Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

oval shape. All of this suggests that what we are looking at here is a broad-bladed bowie knife, serrated on the back side.” He frowned at Dehan a moment. “You know the sort of thing, a survival knife, probably has a compass in the hilt.”

“I know the sort of thing.”

“Both stab wounds are very deep and quite close together, and both seem to kind of hook down, if you know what I mean. They enter the chest at the height of the second intercostals, and then penetrate downward at a slight angle into the heart.”

I frowned, trying to visualize how the blow would be delivered. He saw my face and elaborated.

“It means one of two things, John. Either the blows were delivered overhand, in an arching motion, like so…” He demonstrated, holding his pen as though it were a lance, stabbing down at my chest. “Which presents certain problems. First of all, it is a very incompetent way to stab anybody, and practically nobody uses that method outside of black and white movies. But secondly, and more to the point, the angle it gives us is too acute. It penetrates the chest at a hundred and thirty-five degrees, and what we are looking for is more like a hundred degrees. Just past the dead-straight ninety degree angle.”

Dehan scratched her head. “So what is the other thing it might mean?”

He spread his hands. “Unless we say that it was delivered by a very tall man, lunging with the knife as though he were fencing…” He paused to demonstrate. “In which case he would have to be a very strong, heavy man indeed to penetrate the sternum, I think our only other realistic scenario is that our victim is lying on his back, our killer straddles him, and using all the force of his weight, plunges the knife into his chest, in a kind of frenzy. Then we get the angle and the penetration that occured.”

I scratched my chin. “A frenzy. But it’s odd, isn’t it? Hate frenzies usually result in ten, twenty, thirty, even more stab wounds. This is just two. Bam, bam and we’re done.”

He nodded. “This is not that kind of frenzy. We had an abusive husband last month. He tormented his wife for years. Then one day, she snapped and stabbed him fifty times, over every inch of his body. No, this is not hatred. I would say this was more like fear. He was in a hurry to kill him and get out of there.”

He switched the photograph and adjusted the focus and resolution. It showed the left side of Martin’s ribcage. There was a large discoloration over his floating ribs. Then, he slid the lens up to his jaw, where there was another, and it had similar discoloration.

“These are the only bruises on his body. He has been hit twice in rapid succession with the right fist. He has fallen to the ground and immediately his assailant jumped on him, in a panic, plunged the knife twice into his chest, and fled.”

Dehan asked the question that was on my mind. “Could a woman have done this?”

His face said he didn’t like the idea. “A strong woman, using something other than her fist to strike the blows to his chest and jaw.”

“So what you are suggesting here is a burglary gone wrong.”

He wagged a finger at her. “I am suggesting nothing of the sort, young Dehan. It would certainly be consistent with a burglary gone wrong. But suggesting is for you and your partner, not me.”

She looked at me, narrowing her eyes in frustration. “Why the hell would she want to conceal the identity of a burglar?” She held up her hands. “I know! Maybe it wasn’t a burglar, maybe it was a lover. Maybe Simon walked in on her while she was shagging the reverend, but why the hell would she be shagging the reverend at the time she knew her husband was about to come home? And, who the hell takes a bowie knife along to a lovers’ rendezvous?”

I nodded.

Frank shrugged. “Those are all good questions. What struck me as particularly interesting, though…” He rested his ass against the bench and wagged his pen at us. “Was both the similarities and the contrasts with the son’s murder.”

We stared at him and he looked at us in turn. I said, “What?”

“The son. Jacob Martin. I assumed you knew. I thought you wanted me to look at both. You didn’t know?”

Dehan was shaking her head. “She had a son? Who was stabbed to death? What the fuck?”

He frowned. “Sylvie Martin’s son, Jacob. She was pregnant at the time her husband was killed. He was murdered fifteen years later, in surprisingly similar circumstances. Only the weapon was a little different. I assumed you knew.”

Eleven

We went back to his office and as I sat he handed me the file. Dehan sat next to me. Frank spoke as we leafed through the pages together.

“It was two years ago. Like the dad’s murder, it was never solved. It must be filed in your own cold cases. What I can tell you is that he was found pretty much where his father was found, at the bottom of the stairs, lying on his back, and he had been stabbed in the heart, not twice, but six times. However, the stab wounds were perimortem. There was very little bleeding. Other injuries, such as bruising and a broken neck, suggested that he might have fallen—or been pushed—down the stairs. The broken neck almost certainly killed him and he was stabbed during death or immediately after.”

“This,” I said, tossing the file on the desk, “was a hate frenzy.”

“Indeed.”

Dehan put her fingertips to her forehead and closed her eyes, like she was trying really hard to understand something. “Why…” She held up her hands to me. “Sorry,