Page 5

5

Hagen paced the entrance of the Middle Tennessee Regional Forensic Center.

He hated these places. Everything about a morgue erased a victim’s personality and history. The smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant. Waiting for the medical examiner in his crisp, white coat to escort them in. Finally, the sight of the corpse, cleaned up and laid out on a slab like some piece of forensic evidence.

Dammit. Why did Slade always do this to him?

The less time he spent around morgues, the happier he’d be.

He strode to the end of the hall, checked his watch, and walked right back.

Ander sat on one of the plastic chairs by the wall. He looked entirely at ease, his legs stretched, his fingers folded over the front of his belt buckle, as he described the minutiae of his relationship with Alessandra Lagarde.

They were both divorced and shared custody of their only children—him, a ten-year-old named Murphy, her, a three-year-old named Demetri—with their exes.

“Man, you should’ve seen Murphy and Demetri this morning. I was worried, you know? I thought Murphy would be all jealous of Demetri. He can get moody sometimes, like any kid. Figured he’d fight for my attention. But he was great. He held Demetri and helped to feed him. And Demetri was babbling away like an old drain. I’m telling you, those two are getting along like brothers. It’s great, man.”

Hagen was happy for Ander. He and Alessandra hadn’t been together long, but they were already settling into the domestic life that Ander clearly craved. “I’m glad it’s working out for you.”

“It really is, you know? It’s funny. I think of all the fights Kelsey and I had before we broke up. Everything was a struggle. We argued about every little thing. But this is easy. Just smooth. It’s like we both wanted the same thing at the same time and found it in each other. I couldn’t be happier, man. Really.”

If anyone else had spoken like that, he’d have believed they were trying to convince themselves of something. But Ander had never struggled to face the truth. He’d always known what he wanted.

Even in the kind of day-to-day drudgery that domestic life entailed—feeding the kids, shepherding them around—Ander was in his element.

Hagen and Stella had forged their bond in moments of stress. He’d seen Stella’s determination, her courage, her intelligence, and found so much to admire in one beautiful package. He was lucky to have found her, luckier still that she’d found something in him.

But he didn’t think either one of them was “in their element.” And now they faced their real test.

Life and work together, like Ander and Alessandra, day after day.

Hagen had never let a relationship progress this far. This was a whole new challenge.

He rubbed at a spot on the floor with the toe of his shoe. “Good for you. I’m glad you’re happy.”

Ander grinned. “We both are, right? Stella’s a great catch. Way out of your league. Different game, really. She’s Roland-Garros, and you’re a pickleball tourney at the rec courts.”

Hagen didn’t appreciate the crack but sloughed it off. “Thanks, man.”

“What do you make of the new girl? Anja. You worked with her long in San Francisco?”

Shit. He’d known the conversation was coming, but still…

“No. A few months. Two or three, I think. She was coming in as I was going out. She’s good. She’s got a way of developing assets in the field.”

“Really?” Ander raised his brow. He clearly wanted more.

Talking about Anja as an agent was something Hagen could easily handle. “We had a case. My last one in San Fran. There were reports of a gang moving Colombian cocaine in nightclubs. We figured we’d need a good eight months to figure out who was doing what and gather evidence. Within a month, Anja had gotten three bartenders and half a dozen bouncers leaking information.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d she do that?”

“She can be…persuasive. She spoke to them, their families, dug hard into their backgrounds. Didn’t take her long to figure out each person’s weakness and decide whether they needed a carrot or a stick, a shove against the wall or an envelope filled with Benjamins. We wrapped the whole thing up in two and a half months. It was good work.”

Ander uncrossed his ankles and recrossed them. “And?”

“And what?”

“Hey, man. I’m just saying. Those googly eyes she was making at you? What was that all about?”

Hagen reached the end of the entrance hall and stopped. If Ander noticed Anja’s reaction to him, Stella certainly had. He spun on his heel. “Yeah, yeah. We had a thing. She was interested, and I was…there. Willing, I guess. She figured out my weak point.”

“What was that?”

Hagen hated how uncomfortable this entire conversation made him. He had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. Not really.

He rolled his neck. “I don’t know. She just got too close, you know? One night, I ended up talking about my dad’s murder, and I got so angry…I guess I wasn’t ready for anyone to see that side of me yet.”

“These things take time to process. You seem better now, though.” Ander’s solemn expression morphed into a knowing look. “Told Stella?”

“No.” He threw his hands up. “When? I was blindsided back there. But she’s probably figured it out. Not much gets past her.”

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t envy that conversation.” Ander chuckled. “Look at you. Always punching above your weight.”

The door opened, and Caspar Brennan waved them in. He tossed Hagen and Ander each a pair of nitrile gloves, which they caught and snapped over their fingers.

Dr. Brennan’s jacket was always too white, too pressed. And the halo of blond hair around his bald head was always neatly trimmed, the small tuft that remained above his forehead never out of place. As though the corpses the M.E. dealt with all day cared how he looked.

Patrick Marrion certainly didn’t.

They found him lying naked on the slab. The victim’s eyes were open but sunken. His face was decorated with only the lightest of stubble, which barely reached above his jaw. The lines of his ribs showed through his thin chest, and the red mark Hagen had seen on the crime scene photos was brighter than he expected up close. An old, healed burn scar ran across the young man’s cheek and covered the top of his left shoulder before disappearing down his back.

