Page 26 of Forever Dead

Connor nodded. “Someone you trust to get us the right result?”

“He’s one of the best.”

“How long until we get the results?”

“Connor.”

“I know. When you know, I know.”

“That’s usually how this works.”

Connor let the mild irritation pass. He moved closer to Eleanor’s head.

The injury was more difficult to see now that the body had been cleaned. That somehow made it worse. The swelling and bruising no longer distracted from the unnatural position of the neck.

He remembered her standing outside the high school on graduation days, clapping for students as if each diploma belonged partly to her. She had taught half the county and corrected the grammar of the other half. Connor had never known anyone to speak badly of her. Even people who had hated school seemed to make an exception for Miss Marsh.

Seeing her on Blethan’s table made the killing feel less like another case and more like an attack on something Elmsview had taken for granted.

“Tell me about this.”

Blethan came around the table. “The fracture pattern?”

“Yeah.”

The doctor gently indicated the upper cervical area without moving the body. “Multiple fractures. Significant rotational force. The vertebrae here and here are damaged, and there’s disruption higher up as well.”

Connor stared down at Eleanor. “Could someone do that with their bare hands?”

“Yes.”

Arnold’s expression tightened.

Blethan continued. “It would take strength. Considerable strength. Particularly on an adult who was resisting.”

“She was eighty?”

“Seventy-nine.”

“And small.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make the mechanism easy. Whoever did this committed fully to it.”

Connor thought about the hands Blethan had described around Eleanor’s throat, the strange material beneath her nails, and the smashed chair laid across her afterward.

"So, we're probably looking for a man."

“Probably.”

“Age?”

Blethan hesitated. “Physical strength alone doesn’t give you an age. We’re looking for someone capable of generating considerable force, probably male, but I wouldn’t narrow it further from the injury alone. Don’t turn a medical estimate into a suspect description.”

“I won’t.”

Arnold said, “Anything else preliminary?”

“Bruising around the throat supports manual strangulation or compression before the neck was broken. Some small defensive injuries on the hands. No obvious sexual component. Nothing that immediately suggests prolonged torture.”