Draw One In The Dark(44)

"I'm sorry," Rafiel said. There was some change that Kyrie couldn't quite define to his tone. "We were having breakfast."



The man in the lab coat—a doctor?—grinned. "Breakfast, before this? Oh, no. You know so much better than that."



"To be honest, Mike," Bob said, "he hasn't tossed his cookies in about a year. Not since that vagrant found at the warehouse that had been there for over three months, last summer, remember?"



Rafiel said nothing, only shook his head and a light red tinge appeared on his cheeks. And Kyrie realized all of a sudden what his tone had been. The sound in his voice had been the sound of a little boy responding to his betters, of a young man convincing the elders of his worthiness.



"This is Kyrie Smith," Rafiel said, gruffly. "She'll be taking notes."



The two older men looked at her as if noticing her presence for the first time. The medical examiner smiled and Bob raised his eyebrows, his eyes twinkling with amusement. She rather suspected that, notebook or not, she'd just been relegated to the girlfriend realm again.



She ducked her head, while the examiner turned to a point in the wall, where a little light flashing and a glint of something seemed to indicate the presence of a camera, and said, "We have washed and set the body, ready for examination." He gestured toward the body on the table.



It looked much better than the night before. Or perhaps much worse. It was all a matter of perspective. The night before, it had looked like a piece of meat wrapped in blood-soaked rags. Now, laid out on the table, it looked definitely human.



"The victim," the medical examiner continued, in that officious voice that people get when talking into recording instruments, "is a Caucasian male, blue-eyed, five foot nine, two hundred and thirty pounds, probably between thirty and forty years old. As far as we can determine, he died of multiple stab wounds, by an instrument to be determined." He gestured toward a large Ziploc bag at the corner of the room, against the multicolored wall. It was filled with something that looked black and ragged. "I removed the victim's clothes—T-shirt and slacks—in the presence of Officer McDonald, and bagged them. They will be handed to the custody of Officer McDonald and Officer Trall for further analysis. As reported to me by Officer McDonald, the corpse was not found to have any identification and the police department is waiting for a missing-persons report that might give some clue as to his identity."



"Instrument to be determined, Mike?" Rafiel asked, leaning forward to take a closer look at the very pale corpse crisscrossed by dark gashes.



The medical examiner looked up. "They don't look like knife stab wounds."



"What about . . . I mean, yesterday we thought it might be another of those animal attacks?"



"What animal . . . ? Oh, the victims cut in half?" Mike said. "Not that I can tell. I mean, yeah, the other ones have some marks consistent with perhaps animal teeth, though I would hate to see the animal with teeth that size. But this one . . ." He frowned. "More like he was stabbed multiple times by a weird implement. A nubby sword with a serrated edge, perhaps?"



Rafiel blinked. He looked toward Kyrie and frowned.



Kyrie felt relieved. Well, at least a little relieved. She took a deep breath. A nubby sword with a serrated edge didn't seem like anything that Tom could have been carrying on him. She had seen his teeth—glimmering in the moonlight—and they looked as polished and smooth as the best gourmet knives. So they couldn't be confused with these stabbing implements. And Tom hadn't had anything on him. She remembered him in the bathroom.



Her sense of relief surprised her. Did she care that much if Tom was guilty or not? But then she thought that considering she might be called on to administer justice, and considering she had already hidden him from the law, in a way, yes, she did care.



She made a quick note on the nature of the implements, and looked up to see that the doctor and Rafiel were removing something, with tweezers—from the man's grey hair.



"Looks like the same green powder found on the clothes and the body when we first examined it," Mike said. "We're sending it for analysis."



Rafiel was frowning at a little baggie into which he'd collected what looked like a sprinkle of bright green powder. "Looks like pollen," he said. "Anything flowering about now that's this bright green?" he looked at Bob.



"Not that I know," Bob said. "Label it. We'll hand it over to the lab. Who knows? They might actually figure it out."



He shrugged and Kyrie didn't know if he was being ironic. She also didn't have time to think about it, because Mike had sliced a Y shape on the man's chest and opened the body cavity.