But it was the victim’s pallor that stood out the most. Marrion’s skin was pale, his color vanished with the blood drained from him. Even his lips had lost their luster, so that only his scar and his small, hairless nipples displayed any tone at all.

A sharp intake of breath sounded from Ander. “Jeez.”

Hagen braced himself for the revulsion he usually experienced in morgues. But it didn’t come. He’d recently seen two corpses in a similar state. Perhaps he adjusted better to exsanguination cases? Putrefaction and decay were delayed without blood in the body, so some of the gnarlier side effects of death were mitigated.

He approached the corpse and indicated the bottom of the victim’s thighs and the edge of his buttocks. “Do you see how there’s little discoloration here? Usually, you’d expect to find the blood pooled at the lowest point. He was found in a seated position, so this part of the body,” he lowered his pointed finger to the hip and buttock area, “should be darker than the rest. The fact there’s so little discoloration here indicates he was moved after death. Right, Doc?”

Dr. Brennan tilted his head. “Very good, Agent Yates. We’ll have you elbow-deep in cadavers any day now. Want to guess the time of death?”

Hagen shook his head. He’d leave the details to the experts.

Dr. Brennan checked his notes. “We can probably say it was sometime late Friday afternoon. The report said he was found in the early hours of Saturday morning. He hadn’t been sitting in the cold for long.”

Ander kept his distance, but Hagen drew nearer the body. In Claymore, the victims had been killed by deep slashes across their necks, the depth and savagery of the cuts opening the carotid arteries. The bleeding had been fast.

But Patrick Marrion’s neck was intact. Besides the bruising around the victim’s ankles, wrists, and neck, the only obvious wound Hagen could identify was a single cut on the right side of the victim’s neck—a straight line, no more than an inch long—which appeared to be done with precision.

“I see you’ve found our cause of death.” Dr. Brennan hovered over Hagen’s shoulder.

Ander took a step forward and stood at Hagen’s other shoulder. “That’s what killed him?” He sounded skeptical. “I was expecting something more gruesome.”

The medical examiner rocked on his heels. “Yes. That incision, as small as it seems, is deep. Goes all the way to the carotid artery.”

The M.E. placed a gloved finger at the bottom of the cut and pulled down. The skin separated easily, the end of a severed artery visible under a thin layer of fat. Still holding the cut open, Dr. Brennan toyed with the edge of the artery with the tip of his gloved finger. The tissue bounced like rubber.

Hagen forced himself to relax his jaw. Dr. Brennan always made things a bit weird.

“The carotid artery. Cut that, and you’ve had it without immediate help, gentlemen. If you can’t stop the bleeding, you’ll be unconscious in minutes and dead as a doornail shortly afterward. In two to five minutes, if you want to be precise about it.”

Ander pushed a loose curl away from his eye. “Could it have been an accident? A fight, and the blade made a lucky hit?”

Dr. Brennan released the cut. The edge of the skin slowly returned to its place, its elasticity all but gone.

“There are no other wounds. Nothing defensive. The bruising around the neck suggests the victim was asphyxiated, which might imply a minor struggle.” He paused. “At best, you might be able to say he was held down while the killer bound him at the wrists and ankles before the killer made their precise cut.”

The medical examiner was right. There was nothing on the victim’s face that suggested more than the lightest of struggles.

Hagen crossed his arms. This didn’t look anything like the Pennsylvania cases. “Why make such a strange incision?”

“It reminds me of the cuts morticians make during the embalming process.” Dr. Brennan crossed his arms too.

“Can we see his back?”

Dr. Brennan smiled. “Thought you’d want to see that. It’s something. Give me a hand here, will you?”

As Dr. Brennan placed his hands under the victim’s ribs, Hagen lifted from beneath the shoulders.

The body twisted, then flopped face down on the slab. Dr. Brennan pulled out the arm trapped under Marrion’s chest and straightened it next to his side.

A red scar started on the victim’s left cheek and neck, cascaded over his shoulder, and covered much of his upper back, stopping just below the rib cage in a rough, curving line.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

Ander swallowed. “What is it?”

“An old burn, one that was completely healed. That means it happened long before the fatal attack. Must’ve hurt like all heck when it happened. And while it was healing too. You can see how the skin grew back tighter, more unevenly than the rest of his normal skin. You’d probably get away with less of a scar these days. Skin grafts have come a long way. But that was the best they could do then.”

Hagen thought of the bodies they’d found hanging from trees in Claymore Township. Their backs had been covered in strange writing, with a message about the end of the world.

He leaned closer. There were abrasions in the scar tissues. A few small lines and cuts ran over the bumps and old scabs on the skin.

“These fresh?”

Dr. Brennan brought the light closer. “Looks like it. Someone made a few incisions on the scar. These appear to be done by a scalpel or something similar. I’d suggest the same weapon used to make the cut on the carotid artery. But unlike that cut, these were superficial. Certainly not deadly. But again, I would look into morticians. It’s not like the average Joe would think to commit murder in such a specific way. That might be a place to start.”

Hagen straightened. The M.E. wasn’t wrong. The exsanguination matched the last case, as well as the bruising around the ankles. But the cuts on the victim’s back were inconclusive. They could be the result of Patrick Marrion’s body being dragged along a rough surface.

He peeled off his gloves. “Anything else?”

Dr. Brennan shook his head. “Not at this time. If I find something, I’ll be in touch.”

“Right, then. Let’s go meet Patrick Marrion’s roommate.” Ander was already halfway to the door.