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I felt Claire’s hand bolstering my arm, and leaned into her.

To my surprise, it turned out to be Raleigh. I righted myself with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “Thanks.” I exhaled. “I’m okay.”

“I’ve been doing this job eight years,” Claire said, “and this one, I wanted to turn away myself.”

She picked up a folder from an examining table across from David Brandt. She pointed to the raw, gaping knife wound on the left side of his chest. “He was stabbed once in the right ventricle. You can see here the blade pierced the juncture between the fourth rib and the sternum on the way in. Ruptured the AV node, which provides the heart’s electrical powering. Technically, he arrested.”

“He died of a heart attack?”

Raleigh asked.

She pulled a pair of tight surgical gloves over her hands and red-lacquered nails. “Electromechanical dissociation. Just a fancy way of describing what happens when you get stabbed in the heart.”

“What about the weapon?” I spoke up.

“At this point, all I know is that it was a standard, straight-edged blade. No distinguishing marks or entry pattern. One thing I can tell you is that the killer was medium height, anywhere from five-seven to five-ten, and right-handed, based on the angle of impact. You can see here the path of the incision is angled slightly upward. Here,” she said, poking around the wound. “The groom was six feet. On his wife, who was five-five, the angle of the first incision was slanted in a downward path.”

I checked the groom’s hands and arms for abrasions. “Any signs of a struggle?”

“Couldn’t. The poor man was scared right out of his mind.”

I nodded as my eyes fell on the groom’s face.

Claire shook her head. “That’s not exactly what I meant. Charlie Clapper’s boys scraped up samples of a fluid from the groom’s shoes and the hardwood floor in the foyer where he was found.” She held up a small vial containing droplets of a cloudy liquid.

Raleigh and I stared at it, uncomprehending.

“Urine,” explained Claire. “The poor man apparently went in his pants. Must have been a gusher.”

She pulled a white sheet over David Brandt’s face and shook her head. “I figure that’s one secret we can keep to ourselves.

“Unfortunately,” she said with a sigh, “things didn’t happen nearly as swiftly for the bride.” She led us over to the bride’s gurney. “Maybe she surprised him. There are marks on her hands and wrists that indicate a struggle. Here,” she pointed to a reddened abrasion on her neck. “I tried to lift some tissue from under her nails, but we’ll see what comes back. Anyway, the first wound was in the upper abdomen and tore through the lungs. With time, given the loss of blood, she might have died from that.”

She pointed to a second and third ugly incision under the left breast in a similar location to the groom’s. “Her pericardium was filled with so much blood you could’ve wrung it out like a wet dishrag.”

“You’re getting technical again,” I said.

“The tissuelike membrane around the heart. Blood collects in this space and compresses the muscle so that the heart can no longer fill with blood from the main return. Ultimately, it ends up strangling itself.”

The image of the bride’s heart choking on her own blood chilled me. “It’s almost as if he wanted to duplicate the wounds,” I said, studying the knife-entry points.

“I thought of that,” said Claire. “Straight line to the heart.”

Raleigh furrowed his brow. “So the killer could be professional?”

Claire shrugged. “By the technical pattern of the wounds, perhaps. But I don’t think so.”

There was a hesitancy in her voice. I looked up and fixed on her grim eyes. “So what I need to know is, was she sexually molested?”

She swallowed. “There are clear signs of some sort of postmortem penetration. The vaginal mucosa was severely extended, and I found small lacerations around the introitus.”

My body stiffened in rage. “She was raped.”

“If she was raped,” Claire replied, “it was a very bad deal. The vaginal cavity was as wide as I’ve ever seen it. Honestly, I don’t think we’re talking penile entry at all.”

“Blunt instrument?” Raleigh said.

“Certainly wide enough…but there are abrasions along the vaginal walls consistent with some kind of ring.” Claire took in a breath. “Personally, I’d go with a fist.”


Tags: James Patterson Women's Murder Club Mystery