Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

Dropping down next to me, he leaned his head back on the cushion and closed his eyes.

“Yeah. My back started doing its tensing thing about thirty minutes ago.”

“Have you tried having acupuncture for it? Both Sam and Ryan get theirs done every two weeks, and they swear by it.”

Mulling it over, he eventually nodded. “I’ll look it up. It’s just muscle spasms, but if something could stop them happening, that’d be fucking awesome.”

“Does it happen every day?”

“Not really. Sometimes it happens through the night, but these ones are because we were doing a simulated investigation all day.”

This part of his schoolwork intrigued me. I understood environmental sciences and the different aspects involved in it all, and I loved the ecosystem and looking at ways to slow down climate change, but forensic sciences was a whole new ball game for me. I’d only seen stuff about it on television, so I never really learned that much about it.

“What was the scene?”

“It was based on a real life crime,” he explained tiredly. “A man and woman were found dead in their basement, with almost a whole roll of duct tape around their heads.”

“Jesus.”

Opening his eyes and blinking, he was just in time to watch as Milkshake jumped up on the couch, his agile body not touching either of us until he wanted it to.

“Yeah, it was awful. Anyway, their arms and legs had been duct taped behind their backs, too.”

“And this was a real case?” When he nodded, I mumbled, “What the fuck is wrong with some people?”

“A lot’s wrong with them. Seriously, there’s some really fucked up and twisted people in the world.”

“Are you sure this is what you want to do for the rest of your life?” I asked worriedly.

Surely it would affect him mentally dealing with stuff like that every day.

“Absolutely,” he replied firmly, turning his head to look at me. “It hits you hard that those people exist and that the bodies you’re dealing with suffered. But it also lights a fire in you to get the victims justice and make sure no one else goes through it.

“Plus, forensic science isn’t just based on what we were doing today. Professor Constane’s like the cool uncle who wants you to try everything, so he puts you into scenes like that to make you think long and hard about different elements of what the profession entails.”

“I can understand that.” Wasn’t that what my paper today had done in a way, but for the environment? “What happened after that?”

“Well, the scene we were presented with was two medical dummies with the tape where the victims had it. The crime scene is laid out exactly like the real one, too, and we had to piece it together.” His expression changed from tired to animated as he explained it.

“Wait,” I held up my hand. “Did they die before or after the tape was wrapped around their heads?”

Twisting so that his upper body was facing me now, he nodded. “That’s just it, the guy died after it was put on. When we removed the tape, there was blood on the inside. We’re given a post mortem report to compare to the crime scene—which, obviously, we wouldn’t get in real life, but it helps you gain analytical experience—and the guy was beaten badly. If the degree of bleeding we found on the tape was evident before it was applied, it wouldn’t have stuck to the skin.”

“So,” I said slowly, trying to keep up. “He died because the tape suffocated him?”

“Negative, although it would have if they’d just left him with it on. He suffocated on blood from a punctured lung which made its way into his throat and up his nose. With nowhere for the blood to come out, he suffocated on it.”

“God, that’s awful.” I gagged at the mental image that popped into my head.

“His injuries were extensive. They found seventy-three different wounds on him, ranging from beating, kicking, trauma from a blunt force instrument, stab wounds, and finally three bullets were fired into his abdomen.”

“What the fuck?” I breathed, looking at him wide-eyed. “I felt bad for punching you in the balls. How can someone do that to another human?”

“That’s wasn’t the worst of it. They raped and stabbed his wife, before strangling her until she passed out and wrapped her head in the tape. She died of asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen, but she had damage to her brain from the beating that would have been incompatible with life anyway. She was already dead when they fired two bullets into her.”

“God, those poor people.”

Nodding grimly, he watched Milkshake as he graced Jackson with his presence, walking onto his lap and curling up, then staring at him like he was permitting him to scratch his head.

Doing it, Jackson blew out a breath. “Thanks, Fugly. I needed that, man.”