“You have a weird look on your face,” Jack said, getting up to greet me.
“How old do you think Molly is?” I asked.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she’s in college. Why?”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “She’s interested in Doug.”
Jack rocked back on his heels. “Our Doug? The Doug who leaves empty pizza boxes on the counter and his dirty socks two feet from the clothes hamper?”
“One and the same,” I said. “She wants him to meet her on Wednesday for happy hour. Do you think we should tell her he’s only sixteen?”
“Nope,” Jack said. “He needs to tell her. I’ll talk to him. Though I can’t imagine it’d be too hard to figure out.”
“Maybe he has some serious game,” Cole said, squeezing in next to Lily in the round corner booth.
“I’m going to give you a chance to revise your statement since you’ve met the Doug we’re talking about,” Jack said, his lips pressing together.
“You and I both know it’s always an older woman who kicks a boy’s hormones into full gear,” Cole said. “For me it was Mrs. Hanson. Fifth grade. She wore this red sweater that sent me into puberty much too early. Changed my life forever. Besides, I thought nerds were in now. I’m sure Doug gets all the ladies.”
“If by ladies you mean his creepy computer, then you’re probably right,” I said. “I’m not sure real girls are ready for Doug.”
The waiter arrived and said, “I’m Henry. What can I get you to drink?”
“I want a margarita. Lots of salt. Lots of tequila,” Lily said.
“Wow,” Cole said, surprised. “That must have been one hell of an autopsy.”
Henry jostled his notepad at the word autopsy and his eyes went wide.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “We washed our hands.”
Henry didn’t look convinced.
“It wasn’t one of my favorites,” Lily said. “But now it’s officially my day off, so drinks.”
“Ahh, sometimes I miss my twenties,” I said. “When you get our age day drinking is usually followed by heartburn and an immediate need for a nap.”
“I’d like to go back to the statement about how this autopsy wasn’t one of your favorites,” Cole said. “Does that mean you have a favorite?”
“Definitely,” Lily said.
“Me too,” I followed up. “There are some that just stick with you.”
Jack and Cole looked at us like we were crazy, and Sheldon was still perusing the drink menu, not paying attention to the conversation.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” Sheldon finally said. “It’s my day off too.”
I’d only witnessed Sheldon under the influence of alcohol once before, and he’d made some pretty terrible decisions that had almost gotten him killed. I was hoping today wasn’t going to be like the last time.
Jack must have had the same thought because he looked at me with a combination of amusement and pure terror in his eyes.
“So, did you find anything?” Jack asked, after Henry had disappeared.
“You could say that,” I said. “She was pregnant. About sixteen weeks. She wasn’t really showing yet.”
Jack’s mouth went into a hard line. “Double homicide.”
“She’s not delivered any other children,” I said. “She’s late thirties, almost forty, and after talking with her husband this morning I have to wonder if it was planned.”
“Especially if she’s meeting a guy named Peter in the alley late at night,” Cole put in. “We found a potential match for him, by the way. Figured we could swing by and talk to him after lunch. His name is Peter Trest. He owns the Curtain Call.”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said, but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard his name before and I looked at Jack quizzically.
“Trest Art Gallery,” Jack said. “And the concert hall over in King George Proper.”
Now it clicked. “Got it,” I said. “Man’s got money.”
“And some to spare,” Jack agreed.
“I took samples so we can determine paternity,” I said. “Everything is in the cooler in the Suburban and ready to send off to the lab. Tox screen came back with Phenergan in her system. She must have still been having issues with morning sickness, which makes sense because she’s a little underweight. But if she had a prescription it means she had a doctor, so that’s another name to add to the list.”
“Anything unusual about the knife wounds?” Jack asked.
The waiter was delivering drinks and chips and salsa and hanging on to every word we were saying. I had a feeling we’d all end up on TikTok if we weren’t careful, so I waited until he left again before answering.
“I swabbed the blade so it can be compared to the victim’s blood, but the wound looks like a visual match to the knife. Left to right strike, so the killer was right handed, but he didn’t just slice the blade across the throat.”
Sheldon was sitting next to me so I used him as an example, and turned and faced him like the killer would’ve been facing Juliet.
“It was a stab wound, not a slice, and he went all the way through the neck tissue and nicked the spinal column.” I held my arm up and pretended I was holding a knife, and then I brought it down, showing where the initial strike had been in the side of the neck.
“The first strike is the killing blow,” I said. “Not even immediate medical attention would’ve saved her. Knife is embedded almost to the hilt, and then he jerks it downward toward her clavicle.”
I made a quick motion and Sheldon went pale, sweat dotting his upper lip. I patted him encouragingly on the shoulder.
“And then he did it again,” I said. “There’s a second entry wound, but the trajectory is different. This cut is almost straight across until it gets to the other side of her neck, and then it tilts up slightly and it’s not as deep.”
“She was falling to the ground,” Jack said.
I could tell he was seeing it fully in his head. Jack had the ability to see a crime scene like no one I’d ever met. He could put himself there and see and understand things that the naked eye couldn’t always see. I knew from experience it wasn’t always a comfortable gift to live with.
“Exactly,” I said. “He would’ve been covered in blood, but at that point the rage kicked in. She had thirty-seven stab wounds to the chest, many of them going all the way through the torso. If you look at the tip of the knife blade you can see where the point is broken off either from where it hit pavement or bone.”
“Serious rage,” Cole said. “That kind of close-contact anger usually means the killer and victim knew each other. What could make someone so angry that they’d mutilate a pregnant woman?”
“Maybe a husband who didn’t like that his wife’s baby belonged to another man,” Jack said.
“Or a lover who didn’t want to be saddled with child support for the next eighteen years,” Lily chimed in. “There are lots of variables when husbands and lovers come into play.”