcher-Payne when Fish and Game starts searching,” he’d said, and was right. They were going to need every free body to track the ducks.

  The smell in the small autopsy room was clinical and unpleasant, but not intolerable. The forced air circulation kept everything cooler than a typical room, aiding the dispersal of any particularly foul odors. Dr. Coffey’s assistant—a young, petite Asian woman—was working on a tray of tissue samples with her back to them.

  Coffey had already incised the body. He said to Nora, “Check out the box.”

  She walked over to the forensic evidence dryer—essentially a big box with HEPA filters to preserve and protect evidence. It was used primarily to dry clothing prior to storage. The only three things in the box were jeans, male underwear, and a pair of athletic socks. The jeans were stained with something that could be blood, and the underwear and socks definitely looked stained with blood.

  “From the vic?”

  “Yep,” Coffey said. “I didn’t notice at the crime scene because his body was wet from the fire suppression, but as soon as I pulled off the jeans I realized we were dealing with murder. They tested positive for blood.”

  “This looks like a lot of blood.” Only an unusual amount of blood loss could account for this much blood. “Are you sure this is only blood? Not—” She didn’t know what else it could be. “Maybe something from the fire?”

  “The jeans are burned, but not substantially, and as you can see I turned them inside out.”

  Nora actually hadn’t noticed that until the M.E. mentioned it. The stains had seeped through, and nearly every inch of the jeans above the knees was saturated.

  “I tested several samples. Only type A-positive, which matches the vic’s blood type. It’s common, but I suspect most, if not all, the blood is from his body.”

  “But no shooting? Stabbing?”

  “Nothing that tells me what caused that much blood. Except—”

  He hesitated.

  “What?”

  Coffey spoke carefully. “The injuries are inconsistent with a stabbing—no plunging knife. No internal organ damage. And on the surface, I can’t tell whether the injuries were life-threatening—the fire damage is too extensive to get a good gauge on the depth. However, I can tell you that he was restrained.”

  He picked up a rubber-tipped pointer and lightly touched Jonah Payne’s wrists. “You can’t see the damage easily on the surface because his hands were burned, but see here? I peeled away the charred skin and there is damage to the muscles.”

  He motioned for Nora to walk around to the other side of the table. “We have to be gentle, but I want you to see his back. I’ve already taken pictures.”

  They carefully turned the body onto its side. “There’s some sort of indention,” Nora said. “From the beginning stages of rigor.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why isn’t it purple or black? If he was supine for a few hours, then there should be pooling on his back.” There was a faint purple hue, but it wasn’t the right color.

  They eased the body back on the table. “You’re right, there should be. I looked everywhere on this body, there is very little pooling, and what there is, is only on the back—but it’s not visible to the naked eye.”

  “Did it evaporate or something? Because of the heat?”

  “The fire didn’t last long enough to cause such extensive blood loss, and even if it had, I would have seen a discoloration on the muscles where the body had been during the early to middle stages of rigor. I examined the cuts. They’re shallow—they only look deeper because of skin splitting.”

  Pete paled and stepped back. “Skin splitting?”

  Coffey nodded. “In the heat of the fire. But I’ve looked at every external inch of this body and I don’t believe any of them are more than an eighth of an inch deep. And that’s stretching it.”

  “What are they caused from?” Nora asked.

  “That’s almost impossible to tell because of the fire damage. Some sort of knife, thicker than a razor blade, but beyond that I can’t give a more accurate example.”

  Nora stared at the body. “There’re at least thirty marks on him.”

  “Thirty-eight that I can positively identify. No apparent pattern, except that the majority of them are on the arms. Only six are on the torso.”<
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  Nora asked, “Were you able to determine whether he died in the fire or before?”

  “I haven’t looked at the lungs yet.”

  Nora let the M.E. do his job, watching him, focusing on the process so she didn’t have to think about the victim and who he had been.

  “Hmm,” Coffey said.

  “What?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Nora stepped forward, though she didn’t know what she was looking for. The insides of the recently dead were messy and the organs almost indistinguishable to a novice. But when Coffey pulled out a large organ, Nora recognized it as the lungs.

