Chapter Twelve #3
“He died between Friday night and twelve hours before we pulled him from the water. I’m going to say more toward the latter. That’s all I can give you. I’m putting his time in the water to be about a full day or more. There’s a twelve-hour margin of error.”
Well, shit.
That was a wide window.
“The water was about the same temp as his body, so it makes it look like he was in the water far less than he was. The skin bloating and the beginning stages of slippage tell me around twenty-four hours. That’s all I can say,” Ben admitted.
Well, it was something.
The person who did this had to have time to grab the man, break all his bones, and then dump him.
They would start running a timeline to see if they could lock that down.
Then, they’d start going through his schedule to retrace his steps. They knew when he sent his report to Gabe.
Whoever saw him last, might have an idea.
Or be the killer.
“Okay, so that covers COD, TOD, and tox. Anything you can tell us in comparison to the cop’s autopsy?” Gene asked.
The man opened the other file, and he shared what he could.
“He was in the water far longer. Again, I wasn’t able to do TOD, but he had become a snack for the sea life.
That tells me he sank, he bloated and floated up, and sank again.
At the bottom of the ocean, he was dinner.
So someone is taking the bodies out, and dumping them.
Because it’s rather shallow where we get the normal floaters. ”
Ethan was making notes, and was curious.
“And as for the Fed?” he asked. “Did you find anything that might give us an idea as to where he was dumped?
Ben considered it.
“I’d say there is a good possibility that the killer dumped him out further, based on the temperature of his body while he was in the water. It’s colder the further out you go.”
That was interesting.
“We know he was around Friday as he worked his shift,” Gene said.
Oh, Ben understood.
So, he explained.
“Yes, but, last night, you saw the surf. A storm is heading here, and that weather comes first as rough waters, and then torrential rains with a side of winds. I think he was dumped, picked up in the rip current, and then settled on shore where you guys were. He may have been left out further, but the killer didn’t take into account the upcoming weather.
That also might be why he had no predation to his body.
The rip current is brutal for all living things. ”
Gene weighed that in his mind.
And so did Ethan.
“So he’s learning,” Blackhawk said. “He’s getting better with each kill, trying to improve it, and by ‘HE’, I’m just using that to describe the killer. I don’t have enough to pick the gender yet,” he stated, more for Gene than anyone else.
His partner considered everything he had heard, and was weighing it all in his head.
“So we have an individual who is learning from this, and that is NEVER good.”
No, it wasn’t.
Gene had that feeling again, and it wasn’t a good one. It was the one that made him twitchy as fuck.
“Can we have pictures of the autopsy photos, and the files to go with them?” he asked as he tried not to panic or freak out.
The man nodded.
He went to his computer, typed in a few things, and the printer went off.
“Did they suffer?” Ethan asked, curiously. “I know they had broken bones, and you said no tox on board, but in your professional opinion, was this torture? Or did they die first? You said the water was rough. Could their internal damage be because of that?”
The man shared what he could.
“They were alive through the blunt force trauma, so as a doctor, I’m going to say yes, they suffered—if they were awake. The broken bones have proof of bruising above skin, so that happened while they were alive.”
That sucked for them.
Ben continued.
“If I look at the whole picture, I can see there are ligature marks on their wrists and ankles. That tells me that they fought to get free—so yes, they were awake. My final assessment to your question is that someone made them suffer a great deal before they died. I’d chase the symbols, but do it carefully. ”
Gene lifted a brow.
Where had that come from?
“What do you mean?” he asked, already knowing what Corbin had told them from the other ME.
Ben was to the point.
“I looked up some of them, and I tried to go back into the files to see if there was anything similar. It appears to be some sort of branched-off Voodoo that is tied to those marks. There is a whole sect of people on this island that practice it, and they take it very seriously. If you upset them, they will protect the religion.”
That was…ominous.
“And you know this how?” Gene asked.
Ben shared.
“We had a body show up a few months ago. It was some guy, and he turned up on the beach, pinned down with stakes through his hands. When I opened him up, I found a gris-gris back in his belly. No one ever solved it, but I will tell you that it was grisly. He had one particular symbol on him that showed up on the others.”
Ethan was curious.
“Which one?”
He pointed at one, and Ethan got it.
“The evil eye?”
Ben nodded.
“That’s the symbol I mentioned to your partner that looked familiar.”
Oh, this was degrading fast for Gene.
