Bitter Sweets

restrain a corpse?” she asked, thinking aloud. “Or maybe they just wanted it to look like the first murder. A copycat?”

    Dr. Liu shrugged. “That’s for you to decide. I just gather the facts, right? It’s up to you and Dirk to catch the bad guy.”

    “We’re trying, we’re trying. What else do you have?”

    “Two different kinds of wire.”

    “Seriously?”

    Jennifer nodded her head. “The first one was common copper wire, like they sell in any run-of-the-mill electronic store. A thin variety.”

    “Electrical?” Savannah instantly thought of Ian Warner’s shop.

    “Yeah. But the second wire is even thinner. I’m not sure yet, but I’d say it’s piano wire. And another thing “ Jennifer reached for a nearby manila envelope and pulled out a coil of copper wire. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the end. “See how jagged and uneven the cut is?”

    Savannah saw a number of gouges along the last four inches or so of the wire and the very end looked as though it had been sawn, rather than neatly cut.

    “Yes, I see. What do you think it means?”

    “I’d say the person who cut it used a knife. See the scrapes along the side? Those were probably made when he dragged the blade along the wire, before actually severing it. And see how it’s sort of crimped?”

    “Yes.”

    “Some people cut wire by looping it over the knife first, then sawing through.”

    “It must have been a pretty good knife,” Savannah mused.

    “One of those very effective survival knives, I’d say.”

    Mark’s saw suddenly went quiet, and the women found themselves shouting in a silent room.

    “Cap’s off,” he said, stepping back and giving a grandiose wave toward the body. “He’s all yours.”

    “Ah, ha...now we can find the bullet,” Dr. Liu said, all but rubbing her hands together with ghoulish delight.

    Examining the front quarter of the scalp which Mark had sawn away, Jennifer carefully considered the small, round hole. “Yes, this is the entrance.” She held it under Savannah’s nose. “See, the bevel slants inward. The bullet always removes more material the farther in it goes. That’s how you can tell if it’s the entrance or exit.”

    Savannah marveled, not for the first time, at the wondrous design of the human body. Because of the dome shape, the skull was incredibly strong, yet surprisingly thin. She could see light through it as Jennifer held it up.

    “And here...Mark, bring us a flashlight so that 1 can show Savannah exactly what I’m talking about. This always amazes me, the path that a bullet makes through a brain.”

    A flashlight. Oh, great, Savannah thought. If there was anything she didn’t need right now, it was a better look.

    But on closer inspection, she found that it was, indeed, amazing. The even, black tunnel of destruction had burned its way through Earl Mallock’s consciousness, forever destroying a million complex biological processes, a million memories, and one life.

    Dr. Liu lifted out the murdered brain and laid it carefully on the tiny dissecting table, beside the scale. When she returned to the cavity, she probed the empty bowl with her gloved fingertips. “And here ...” She held up the tiny mushroomshaped piece of metal that had done all the damage. “... is our bullet.”

    She squinted at it, turning it this way and that. “Mmmm. Not what I was expecting.”

    “Why? What is it?” Savannah found that her curiosity was contagious.

    “I’d bet that it’s a .45.”

    “What’s unusual about that?”

    “Normally, a .45 would have gone on through...created an exit wound. Maybe it was a low charge.”

    “Like target ammo?”

    “Exactly. But there’s another reason I wasn’t expecting a .45.”

    “What’s that?”

    “I would have bet he was shot with the same weapon as Lisa Mallock. But she was killed with a nine millimeter.”

    Savannah held her breath for a long time, and it had nothing to do with the stench of death in the room. “No shit?” she said at last.

    Dr. Liu quirked one eyebrow. “Are you sure they were killed by the same person?”

    Savannah’s head swam. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

    CHAPTER TWENTY

    “I don’t know what you’re so excited about,” Dirk told Savannah in his usual, pessimistic tone that irritated her to death.

    Leave it to him to pop her bubble at every possible opportunity.

    “This is a very interesting development,” she argued. “You just