Whisper of Bones (Widow's Island #3)(3)

“So he hit his head twice?” Logan asked.

“Or someone hit him twice.” Tessa was more suspicious.

“At least twice,” Henry said. “It’s hard to tell without a magnifying lamp and x-rays of the skull.”

“Could the wounds have been fatal?” Tessa asked.

“Gray matter is visible through at least one skull fracture, so that’s definitely possible.” Henry rocked back on his heels. “Submersion would have washed away any blood, but these are deep and serious wounds. If they were inflicted antemortem, they would have bled heavily.”

Because the heart stopped beating upon death, injuries sustained postmortem did not bleed as much.

Another wave shifted the body.

“Let’s move him away from the water,” Henry said.

Logan donned gloves. He and Henry dragged the body out of the surf’s reach.

Tessa leaned over Henry’s shoulder. “I’d like to check his pockets.”

“Go ahead.” Henry moved back and gave her room.

She put on gloves and searched the dead man’s pockets. She found a folded wallet in the front pocket of his jeans. Tessa opened the wallet and confirmed his ID as Jason McCoy. She noted his address on Orcas Road and bagged the wallet as evidence.

Henry removed a thermometer and scalpel from his kit. He lifted the corpse’s flannel shirt, then paused, scalpel in hand.

Tessa lowered the camera. Deep-pink blotches stained the corpse’s abdomen. Henry pointed to the dead man’s waistband. The weight of the saturated denim had caused his pants to sag. In the middle of his discolored paunch was a glaringly white oval.

“What’s that big white mark?” Logan asked.

“Contact blanching.” Henry pointed to the corpse’s belt buckle. “While lividity was developing, the buckle was pressed hard enough against his skin to compress the blood vessels.”

Logan frowned. “Could that happen if he was floating in the water?”

“I doubt it,” Henry said. “Between the contact blanching and the patterns on the hands and face, I’d say he was lying facedown on a hard surface until lividity was fixed.”

“How long does that take?” Logan asked.

“Six to eight hours at a normal room temperature.” Henry had had the position of coroner unexpectedly thrust on him, but he clearly took the job seriously and had been studying up.

Logan met Tessa’s gaze. “He didn’t die in the water.”

Jason McCoy hadn’t fallen off a boat and drowned. He hadn’t hit his head or suffered a heart attack and fallen into the sea. He hadn’t moved his own body six hours after death.

Someone had moved him.

Tessa had left Seattle and moved back to Widow’s Island to care for her mother, recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and raise her teenage half sister. She had expected some trouble adjusting to living in the rural island community. She’d expected to be bored. She’d expected to chase loose livestock from winding rural roads, write traffic tickets, and deal with rowdy tourists who’d had one too many at the Widow Maker Brewery.

Instead, she was looking at another murder.

Henry made an incision in the abdomen and took the body’s temperature via the liver. He took out a pad and wrote some notes, then looked up at Tessa. “This is clearly not a natural death or a simple accident. He’ll have to go to the medical examiner on the mainland for an autopsy.”

Even if Henry’s office had been equipped with a surgical unit, which it wasn’t, he wasn’t trained as a forensic pathologist.

“Can you give us any idea of time of death?” Tessa asked.

Henry pursed his lips. “He’s been dead longer than six hours but probably less than twenty-four. This is a very rough window.”

“Understood.” Tessa shifted the camera in her grip. Her eyes swept the beach. Kurt was talking to the kayakers and taking notes, no doubt getting their statements and contact information.

Kurt turned away from the kayakers and limped over to Logan. “I hate to ask, but would you and Henry bring the gurney from the sheriff’s boat? I don’t think I’ll be much help with this bum knee.”

“Sure,” Logan said.

Henry followed Logan back toward the dock.

Cate stepped up next to Tessa. Together they stood on the beach and stared across the water at Widow’s Island. Directly across the sparkling water of Blind Bay, the cliff of Widow’s Walk rose from the rocky shoreline. Cate didn’t have to say a word for Tessa to know exactly what she was thinking about.

Nearly twenty years ago, the third member of their inseparable childhood trio, Samantha Bishop, had gone missing. Sam’s jacket had been found at the top of the cliff, but her body had never been found. The sheriff had been convinced that Sam had fallen off the cliff.

“When Sam disappeared, the deputies searched this beach,” Tessa said. “This is the closest point between the two islands.” She remembered Logan’s earlier statement. “The current carries a lot of debris here.”

“I know.” Cate wrapped an arm around Tessa’s shoulders. “But the fact that her body didn’t wash up on this beach doesn’t mean she wasn’t swept out to sea.”

Tessa lifted her chin. “We’re going to find out what happened to her.”