  “See the lungs? No internal smoke damage. The throat isn’t burned, at least to the degree that it would be if he were breathing when the room filled with smoke.”

  “That makes me feel marginally better,” Nora said. “Then how did he die? These?” She gestured to the knifelike incisions on the torso and arms.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Coffey continued with the autopsy, and Nora refrained from asking too many questions.

  “Look at his heart,” Coffey said.

  Nora didn’t know what she was looking at, but looked anyway.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Exactly! There was little to no blood pressure when he died. Usually I get a spurt when I cut out the heart, but only a little trickled out.”

  “You mean there was low blood pressure when he died?”

  “Yes. Considering the amount of blood on the jeans, he very well could have bled to death.”

  “From what evidence? Can you state with certainty he died of exsanguination?”

  He looked irritated. “You have all the evidence I have. Right now I can only tell you how he didn’t die. He didn’t die in the fire, from burns or smoke inhalation. He was dead when the fire started.”

  “But how can someone die from shallow wounds like these?”

  Coffey said, “I don’t know. I’ve ordered his medical records, and I talked to his doctor just before you arrived. He wasn’t a hemophiliac, he wasn’t on any medication—prescription at least—that would hinder his blood’s ability to clot, such as warfarin. I’ve taken blood samples and hope to get tox reports back by tomorrow morning. I rushed them.”

  Nora was stumped. “So you can’t confirm he died of exsanguination?”

  “I’m not putting it in writing—if he did die of a Class Four hemorrhage, then there would be a secondary determination, but I have to run some more tests, check the bloodwork, maybe run some more tissue and blood tests. I’m not closing it yet.”

  “I didn’t see blood evidence at the scene. Would it have been destroyed by the fire?” Nora asked.

  “No—there was no blood at the scene. Your crime-scene folks cut out the carpet after I bagged the body. I didn’t see even a noticeable bloodstain—if any. But you’ll have to ask them.”

  Pete asked, “What about the marks on his back? What does that mean?”

  “Right, that’s the other thing. So his body didn’t leave the usual discoloration, though there was some pooling. But the weight of his body did press into a hard, uneven surface. I also found trace fibers on his back, which I’ve bagged as evidence.”

  Nora said, “I’d like samples for the FBI lab. We can expedite the tests.”

  “Great, because otherwise I’d send it to the state. We have a great lab for most things, but for trace evidence we have a very small department. I’ll have a sample of everything couriered over to your office.”

  “Thank you,” Nora said.

  “Do you think the marks mean Payne wasn’t killed at Butcher-Payne?” Pete asked.

  “They might. Because the fire messed with the rate of decomposition, I can’t give you a time of death—in fact, I can’t even give you a tight window. I can say that rigor mortis had already begun before the fire. He had been dead a minimum of six hours. Possibly longer, up to twenty-four hours. But your investigation may yield a better window. He died approximately eight hours after eating. We’re running those tests now because I couldn’t tell by sight what he’d last eaten.”

  Pete excused himself and left the room.

  Nora said, “The fire started around one-thirty in the morning. So he’d already been dead for six hours.” That put the latest time of death at approximately seven-thirty Sunday evening, the earliest Saturday afternoon.

  Nora emailed Duke and asked him if he’d yet accessed the security logs for the weekend. What if Payne was dead in the office long before the arsonists arrived? That seemed an unlikely coincidence, but something she needed to rule out.

  “So what do you think caused those marks, Dr. Coffey?” Nora asked.

  “I think the body was transported shortly after death. Rigor mortis set in while lying on a hard, smoothly ridged surface.”

  “Smoothly ridged? That seems an oxymoron.”

  “I won’t put this in writing until I get a mold done and compare with the books, but I think he was in the back of a pickup truck for several hours after he was killed. The truck was likely enclosed or I would have seen evidence of greater insect activity.”

  “And because it would be obvious to passersby that a partially naked dead man was in the back.”

  He cracked a grin. “Right.”

  “So we’re looking for a pickup truck with a camper shell or another similar secure top.”

