Page 12 of The Broken Places

“Long enough to know she was pregnant if she was at all in touch with her body,” Lennon murmured.

He had a feeling this woman on the slab in front of him was not even remotely “in touch” with her body. Thankfully, however, her face had been cleaned, eyes shut, and mouth closed. That awful scream he’d last seen on her face was now an expression of peaceful slumber. His gaze moved to the dead woman’s arm, where there were clear track marks at the crease, and then farther down where there was a line of pale red scars, each about the same width and length. “She was a cutter,” he noted.

“Most definitely. She has scars on her thighs, too, some years old, others more recent.”

“That one always gets me,” Lennon murmured. “Why hurt yourself more than you’re already hurting?”

“The pain is better than the numb,” Ambrose said. “Pain reminds you you’re alive.” Lennon’s eyes met his, and even in this cold, sad room, standing over the body of a young woman who’d suffered in—very likely—more ways than just one, or even two or three, he was struck by the inspector’s beauty. She was intriguing to him, too, and he’d have liked time to figure her out but knew that wasn’t going to be possible.

She looked away from him, back to Clyde. “The thing that keeps bothering me about this scene in particular is that I’ve never heard of hallucinogens being part of an orgy. I’d think that would make things ... very bizarre.”

“Some people like bizarre,” Clyde said.

True enough.But the case already disturbed Ambrose, and this only added to it. The light-purple hallucinogens with the “BB” imprint ...the teddy bear and the children’s toys. “No, you’re right,” he said to Lennon. “Hallucinogens are typically used for a mental or spiritual experience, not a physical one.”

“Right. Exactly,” she agreed.

“These people appeared to be drug users, however,” Ambrose said. “They might not have been very discerning if given free product.”

Lennon’s brow knitted. “Could you tell if she’d had sex?” she asked Clyde after a moment. “Willing or otherwise?”

“I’m going to get the second female up on the table this afternoon, but there was no semen in—or on—this one. As far as I can tell, she didn’t have sex recently.”

“And the shower didn’t appear to have been used,” Ambrose said, recalling the report they’d received that morning from the criminalists who’d worked the scene and sent the samples they’d gathered to the lab for testing. The water had still been on at the property, but the shower had been dry, and there weren’t any towels available to mop up the residual water.

“And no condom or fresh semen found either,” Lennon murmured. “So maybe it hadn’t gotten sexual yet.”

“The footage from the bank up the street showed all three of them headed in the direction of the motel at midnight, though,” Ambrose said, referring to the footage they’d received early that morning. “You estimated time of death to be about three a.m.?” he asked Clyde.

“Give or take an hour,” Clyde answered.

“Three hours would be a long time to sit around and chat,” he said. “So if they weren’t having sex, what were they doing for all that time?”

Lennon chewed at her lip for a second. “Yeah. It doesn’t fit.” She paused again. “What can you tell us about the wounds?”

“Well, the male has some defensive wounds on his hands, but they’re very light and shallow, practically scratches. Which aren’t congruent with the wounds on his chest, and especially the one to his heart that ultimately killed him. Those ones are deep slashes. Considerable strength was used for those.”

“And conviction,” Ambrose said. Whoever had stabbed him with enough strength to penetrate his heart muscle had gone all in. Literally.

“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “No hesitancy whatsoever. And from a visual aspect, there doesn’t appear to be blood spatter on either of the female victims—blood, yes, which I suspect is only their own. But there most certainly would have been spatter had they stabbed him with the force necessary to cause the weapon to go through his chest wall and into his heart.”

“Which means neither of the women killed him. So in this case, at least, there was a fourth person present who walked away from the scene,” Lennon said.

“I’ll have more definitive answers shortly, but yes, I strongly suspect so.”

“Which leads me to wonder if there was another person at the first two murders as well.”

“Evidence confirmed those people stabbed each other, though, correct?” Ambrose asked.

“Yes. But some of the wounds were deeper and more ... purposeful?” She looked at Clyde for confirmation, and he gave her a nod. “Because of the hallucinogens, it was difficult to say whether the wounds held different levels of vigor, for lack of a better description, because of multiple knife wielders or because of the drugs.”

“That makes sense. People tripping on hallucinogens can morph quickly between emotions, reactions, et cetera,” Ambrose said.

“Right. But now—”

“Now it’s looking highly likely there’s a killer who probably walked away from each scene.”

Lennon nodded slowly before looking at Clyde. “The more superficial wounds—what’s your take there? That the killer was just warming up with the ones the male victim fended off?”

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