Page 34 of Killing Mind

He nodded. ‘Buried down with only the laces showing.’

‘Good spot,’ she acknowledged.

He smiled. ‘We don’t have a plant to hand around but I’ll be sure to tell the guy you said so.’

‘We don’t have it any more,’ Kim said, glancing at her colleague, who whistled and looked away. ‘It died.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Mitch said, placing the shoe into the clear box.

The ironies of police work never failed to amaze her. They were standing at the site where a young man had lost his life and she was being offered condolences for a plant.

‘So, what…’

‘There’s something…’

They said together. Of course there was something else. There were two groups of techs stationed around the lake. She rarely got called back to a crime scene for an item the forensic team expected to find.

He reached under the table into the right-hand box and took out an evidence bag similar in size to the other.

‘Found over the other side of the lake. Maybe something. Maybe nothing but I thought you’d like to know.’

Kim took the bag from him and turned it.

Another shoe.

But this one had belonged to a woman.

Thirty

Penn removed the gown and mask when instructed to do so by Keats.

He had remained silent as the pathologist had worked steadily and methodically through the process of examining the body externally before turning his attention to the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, blood vessels and small glands. As he’d worked Penn had been surprised at the respect and reverence he had shown the body of Tyler Short. Every organ that was measured and weighed had been treated with the care of a newborn baby, as though he wished to cause no further damage. His only surprise had been when Keats had removed the stomach contents with a ladle.

Keats had not spoken during the process except into his Dictaphone as he worked, seemingly forgetting that Penn was in the room.

‘So, we have established that this poor fellow didn’t die from the laceration to his throat. Your killer cut him and then forced his head underwater so that he drowned.’

Penn assumed this was Keats’s way of giving him permission to speak.

‘Wanted to make sure?’

‘Your question to answer. not mine,’ Keats said, pulling the sheet over the head of Tyler Short.

‘Is that to help establish time of death?’ Penn asked, as Keats took the contents he’d ladled out of the stomach over to the microscope.

Keats shook his head. ‘In this case the placement of the contents within the digestive system will assist with knowing the time between his last meal and death, which I would estimate to be approximately three hours, but it’s not going to help establish when he died, which I would estimate to have been four to six weeks.’

‘You can’t…’

‘No,’ Keats said. ‘I can’t be more specific than that, and your boss will get the same answer when she reads my full report.’

Penn hid his smile. They both knew she’d push for a more specific time frame than that.

Penn balled up his paper outfit and placed the items into the bin. ‘Okay, I’ll…’

‘Did I say we were done?’ Keats asked, without turning.

‘Not sure what else…’