Page 19 of Crossroads Magic
Benedict Marcus glanced at the bed. “No.”
“She was moved, then. That’s…not standard procedure.” I moved back to the bed and steeled myself to study my mother once more. “Why wasn’t she left where she was found, so the police could examine the site?”
“Because she was found in the middle of the intersection, out there,” Benedict Marcus said, behind me. “The one you drove through to get here.”
I shivered. “I see.”
“We took a lot of photos,” Marcus added. “Of everything.”
I turned to him. “Let me see them.”
He reached without hesitation into his trouser pocket and withdrew a phone. It was an older model, tiny compared to the monster phones we all had these days, but it could display images. He swiped a few times, then held it out to me. “They’re graphic,” he warned.
But I was braced, now. I took the phone and turned it around. The first image showed my mother lying on asphalt, wearing the gown she wore now. Her hair was splayed around her, exactly the way it would if she had fallen backward onto the roadway.
Her eyes were open in the photo. Someone had closed them since.
The tears in her gown were the same as in the photo.
“Why isn’t there more blood?” I asked. “She was stabbed. She must have bled a lot before…before she died.”
“I believe she died very quickly,” Benedict Marcus said, his tone cool and businesslike. “Also, it snowed last night. The snow settled on…your mother, and rinsed the blood that was on the edges of the rips in the gown. Also…”
I glanced at him, but he was checking Ghaliya. Ghaliya’s face was white.
“Bathroom?” I said urgently.
Benedict Marcus pointed to the narrow door beside the chair I had used.
Ghaliya hurried to the door, pushed it open and closed it behind her.
Benedict Marcus raised his brow at me. “I don’t think that was her version of a panic attack….” His tone was speculative.
“No, it wasn’t,” I said unhelpfully. “The blood…?” I prompted him.
He nodded and looked back at the bed. “The gown was raised from her flesh by her knee, so the blood ran freely beneath it, and pooled beneath her. The gown at the back is…very stained.”
I glanced at the phone in my hand once more. My mother’s knees were drawn up and canted to one side, whichhadraised the gown from resting against her flesh.
Now I understood the reason for the plastic sheet beneath her.
I swallowed and drew in a few deep breaths, counting out my exhales. “Still, she shouldn’t have been moved,” I insisted pedantically. “The police, the coroner, they will be upset about it, when they get here. And why aren’t they here already?”
“Things move a little differently in the Crossing,” Benedict Marcus said.
“Theyhavebeen called, haven’t they?” I asked sharply.
“Yes. But it might take them a while to get here.”
“For amurder?”
“That will hurry them a little for certain,” Benedict Marcus said grimly. “But they’re usually not in a rush to come here.”
No one goes to Haigton Crossing, the man at the gas station had said.
It seemed that “no one” included the authorities, too.
I shook my head in disbelief. No wonder they had moved the body.
