Chapter Ten #2
“Do you know what material the saw was made of?” Tobias asked.
“No, though it had to have been extremely sharp and well made to have cut through her bones with the ease it did.” The doctor scratched at his beard again. “Perhaps a bone saw similar to what butchers use?”
“Could a magician’s saw have done this?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” the doctor seemed more than happy to confess.
“I’ve never come across a magician’s saw in person, so I have no idea if it’s merely a prop or could be employed for the purposes for which our killer used it.
Perhaps a theatrical supply store or a magician himself could assist? ”
The so-called Great Dondaric was next on Tobias’s long list of whom he had to go talk to. “What else did you find?”
“Not a great deal,” the doctor confessed.
“There were no obvious signs of toxins or poisons used. However, to be certain, I’ve sent some tissue and blood samples off to an expert for testing.
I should have the report back in a day or two, and I will forward it onto you.
Obviously, the official cause of death is severe blood loss from the severing of her arteries, which I’m sure you would have already guessed. ”
“Anything else you think we should know, Doctor?”
Dr. Morton hesitated slightly. “I don’t know if it is anything… but I found some three strands of long, auburn hair on the victim.”
“‘Auburn hair’?” Immediately, an image of the woman who’d bested him flashed to Tobias’s mind.
He’d noticed the color of her hair immediately, even tucked under the cleaning cap as it had been.
A color that was so nuanced with shades of gold, ginger, and chestnut, that to call it simply ‘auburn’ wasn’t doing it justice.
“Yes, a golden-reddish color,” the doctor confirmed. “It’s what I was looking at under the microscope when you first arrived.” He glanced over to the apparatus.
“Didn’t you describe the woman who trapped you as having auburn hair?” Iain asked, looking at Tobias, with little hint of humor on his face any longer.
“I did.” Tobias nodded. It was the first potential clue and break in the case they’d gotten, but rather than the usual stirrings of excitement such a discovery would normally have generated, Tobias felt a dark apprehension.
“Could a woman be our killer, Doc?” Iain asked, voicing the same question hammering in Tobias’s own head.
The doctor tugged at his beard. “I honestly don’t think so. The strength it would have taken to not only saw through the wood of the box, but also the woman’s body itself… I just don’t see how a woman would have been able to do so. Though that doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved in some manner.”
A part of Tobias had known the woman was somehow involved, but he hadn’t truly thought she’d had any actual participation in the killing of the victim.
There had been such an expression of forthrightness and courage in her eyes when she’d looked at him, that he could have sworn that she wasn’t an evil person.
Though she was skilled in deception, it seemed, so perhaps her courage was an illusion.
“If I got you a sample of her hair, Doctor, could you match it with the strands found on the victim?”
“Not definitively, unfortunately,” the doctor replied.
“At least not in a manner that would secure a conviction at court, given the limitations of the resolution of the lens of the microscope itself. However, I can certainly compare the strands and then give you my opinion as to whether they are a close match or not.”
Tobias’s jaw tightened and he nodded. It was hard to reconcile that the woman was most likely intimately involved in the murder.
For a moment, he questioned his own sanity in having been attracted to her.
In still being attracted to her. What the Devil was wrong with him?
He shook his head at his own folly, then turned to Iain.
“It seems finding this mystery woman has now become our number-one priority, Sergeant. Get your team onto the matter immediately and leave no stone unturned. I’ll go speak to this Dondaric magician myself while you get started. ”
“Aye, sir,” Iain replied, all business now as he nodded to Tobias, then spun on his heel, leaving the doctor’s office to carry out Tobias’s instructions.
Turning back to the doctor, Tobias tipped his hat to him. “As usual, good work, Doctor. Send me through the toxicology results when you receive them.”
“Of course,” the doctor said, staring intently at Tobias as the latter bowed then stalked from the room. “Tobias, wait.”
Tobias stopped at the doorway and glanced back.
Though they’d worked on hundreds of cases over the years, they rarely called each other by their first names.
The fact that the very proper and precise Charles Morton was doing so now, along with staring at Tobias with an intensity that gave Tobias pause. “Yes, Charles?”
“Be careful,” Charles warned. “There’s something about this one that is truly malevolent. A degree of cunning and planning that I’ve not seen before. And if this was his opening act, as I rather suspect it was, I’m greatly concerned about what is to follow.”
“Me too, Doctor. Me too.”