Blood of the Demon (Kara Gillian 2)

Her smile grew even wider, if that was possible. “Oh, thank you for saying that! And I sure am glad to see y’all coming in. Maybe it’s my imagination, but she sure seems perkier after each visit.”

I blinked. “Wait. Is someone else visiting besides me?”

“Sure is! There’s a man who’s been stopping by late in the evenings. I figured it must be another family member, since visitors are restricted to immediate family only at that hour.”

What the fuck? “Can you describe him?”

She bit her lip. “Wow. Um … well, he’s older than me. And he’s kinda tall, I guess.” She shook her head and gave me a bewildered look. “I’m sorry. I tried to talk to him and introduce myself, but he just kinda looked at me and didn’t say much. I assumed it was her husband or brother or something.”

“She doesn’t have either,” I said with a frown.

Melanie’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no. He must have lied about being family!” Then her face brightened. “Maybe it’s a boyfriend, and he lied so that he could be near her! Y’know, out of love. And he was so subdued and quiet and eerie and all because he was so sad she was here.” She put her hand on her chest and gave a tragic sigh.

I stared at her as Mr. Roommate was overcome with an inexplicable coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like laughter. There was a part of me that wanted to shake her and demand to know how anyone could be that naïve, but a slightly more rational part of me pointed out that there was a dearth of innocent exuberance in the world, so physical violence probably wasn’t the best option here.>Doc pulled Brian’s lips back and looked down at his teeth, eyes narrowed. “Missing right front incisor. You’re right, Kara.”

I allowed myself a pleased smile. “All right, Doc,” I said. “Did he pull the trigger himself or was he murdered?”

“No fucking idea,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he picked up a scalpel and began to shave around the holes in the scalp and skull. “But I’m hoping to have an answer for you soon.” He peered at the wounds, lifting sections of skull that had been in the body bag and fitting them to the still-intact part of the skull. He put his hand out and Carl placed a long plastic rod in it without being asked—a sign of how long the two had worked together.

Doc poked the rod into the hole at Brian’s right temple, working it carefully until it protruded through the other side. Despite the morbid look of the thing, there was no better way to get a solid idea of what the trajectory of the bullet had been.

Doc peered at the rod, then shrugged and glanced back at me. “Well, the angle’s consistent.…” He frowned, then shook his head. “And he was definitely shot at close range, though I’m not seeing signs that the gun was flush against his head.”

“What do you mean?”

He pointed to the shaved area of scalp. “There’s plenty of stippling from gunpowder, but there aren’t any burns or blackening of the edges, and”—he peeled the scalp back to show the skull—“on a contact wound, you’d have a stellate-shaped entrance wound, and you’d see blackening on the skull as well.”

“So … he didn’t kill himself?”

He merely gave an infuriating shrug. “I can’t say that either. He could have held the gun a few inches away.”

“You’re no help,” I said sourly. “What about gunshot residue on his hands?”

“There could be GSR on his hands just from being in the same room when the gun was fired,” he pointed out.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t give up hope yet,” he reassured me with a gesture toward the bagged hands. “I’ll check to see if there’s any blowback on his hands, plus I’ll ask the lab to swab the gun for contact DNA. It was his duty weapon?”

“Yeah.”

“Then if someone else’s DNA is found, that’s fairly telling.” He unbagged Brian’s hands, then lifted them for me to see and for Carl to photograph. “This isn’t much help either.”

I scowled. “Covered in blood.”

“Yep. He had his hands in a pool of his own blood.”

“So for now it’s undetermined?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

Doc nodded. “For now. Sorry.”

I stripped off my gloves and other protective gear. “All right. I guess I have to make some phone calls.” And continue to try to figure out what was eating essence. “You’ll call me if you find anything interesting on Davis Sharp?”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he replied.

Well, I wanted to bury myself in work, I reminded myself as I left the morgue. At this rate I won’t have time to worry about anything else.

Chapter 11