Page 82 of The Sister's Curse

She pulled out her phone, showing some pictures of the corpse. Deep scratches trailed along Sims’s ribs and arm, long gashes in the pale flesh. “Here.” She advanced to a shot of the corpse’s head, revealing claw marks at the back hairline and along his neck. Bone glistened. “And here.”

“Weird.” I counted five stripes. “Looks almost like a hand, and those are fingers.”

“Sure, but humans don’t grow knives on their fingers, and there’s nothing in the river that does.”

“Maybe they were inflicted before the accident?”

“I don’t think so. The vascular damage and blood pooling aren’t consistent with that. Pragmatically, I’d be really surprised if there was a swimmer in the water with a knife at the time of drowning. Very surprised.”

“No ideas what that is?” Viv was off my list of suspects for the near drownings and Sims’s death. But I imagined Fred Jasper swimming with a knife in the dark and stifled a shudder.

“None. You bring me a tool, and I’ll compare. I didn’t find any inorganic material, like metal burrs, in the wounds, either.”

I exhaled. “Weird.”

“That oddity notwithstanding, cause of death is drowning. The quantities of prescription opioids in his system were sufficient to impair his driving, so I’m ruling this death as accidental.”

“He had opioids in his system?”

“It’s surprisingly common. According to the state’s automatedprescription-reporting system, he had a valid prescription for back pain. It wasn’t doing him any favors while operating heavy machinery, but he probably wasn’t feeling much pain at the end.”

At least Sims didn’t suffer much. A small, dark part of me wished he had, though. He didn’t deserve an easy death.

I backed up to let Forensics do their thing. I caught up on messages. To my disappointment, EPA hadn’t called me back. I called them again, and was in the process of leaving a message when Fred Jasper rolled up beside me in a sheriff’s van.

I ended my call and steeled myself to talk to Jasper.

“You trying to reach EPA?” he asked, brow furrowed as he climbed out of the van.

“Yeah.” I blew out my breath. “They’re not responsive.”

“I may have a contact there, from when I was in the military. Want me to reach out?”

“That would be great,” I admitted. Now I was really feeling bad that I was going to confront him about what I’d learned. I squared my shoulders and faced him. “Fred, can we talk?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

We walked a bit away from the scene, to where we couldn’t be overheard.

“I’ve been looking into the Dana Carson disappearance.”

He nodded. “I figured you would.”

“You didn’t tell me you were Dana Carson’s boyfriend.”

He stared out into the river. He wasn’t hostile and didn’t seem to be provoked by my discovery. His expression was just wistful. “Dana was a great girl. She was kind, smart, funny, artistic.”

“Why did you break up?”

“I was going to college in the fall. She was three years younger, and it didn’t seem fair to leave her behind and have her wait for me. In retrospect…” He sighed. “It was the biggest regret of my life.”

“You must’ve been devastated.”

Jasper’s voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. “Yeah. It was what made me decide to be a cop.”

I felt that. I think that, subconsciously, I’d also become one to purge my father’s sins. Maybe it was a way to have the power I never had as a girl. “I get it. You think Jeff and his friends did something to her?”

He nodded. “I do. I hope that someday they get caught and stand trial.”