  “And probably a long-bed. The vic is six feet two inches tall. He was at a diagonal in the truck—you can tell by the ridges. And he was flat—they didn’t break rigor to move him.”

  Pete stepped back into the room. “Fish and Game just arrived at Butcher-Payne. The guy in charge is looking for you.”

  Sean Rogan slid into a plastic chair in the cafeteria of Rose College, stabbed the salad in front of him with his fork, pretending he was punching Duke in the face.

  Play the part, Duke said. Be one of them, Duke said. You’ll be fine, Duke said.

  Duke could go pound sand for all Sean cared. He hated college, had hated MIT while he was there, straight A’s notwithstanding.

  Straight A’s except for one damn B minus in English from that stodgy female professor who didn’t like him.

  Sean slumped in his seat and ate the leaves in front of him. How could people survive on this rabbit food? His nose twitched, the warm, tantalizing scent of grilled hamburgers making his stomach growl.

  Duke owed him big time.

  Jonah is dead.

  Sean sighed away his anger and devoured the salad. Then he downed two of the four pints of milk in front of him. At least the milk satisfied the hollow feeling in his stomach.

  “You drink milk?”

  Sean looked up as he wiped his lips with his napkin. A cute brunette who didn’t wear makeup—and didn’t need it—stood in front of him with her tray in one hand and her other hand on her hip.

  “I have problems with my bones,” he lied automatically. “My doctor insisted that I drink milk for the calcium.” He prayed she didn’t ask any details, because he’d have to make them up.

  “You can take pills for that.”

  “He said it wasn’t the same.” Sean didn’t know what he was saying, but it sounded good. If he had to pretend to be a vegetarian for the next week or two, he could live—but he was not giving up milk. Not even for Duke.

  She put her tray down on the table and her pretty ass in the chair across from him. The raw veggies on her plate wouldn’t be able to keep Sean thinking coherently for five minutes, let alone sustain him for an hour.

  “Doctors are all quacks,” she said. “I have a great nutritionist. I can hook you up with him if you want.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. Nutritionist? What would he tell Sean that he didn’t already know? Eat a well-balanced meal, stay away from sugar, exercise. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Anya.”

  “Anya. That’s nice. Russian?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.
I never asked.”

  “Asked?”

  “My parents.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged again. “I was never able to talk to them. They don’t understand, you know?”

  Sean remembered why he hated college. He couldn’t stand his peers. I wish I had my parents alive to not understand me.

  “And you’re … Sean, right? From Social Justice.”

  “Good memory.”

  She smiled. She really was pretty, Sean thought. Though he was only twenty-three, he felt a decade older than most of the students here, had felt that way even back when he’d been in college. But he still admired pretty coeds. “I really liked how you stood up for the innocent.”

  Innocent? Sean searched his memory … right, during a discussion during the two-hour class, he’d made a point of taking an extreme position on protecting the rights of animals, living creatures who couldn’t protect themselves or their own rights. It had sounded good at the time, but Sean didn’t remember exactly what he’d said. Something about how people couldn’t be saved on the dead bodies of animals because we’re just animals, too.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.”

  He couldn’t believe his plan had worked so well. He’d hoped to draw out the activists, but after one day?

  “You’re new. Where’d you transfer from?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t. It’s a long story, but I had this jerk professor who flunked me. I graduated in June—or, I would have, except for him. So I have to take this class to get my degree.”

  “Who was it? Brigger? He’s an asshole.”

  “Not here. I went to school on the East Coast, as far from my family as I could get.” That was true, but not because he wanted to leave Sacramento. Duke said the MIT opportunity couldn’t be missed. Maybe he was right, but Sean hadn’t fit in there any more than he’d fit in at high school or at Stanford. True, unlike high school, at MIT he had intellectual peers, but few people he connected with. He’d been restless and bored. He tended to get into trouble when he was bored, and Duke always bailed him out. Like when Sean had hacked into the dean of students’ computer and pulled out the porn the jerk had downloaded, then sent the files to the college board and student council. The dean was fired, but Sean had been expelled. That was Stanford, when he’d been a seventeen-year-old freshman.