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.
A VISIT TO TESSA WAS NEXT ON MY TO-DO LIST, AND I pulled into the parking lot of the Nord du Lac Neurological Rehabilitation Center shortly before noon. Nord Neuro, as everyone called it, was a three-story facility situated across the street from St. Long Parish Hospital. The owners did their best to make the place look warm and inviting—nice landscaping, clean exterior, fresh paint—but there really was no way to make that kind of place look nice. Still, I appreciated that it didn’t look like a total hellhole. I’d tapped heavily into my own savings as well as Tessa’s to pay for her care—grateful that I had the power of attorney to do so. Nord Neuro was a private facility, which meant that it was fucking expensive, even with Tessa’s insurance. But I knew that, one way or another, I would be paying the bills for only a couple of months.
I shut the car off but stayed where I was, gripping the steering wheel and listening to the tick of the engine as it cooled. I hated coming here, but more than that, I hated having my aunt here. Hated it with my entire being—and the only reason I could stand it at all was because I knew that she was completely unaware of her surroundings. Or is she? Rhyzkahl had said that an essence could return—sometimes on its own, but with more surety if coaxed along. That’s why I was here today—to collect what I needed for the ritual that would hopefully do that coaxing.
I got out of my car, hefting my backpack onto my shoulder. Don’t get your hopes up, I chided myself. It was all well and good to hope, but the seemingly inevitable disappointment was bitter. And if more essence gets consumed, how will that affect my aunt? Her essence was floating free at the moment, but if the balance were to shift too far, her essence would be sucked back into the “pool” instead of returning to her body.
I didn’t like thinking about that.
The glass doors slid open, and I mentally braced myself against the feel of the place. It didn’t have the sour food and urine smell of most nursing homes, but it held enough of the over-antiseptic hospital smell that I had to shiver.