The last thing they wanted to do was tangle with religious nuts, but sometimes, they had no choice. This was looking like it was going to be one of those times.
Unfortunately.
For.
Them.
“Thanks, Doc,” Ethan said. “We greatly appreciate the heads-up and your wealth of knowledge.”
The man didn’t mind.
“Anything I can do to help,” he admitted. “I was the new guy here once, too.”
Yeah, well, Gene didn’t plan on being the new guy here. He planned on wooing his man, and getting their asses back onto that plane to Philly on Sunday morning.
They had jobs back in The City of Brotherly Love—not here. Puerto Rico was supposed to be a getaway—not a new place to call home.
“Can we get trace analysis on their clothing?” Gene asked. “I know you said they were coated in herbs, and in the one’s mouth, but what about the clothing?” he asked. “Did you run that?”
The man nodded.
“I did, and it’s pretty much the same, but there was something else I found,” Ben offered as he printed that report out too.
Gene was curious.
“What?”
He told him.
“I swabbed his body, and it was weird,” he offered. “I found sugar—but more so, sugar burns.”
Ethan lifted a brow.
Okay, Corbin mentioned that.
But the last part?
“Sugar burns?”
He nodded.
“Yeah. You know how when you boil sugar to make candy, it gets molten hot?”
No, they didn’t know that since they didn’t make candy, but instead of going there, they just listened.
“Well, it was on their bodies—both of them—like they were dragged through it. Maybe on a floor, or…but it was hot.”
That was…puzzling.
“There was also sandy debris in it.”
What the hell was this?
Ethan was confused.
“So you found sugar and sand mixed into hot sugar, and on the bodies?”
He nodded.
“And when it cooled, it left burns, but it stuck to the hair on the legs. That’s how it didn’t get washed away. Maybe some spa? They use sugar scrubs and beauty treatments for waxing.”
Gene paused.
“Hot enough to burn?” he asked. “Do women do that kind of shit? Asking as a man.”
Ben laughed.
“My girlfriend does all kinds of weird things to her skin to make it look good. I’m just throwing out ideas for you guys. What do I know?” he asked. “If it’s not forensics, I’m out of my league.”
Well, they appreciated that.
Really.
Now, Ethan was thinking, and the hamster was running in the wheel.
The sand part in the sugar was what had him trying to see what he could come up with that had both of those elements in it.
And nothing was popping in his head.
“So they were stripped naked, and tied down, but were they sexually assaulted?” Ethan asked, going there.
He shook his head.
“Nope. Not at all. I swabbed, checked for tearing, and there was nothing there. It definitely looks ritualistic instead to me.”
Yeah, it did look that way.
Only, why were all three connected at some point in the investigation?
That was the part he didn’t like.
It was as if they were missing a big piece of this, and taking a big leap from tied together to ritualistic.
A.
Big.
Leap.
To Ethan, his gut was screaming, and not in a way he normally liked.
This was…fishy.
“Thank you for your help,” Gene offered, shaking his hand.
Then, he stood.
“We’re going to be out in the field, so if you think of anything else, let me know,” he said, handing Ben his business card with his number on it.
The man nodded.
“Sure things, Agents. I’ll keep researching to see if anything else is in the files on previous autopsies. Good luck with this, and be careful out there. I don’t want to be doing another FBI agent autopsy.”
Yeah, well, no one wanted that.
Definitely.
Not.
Them.
Heading out, Gene stopped in the hallway outside the morgue so that he and his partner could talk.
It was time to regroup, and for him, there was a lot to go over—even if forensics gave them very little.
“What can I say?” Gene asked. “Why do I feel like this is all over the place?”
Yeah, Ethan agreed.
BIG.
TIME.
Already, on day one, he was feeling like this was going to be a shitshow for them.
Call it a hunch.
They’d had cases that felt like this from the start, and they were always a pain in the ass to weed through the massive amount of information being thrown at them.
“I don’t like that it’s been bounced between cops and Feds,” Ethan admitted. “There’s too much room for mistakes.”
Gene agreed.
“Yeah, that’s how you drop the ball. I think we need to go to Jarod’s place next to see if we can find anything there. I texted Greyson about positive ID, and by now, Gabe is calling the man’s family.”
Ethan knew what that meant.
They had limited time before the family came from the upper States and showed up to go through the man’s things. They had to do that first.
“Agreed,” Ethan said.
Gene was glad.