A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(103)

I’ve asked Mathias for a second opinion on the cause of death. All he knows is that we have a theory.

“Collapsed lung, obviously,” Mathias says. “You have exposed the lung, which makes your findings easy to determine.”

“I’m not making a game of it, Mathias. You can see what we’ve found. I’d like you to confirm it as cause of death.”

“Cause of death is clearly that lung, given the fact it is collapsed and there is bloody froth in his mouth.” He flips open Roger’s eyelids. “Bloodshot eyes suggest suffocation. The fact he did not fight means he was receiving too much morphine. Which could suggest…” He checks Roger’s lung. “There is a puncture lining up with a stab wound. Someone exacerbated the injury. Used a lancet or other thin object to bypass the ribs and puncture the lung.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The wound has been stitched, yet it is open slightly at this end. There was no injury to the lung yesterday. I was here. There is also tissue damage consistent with a blade being inserted and removed.” He points it out. “It may appear the killer knew what he was doing, but he was really only making an educated guess. Anyone with basic knowledge of anatomy could do the same.”

Mathias taps the morphine pump. “This has been tampered with.”

“How can you tell?”

“I cannot. But we know he slept through suffocation. I watched you and William pore over your notes, discussing exactly how much morphine this man needed. I know enough about sedatives to have agreed with your dosage. Someone increased it. Does that concur with your findings?”

“It does.”

“Which would suggest I did not kill this man.”

“I only wanted—”

He switches to French and puts his back to Dalton. “Playing coy doesn’t become you, Casey. You didn’t need a second opinion. You wanted to see if I would argue that you and William missed that damage to the lung. That this man did, indeed, die of his injuries.”

I glance at Dalton, but he doesn’t insist Mathias return to English. Mathias will speak more freely to me.

He drops the probe back on the tray with a clack.

“If you expect me to deny you’re a suspect,” I say, “you know better. I’m sorry if you’re offended—”

“Not at all. Nor are you sorry, so you should not say so. It cheapens our relationship. You believe I may have killed this man. My only question is whether you also believe I am guilty of the rest. Of the kidnappings and the deaths. I believe you do. You have determined that the timing of my arrival in Rockton does not completely absolve me. Your suspect only needed to be present at the time of Robyn Salas’s death. Which I likely was.”

I open my mouth, but he keeps going. “The death of this man removes him as your former top suspect. It also suggests your killer is almost certainly a local. No one could enter Rockton twice and not be recognized as a stranger.”

“Fine,” I say. “You’re a suspect. Thank you for your time—”

“Before I go, I must ask … what do you consider as my motivation?”

“Motivation is the last thing I consider. Facts come first.”

“So you presume I’m simply a garden-variety sociopath, a man who rapes and tortures women for fun? No. Again, you insult our relationship by lying.”

“This isn’t about our relationship. It’s about my job.”

“You have a motivation in mind. You will. It is how your mind works.”

He moves around the examination table, coming toward me. Dalton tenses, but Mathias stops out of reach of me.

“You know why I am in Rockton, yes?” he says. “I presume Eric has told you.”

“The moment anyone becomes a suspect, that information is no longer privileged.”

“I am not whining about privacy, Casey. We surrender that when we come here, and the fact we retain any privacy at all is a courtesy. So you know what happened to me. What that poor excuse for a human accused me of.”

“Yes.”

He studies my face. “You know something more. Or you think you do.”

“I know there was a second case. One that wasn’t officially tied to you. A disembowelment.”

I have to switch to English for the last word. My French vocabulary isn’t that extensive. It catches Dalton’s attention. That’s intentional. I could have found another way to phrase it, but this is me letting him know what I’m sharing, asking if he wants me to stop. He stays quiet.

“The council did their homework. I am impressed.” Mathias considers. “Too impressed. They are not that thorough. It was Eric, I presume? Checking our stories.”

I say nothing.

“It would be Eric,” Mathias says. “He is the only one who cares enough to be thorough. And his uneducated hick-sheriff routine is quite possibly the least convincing performance I have ever seen. So you have two cases suggesting I somehow persuaded killers to commit terrible acts of self-mutilation.” He leans against the examining table. “But how would that relate to Nicole and the others? I know one could say Nicole caused the death of her brother—yes. He was held captive, wasn’t he? Held prisoner and tortured. If I believed in retributive justice, I might give her a true taste of what her brother went through. Yet the entire scenario does not fit. Her captor tormented her for personal pleasure.”