Tally whispered a prayer. Serrano clenched his jaw. Rachel merely stood there, poring over the body of a man who, twenty-four hours ago, had been responsible for teaching her son.
Though the damage the fire had wreaked upon Matthew Linklater was horrifying, it wasn’t what Rachel was focused on. She was staring at the soda-can-size hole that had been . . . burrowed . . . into the man’s abdomen.
“What is that?” she asked Hector Moreno.
“That is where the rodent gnawed its way into his body,” Moreno said, trying to keep his voice even.
“The what did what?” Serrano said.
“When I went to remove the organs, I found this hole with a number of very small bones inside the victim’s cavity. I believe they’re rodent bones. And based on the organ and tissue damage, I’m pretty sure Linklater was still alive when it was inside him.”
“How exactly would that happen?” Tally said.
“It gnawed its way in,” Moreno said.
“When you say gnawed,” Serrano said, “do you literally mean . . .”
“I mean literally split the man’s skin open with its claws and teeth,” Moreno said. “A human sternum is pretty strong, with the breastplate. But from the bottom tip of the xiphoid process to the top of the pubis bone, people are pretty soft. Just skin and muscle and what lies beneath.”
“What in the ever-loving hell . . . ,” Serrano said.
Rachel said, “It’s an infamous form of medieval torture. The Dutch used to put rats inside pottery, place it on a naked victim, then put hot coals on top.” They all looked at her. She shrugged. “What?”
“I’m not sure I want to know how you know that,” Moreno said.
“It was more commonly used as an interrogation technique,” Rachel continued. “A prisoner would be restrained, bare chested. Then a rat was placed inside a metal bucket, and the open end placed on the person’s abdomen. If the person didn’t cooperate, a torch was held to the bottom of the bucket. As the metal grows hotter, the rat begins to cook, and it looks for a way out. And, well, people are softer than metal.”
“Is that what killed Linklater?” Serrano asked.
“I haven’t been able to determine the exact cause of death due to the degrading of most of the internal organs. But I did find something else.” Moreno led them around to the corpse’s head and traced a thin line by the right temple. “When bones reach an extremely high temperature, they begin to crack. This includes the skull, and they generally rupture along their suture lines. But I found one that is not along a suture line. A small fracture in the right temporal bone. It’s not from the fire and appears to have been caused by blunt-force trauma.”
“Could that be what killed him?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t think so,” Moreno said. “It wasn’t a severe enough blow to have killed him, but it likely would have caused some cerebral bleeding or at least a concussion. Treatable with medical attention.”
“Did it occur before or after Mighty Mouse began cooking?” Serrano asked.
“Again, it’s hard to say, given the condition of the body,” said Moreno.
“I’ll bet the head wound happened before,” Rachel said. “They had to get Linklater from downstairs to his bedroom without him screaming bloody murder. I’ll bet they knocked him out, cracked his skull, then brought him upstairs.”
Tally said, “If that holds up, then Linklater suffered the head wound at the front door. Which means he opened the front door for someone. Which means there’s a good chance he knew his attacker.”
Rachel nodded. “Literally opened the door to his own murder.”
“So you think Linklater was tortured to give up information?” Serrano asked. “He was a teacher. Who would do that to a teacher?”
“I don’t think he was tortured for information.”
“Then why?” Serrano asked.
“To send a message. Whoever cracked his skull didn’t care how badly the wound injured him. They knew he was going to die imminently anyway,” Rachel said. “Head wounds aren’t like they are in the movies, where someone gets walloped in the head with a sledgehammer, then they wake up an hour later with nothing a couple Tylenol can’t cure. A head wound like this one on Linklater could cause a brain hemorrhage. Right, Dr. Moreno?”
The ME nodded. “As I said, the skull wound wasn’t enough to kill him, but without proper treatment, it certainly could have presented major problems.”
“So Linklater was dead either way,” Rachel continued. “Now, there are six other homes on the same block where Linklater lives. The killer may have wanted us to know it was arson and murder, but they didn’t want to actually get caught. Look there. At his mouth. You can see white fibers seared into the dermis. There was a cloth of some sort inserted into Linklater’s mouth to prevent him from screaming. So the killer wasn’t looking for a confession.”
Tally said, “You’re saying the rat was going to . . . eat into him no matter what.”
Rachel nodded. “The killer wanted Matthew Linklater to suffer.”
“A message rat for the cops,” Tally said, rubbing her temples. “Just when you think you’ve seen everything.”
Serrano said, “What if the message wasn’t meant for law enforcement?”
“What do you mean?” Rachel asked.
“You might be an expert on medieval torture, Rachel, but obviously not movies. When a body is found with a rat, it’s meant to scare other people from talking. Whoever did this knows the press will report the circumstances surrounding Linklater’s death. Linklater wanted to say what he knew—hence the email to you—but before he could, somebody wanted to shut him up and scare others into doing the same.”
“Obviously, Matthew Linklater knew something he wasn’t supposed to,” Tally said. “But there are no records of any criminal complaints filed by Matthew Linklater, no arrests, and no records of any 911 calls from his home or cell. The only thing that appears to be out of the ordinary was his email to Rachel.”
Serrano said, “So here’s what we know. Matthew Linklater knew something that unnerved someone so bad that they tortured and killed him to make sure he wouldn’t talk and to scare anyone else from talking. Unfortunately, we don’t know what Linklater knew, how he got it, or exactly who his death is meant to scare. But if this murder was a warning, it was directed at somebody. The big question is who.”
“And remember,” Tally said, locking eyes with Rachel, “Linklater’s cell phone has not been found, which means the killer likely took it. And whoever has the phone also has access to Linklater’s emails. Which means they know he contacted you and know you’re going to be looking into this murder. So watch your back, Rachel.”
CHAPTER 8
When Rachel got home, she tossed her clothes into a pile on the bathroom floor and spent the next thirty minutes showering in an attempt to cleanse the smoke, soot, and grime from her skin and images of the mutilated body of Matthew Linklater from her mind.
When Rachel moved her family to Ashby, she’d had every intention of disappearing into the unassuming, tree-lined, nod-at-your-neighbor-and-move-along background. She would work a menial job for menial pay, while her children would resume their educations that had been so mercilessly interrupted by fate.