“Yes. Want to head over there and take a look?”
“Have you already been?”
“I have,” he said. “It’s about as uneventful as this one.”
“How about the coroner? Have you been there yet?”
“I haven’t. It was on the list for today. But honestly, whacked in the head is still probably going to be the best we get. Still…want to head over there?”
Rachel thought it over for a moment. Paige would be home from school in about another hour and a half, and though Grandma Tate was more than happy to pick her up, there was still a great degree of guilt. Even Paige now understood that her diagnosis and limited time remaining was supposed to mean she’d be spending more time at home. So what would she think if her mother had already decided to change her mind about such things?
Well, it’s a little late to worry about that now, she thought. These are things you should have considered before leaving the house.
Well, she was here now and supposed she may as well see it through. At least for today.
“Yeah, let’s go. But let’s make it quick. I’d like to try to be home before dinner.”
“Sure,” he said, already walking back to the car. He turned before opening the door, though, frowning. “Did I pressure you into this?”
“No. And I think it’s adorable that you think you could pressure me into anything. It’s just that…I don’t want Paige to think I’m going back on a promise I told her.”
“I understand. We better get going then.”
When he got back into the car, Rachel could tell he was uncomfortable about the situation. But she knew Jack well enough; if she pressed him on it, he’d shut down. Maybe he’d be more willing to discuss it after another day or so. Or maybe she would just leave it alone. After all, she didn’t see this being an issue beyond this case—a case she really had no business working on in the first place.
As it was now, they left the crime scene in silence and Jack drove them out toward the coroner’s office. The silence was thick and heavy, and Rachel couldn’t help but feel guilty that this was the atmosphere she’d created for what was essentially her last case…and her last time working as a partner with Jack.
***
Jack called ahead so when they arrived at the coroner’s office, both bodies were already out and waiting for them. The coroner seemed to sense the strange mood hovering among Rachel and Jack, giving them access to the printed case files and then excusing himself. They stood in the large examination room together, looking over the bodies and the details.
The woman, Polly Warren, was on the examination table, as she was the most recent. But the other, a fifty-seven-year-old man named Benjamin Wells, was on a typical gurney, having been wheeled in from storage. Polly Warren looked to be in the worst shape, as her wounds had not yet been given the care and attention as Benjamin Wells’s. Both had been killed in the same manner, with a series of blows to the head. There was only a single blow to Wells’s head, directly cross the left temple, hard enough to cause the skull to cave in on that side. Polly Warren, however, had been hit twice—maybe three times. The two blows to her head were to the temple and just above the forehead. The potential third was just above her brow, but that particular wound might be the result of falling on her face on the pavement. There were scratches on her nose to also support this fact.
Rachel scanned the notes as she looked over each body. The notes were succinct and told the same story her eyes could see. There were no bruises or scratches anywhere other than the heads. The positioning of the blows indicated that they’d been facing their attacker when it happened. When Rachel put these factors together, she came up with a pretty clear picture of what happened: the killer had attacked while facing them, and neither victim showed any signs of a struggle or putting up a fight.
“Seems to me that the victim either knew the attacker or the attacker somehow lured them in under friendly pretenses,” she said.
“Yeah, because if the attacks came from the front,” Jack said, “it seems like he didn’t sneak up or take them by surprise.”
Rachel spent another five minutes looking the bodies over, scanning for anything else that might connect them—scars from surgeries, tattoos, anything. But she could tell fairly quickly that there was nothing. The only thing connecting them outside death was their terminal illnesses. And as far as Rachel was concerned, there was something beyond deplorable about that. Of course, maybe she was biased. She was, after all, in that same boat.
It made her wonder if the killer perhaps envisioned themselves as an angel of mercy, a means of shortening their painful and potentially dark final days. Perhaps the attacks were religious in nature, then, or maybe there was something much less tangible that she could not even conceive of just yet.
Still, looking at the bodies made her feel helpless in a way she rarely felt while examining victims. It went beyond feeling sympathy for them in that she, too, shared in their terminal illnesses. No, it was because as she looked to both of them knowing about that terrible link between them, it was far too easy to picture herself in their position.
This could be her very soon—and she wasn’t nearly ready to face that yet.
“I want to talk to Polly Warren’s family,” Rachel said. “The sister from Poquoson. I assume she came to town after hearing about the murder.”
“She did. She’s currently staying with the brother.” He sighed and said, “I figured you would want to talk to her. Looks like I’m not going to get out of speaking with an aggrieved family member after all.”
Rachel knew he was just trying to make things a bit lighter—something he was usually pretty good at. But as they got back into the car, there was nothing light or remotely funny about what Rachel was feeling. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever felt so lost.