Page 18 of So Twisted

Faith gasped and slapped Michael on the shoulder. “Michael! And after accusingmeof impure thoughts!”

“Hey, Ellie won’t shut up about Chris Hemsworth, so I get to fantasize about Salma Hayek.”

“Okay, well, leave that in your marriage, okay? I don’t need another reason to be awkward around your wife.”

Michael chuckled. “Fair enough.”

They pulled into the parking lot of the coroner’s office a few minutes later. Faith was always a little put off by how small the offices of such functionaries were in places like Council Bluffs. It really wasn’t surprising considering you could fit the entire populations of Council Bluffs into a large neighborhood in Philadelphia, but it was strange to walk into a building that was barely larger than a laundromat and know that this was wherethey managed murders. It made her think wistfully about her old idea of retiring to the Midwest.

Turk started acting strange again when they entered the coroner’s office. He whined and shook his head from side to side, pawing at his nose.

“What’s up with him?” Michael asked.

“I’m not sure,” Faith said.

And that wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t acting like he couldn’t smell right now. He was acting like something he was smelling was too intense. She sniffed the air but couldn’t pick up anything that might have that effect on him.

Finally, Turk’s breath hitched. He tossed his head back, then whipped it forward and sneezed violently. He sighed and trotted forward.

Michael covered his mouth and laughed. Faith shrugged, trying to hide her relief behind nonchalance. “Problem solved.”

The coroner greeted them with a smile as weary as Lisa Hartley’s. She was about ten years younger than Lisa, which made her about ten years older than Faith, dark-haired with candy-blue eyes and supermodel features.

“Good afternoon, agents,” she said. “I’m Dr. Yun. Welcome to my humble abode.”

Her voice was chipper in spite of her weary expression. Faith guessed that was due to years of practice pushing through the tragedy of a job that involved looking at the bodies of murdered people.

“I’ll cut right to the chase,” she said. “You guys already know that the killer was a person and not a panther or a snake.”

“Jaguar,” Michael said.

She lifted an eyebrow, and he shook his head. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

She looked him up and down and smiled slightly. It looked like Michael had an admirer out here too now. “No. Not a jaguar either. What we have is a very, very sick human.”

"Do you know what the murder weapons were?" Faith asked.

“I have a pretty good idea. Weapon one was a bunch of box cutter blades glued to something with superglue.”

“Box cutters?”

“Yes. You know the trapezoidal blades with razor-sharp edges that are really thin?”

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about. Just… Interesting.”

Dr. Yun shuddered. “If you say so. “Anyway, our guy here used ten of these blades to tear Marcus Reeves’ throat out. The skin itself was pierced by a point, sliced cleanly on one side and torn on the other side. That’s how I can tell it was a box cutter blade. The blunt edge was still thin enough to slice through, just not as cleanly.”

“How much force would it take to do something like that.”

“Alot.Think beartrap kind of force. It’s not so much the need to tear through the skin and flesh as it is that the blades are weak. Box cutters are sharp, but their blades are fragile since they’re supposed to cut through tape and cardboard, not people. In order for this to work, the closing force would have to be so great that the skin was sliced before the surface tension had a chance to bend the blades. Otherwise, there would be chips of metal in Marcus Reeve’s neck.”

“So a very powerful spring-loaded mechanism tore his throat out with a bunch of box cutters,” Faith summarized.

“Exactly so.”

Faith furrowed her brow. “What kind of tool would be able to do something like that?”

“Well, this was almost certainly fabricated, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would guess he used a coil spring from a mountain bike suspension for the jaws.”

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