Page 65 of The Couple's Secret
Rigor mortis set in two to six hours after death. This also fit in with the timeline of Riley’s death.
Josie and Gretchen knelt across from Anya, watching as her gloved hands worked nimbly over Riley’s clothes, pushing her collar down, rolling up the cuffs of her sleeves, spreading the lapels of the sweater, folding up the hem of the T-shirt under it to check for any injuries or evidence not immediately visible. Today’s shirt was hot pink with black lettering that said: I’m Like 104% Tired. Anya lifted the waistband of her leggings. There were no marks along her abdomen.
Anya got on her hands and knees, lowering her face until it was inches from concrete as she tried to get a closer look at Riley’s hand. The blowflies scuttled away, taking flight, before diving back toward another area of exposed flesh. Their greenish-blue backs gleamed in the sunlight as more and more attacked Riley’s face.
“Hmmm,” Anya murmured, sitting back on her haunches and grabbing her camera.
Josie stood and rounded the body. Once Anya finished taking additional photos, she pointed to Riley’s palm. It was angled toward her thigh. Kneeling, Josie, too, had to contort her body to get a look at what had caught Anya’s attention.
“I don’t see anything.”
Anya’s index finger slid between Josie’s face and Riley’s palm, pointing to a small series of tiny punctures. Four of them, evenly spaced to form the four corners of a square in the fleshy skin below her index finger.
Josie huffed out a breath to discourage the blowfly that landed dangerously close to her nostrils. “What is it?”
“Some sort of patterned injury, I’d imagine,” Anya said. “Though I’m not sure what from.”
A patterned injury was one that reproduced a mirror image or features of the object that caused the injury. Sometimes they were easy to identify—like a belt buckle—and other times, like now, it wasn’t clear.
“Nothing on the other hand besides rings,” Gretchen reported before joining them. Josie shuffled aside to give her room to examine Riley’s palm.
“It’s too symmetrical to be from pebbles or gravel. It looks like she was clutching something in her hand hard enough to break the skin,” Anya added.
“Something small,” Gretchen said.
Anya continued her examination, moving down to Riley’s pantlegs and finally, the tops of her socks, finding nothing. Her sneakers were snug on her feet, laces tied tightly.
Josie and Gretchen helped Anya turn Riley over so she could repeat the process—peeking under sleeves, hems, and waistbands. Nothing.
Finally, Anya hauled herself to her feet and used her forearm to wipe sweat from her brow, batting away more flies. “No visible injuries other than those punctures on her palm. Nothing to suggest foul play. Not at this point. She’s twenty-three?”
“Yeah,” Josie answered. “No medical issues.”
Anya’s gaze was locked on Riley’s face. “I’ll have to perform an autopsy. Sometimes young people have undiagnosed cardiac conditions. There are no signs until… well, until there are and then it’s too late.”
Thirty-Five
Chief Bob Chitwood’s voice boomed, echoing through the stairwell. Josie, Noah, Gretchen, and Turner were all at their desks when they heard him from the second-floor great room. If he was hollering before he even walked through the door, it wasn’t good. Seconds later, he appeared, his acne-pitted face flushed, and his eyebrows drawn down in a dark scowl. Wisps of his thinning white hair floated over his balding pate.
“What in the hell is going on?” he said. “The couple from Brighton Springs. Now one of their kids? Is this for real? Quinn, Palmer. Tell me you’ve got something. The press are outside multiplying like maggots on a damn corpse. Pretty soon I’m gonna have the Mayor breathing down my neck, and I can’t stand that woman.”
“Pretty sure no one likes her, Chief,” Gretchen muttered.
He folded his arms and looked down his nose at the four of them. “Well? What do you have?”
“On Riley Stevens?” Gretchen said. “Waiting on the autopsy, but it looks like she had a heart attack or went into cardiac arrest.”
The Chief frowned. “Natural causes?”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“What about the couple? What do you have on that case?”
“A big fat nothing,” Josie answered honestly.
Turner gave a low whistle. “Damn, Quinn. You’re not even trying to save your own ass here.”
“Shut up, douch— Turner,” she said without looking at him.
