Pendergast approached Gavin. “I am sorry, Sergeant. I can imagine how mortifying this is.”
Gavin nodded. “How did you…?” he began, then stopped. It was a question he’d been asking himself ever since Pendergast briefed him on the atrocity—but even now he could not quite bring himself to ask for more information.
“How did I make this discovery? Suffice it to say, McCool did the historical legwork.” He waved one hand at the ant farm of activity going on in the hollow before them. “The key fact is this: one or more present-day descendants of those killers of yore know of the massacre. They also knew about the tortured and walled-up captain. Among those individuals we will find our modern-day killer. The only step remaining now is to identify him…or her.”
As Pendergast spoke, Malaga, the head of the SOC team, came up. He fixed the FBI agent with his usual frowning expression. “Well, Agent Pendergast, thanks to you we’ve really got our hands full.”
“So it would seem.”
Malaga ran a hand over his shaved head. “There’s one thing I’m curious about. When I got here, two dozen skeletons had been exposed from the grave site. Once you realized it was a crime scene, why did you continue to uncover the remains?”
“I needed to confirm my theory—that not just murder, but mass murder, had occurred here. But if it’s a crime scene you want, it would appear there are many additional souls yet to be recovered. Poor Dr. Fosswright looks a bit overwhelmed and might welcome the assistance of you and your men.” And with this he nodded at Malaga and Gavin in turn, pulled his coat more tightly around his shoulders, turned, and began making his way through the dune fields back toward the lights of town.
35
The Essex County Coroner’s Office, Northern Division, was situated in a separate two-story wing of the Newburyport Medical Center. As Agent Pendergast entered the inner office, the M.E., Henry Kornhill, stood up from behind his desk. He was some sixty years old, tall, round about the middle, with sandy tufts of hair above each ear. He was wearing a white lab coat that—judging by its crispness and the early hour—had not yet seen duty that day.
“Dr. Kornhill,” said Pendergast. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Of course.” The coroner indicated a chair on the far side of his desk and Pendergast took a seat. “I understand you’re here about Dana Dunwoody.”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish to see the body?”
“That won’t be necessary; evidence photos will suffice. I would, however, like to hear your thoughts about the cause of death.”
The M.E. frowned. “That was logged in my official report.”
“Indeed. But I’m not interested in your official opinion. I’m interested, informally, in anything you might have—in your long experience—found interesting or unusual about the condition of the body, or concerning the cause of death.”
“Informally,” Kornhill repeated. “We scientists don’t normally indulge in speculation, but in fact there were some aspects of this homicide that intrigued me.”
Pendergast waited as Kornhill opened a folder that lay on his desk, perused it, and took a moment to form his thoughts. “I found it to be, for want of a better term, a messy killing. Judging by the bruising to the knuckles and forearms, Dunwoody tried to defend himself.” A pause. “And if I had to guess, I’d say the victim knew his attacker.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because all the wounds were anterior. Dunwoody was facing his killer. The first blow seems to have been to his right cheek, above the zygomatic arch. A fight took place. Death was caused by blunt force trauma, partially collapsing the frontal bone and the parietal bone along the coronal suture.”
“And the stab wounds?”
“Same thing. There were a total of seven, once again all to the anterior. The, ah, carvings were to the posterior.”
“They weren’t the cause of death?”
“Although a few of the stab wounds may have been antemortem, based on hemorrhaging, the great majority were done postmortem. And the carvings were all done postmortem. And all of them were too shallow to have caused dramatic exsanguination. The cuts were feeble, almost tentative. This was not an overkill situation.”
“Let’s turn for a moment, if we could, to the other recent murder—that of the historian, Morris McCool.”
Kornhill reached across his desk, pulled a second folder closer. “Very well.”
“His cause of death was quite different—a long, heavy blade that pierced the body laterally, from one side to the other.”
“Correct.”
“Would you say that, in your opinion, McCool also knew his killer?”
The coroner paused a moment, as if wondering whether this was a trick question. “No.”
“And why not?”