That wasn’t the first question in her mind.
Why hadn’t this been mentioned by Zach?
FIFTEEN
Penn watched as Keats made the Y incision into the flesh for the second time. The horizontal line cut through the site of the bullet hole at the centre of the chest.
So far Keats had turned the body of fifteen-year-old Lewis Daynes inside out.
Penn’s whole team knew he was intrigued by the mechanics of the process, but he’d only witnessed it being carried out on adults. There was something unnerving about watching Keats deconstruct a body that hadn’t even finished growing yet.
Right now, it was Rozzie’s turn. Her young, naked body exposed coldly on the table was a sorry sight. Both of these kids had barely even started their lives. They were like a car that had ignited and spluttered before dying completely without ever having a good run.
Normally he was able to watch every move that Keats made, but somehow the line of instruments waiting to be used seemed far more invasive on the bodies of these teenage children. He didn’t want to see Keats reach for the toothed forceps, rib shears or bone saw.
‘No, it’s not the same,’ Keats said, as though reading his mind. ‘Everything is different when it comes to children so don’t expect to remain as emotionless as normal.’
‘It bothers you still?’ he asked.
‘Of course. I’m human, and I would be more concerned if it didn’t affect me in some way, as you should be.’
He paused before continuing. ‘The first child I ever worked on was an eighteen-month-old boy who had been killed during a car ride with his father late at night. The story was that the father had taken his son out to drive around in the car to soothe him and calm him down. The boy had an ear infection and wouldn’t stop crying.
‘The moment I touched the child’s flesh with the scalpel I wanted to run away. The whole time I swore I was going to retrain in another field. The emotion overwhelmed me, but it also energised me. The anger fuelled me. It made me alert. It made me focussed and, twenty minutes into the process, I found the truth,’ he said, pausing to point at his throat. ‘I was able to examine all tissues of the neck, superficial and deep and the force vector, magnitude and direction, to conclude that the death was no accident. He had been strangled before the minor car accident that was intended to cover up the act. The child’s father was imprisoned for nineteen years. But between you and me, after concluding the process on the boy, I went out back and cried my heart out.’
Penn wasn’t surprised to learn that.
‘Tell your boss that and I’ll tell her you passed out.’
Penn had no intention of telling his boss anything. He knew better than to get in between the sparring of these two.
‘Take a minute to go to your happy place. It helps to keep it real.’
Where exactly was his happy place these days? Penn wondered. Once upon a time it had been spending time in the kitchen with Jasper, trying new recipes and enjoying the sheer joy on his brother’s face when a new idea worked or the laughter when it didn’t. Those times were growing less frequent as his teenage brother powered through life allowing nothing, not even Down’s syndrome, to stop him.
Where the hell was his own happy place now? When was the last time he’d laughed with another adult?
Impulsively, he took out his phone and sent a quick text message.
‘Ahhh…’ Keats said as he stood back for a minute.
Penn put his phone away. He had learned that that one syllable non-word was a signal from Keats to himself. It meant something, but if questioned too soon, Keats would not answer.
‘Hmm…’
Now that was unusual. He hadn’t known an ‘ahhh’ followed by a ‘hmm’ before.
‘Keats?’
‘Did you say your boss wanted to be informed of even the smallest development here?’ the pathologist asked.
‘I did.’
‘Then I think it might be a good idea to give her a call.’
SIXTEEN
As Bryant parked the car, Kim turned in her seat. The journey had been spent with her consciously preventing herself from calling Woody for an update on Symes. Given his instructions, she suspected she would have been strongly advised to focus on the case at hand, which is what she was trying to do.