The Turin Shroud Secret Read Free Page A

everything she says and sees during the examination.
    ‘The victim is a well-nourished woman in her late forties or early fifties. She has extensive pre-mortem injuries to her face
     including the loss of her left eye and two upper middle teeth. There is evidence of recent plastic surgery,nip and tuck scars still healing around the ears and neck.’ Her voice grows more sombre as she realises how the deceased must
     have hoped a more benign encounter with a blade would keep her looking younger and more desirable. ‘Less cosmetic are the
     injuries to the left and right cheeks – these are consistent with a series of blows, probably from front- and back-handed
     slaps. She’s suffered powerful blunt trauma to the left cheek, possibly from a fist. It’s split open and the flesh exposed
     to the bone.’ Amy moves down to the neck. ‘The deceased has bled out through a horizontal three-inch wound that severed the
     vessels in the carotid sheath. A fatal cut. She’d have died from an air embolus even if she’d survived the wound.’ Amy can’t
     help but notice its precision. No hesitant stab. Just a confident and ruthless action.
    She picks up the deceased’s manicured hands. It’s not the first time she’s touched them. Back on the beach she clipped the
     nails for trace evidence and toxicology and then had fingerprints taken. ‘No signs of major defence wounds but there are marks
     around the wrists, indicating she may have been tied up.’ Amy uses tape to lift what she’s sure are small fragments of rope
     twist from the grey skin. She stands back a little and surveys the whole torso, paying particular attention to the feet, knees,
     elbows and hands. ‘No friction or abrasion marks on normal surface contact points. No indications of the body being dragged
     across any kind of surface.’
    Next she examines the empty, red, raw eye socket. The killer used something to lever out the victim’s eyeball.
    What?
    There are no gouge marks inside the cavity to indicate where any metal might have been forced in. She realises what has happened.
     He used his fingers. The attacker pushed his thumb into her eye socket and forced it out. He then cut through the exposed
     muscle and nerve attachments. It takes a special kind of monster to do something like that. She grimaces – something Amy Chang
     seldom does. In the corner of the woman’s thin purple lips are abrasion marks, tell-tale signs that a tight gag stifled her
     screams.
    A phone on the wall rings and flashes – then trips to the message service. Amy moves on. She considers the missing teeth.
     These probably had been extracted prior to the eye damage. She looks again into the woman’s mouth. There are marks on her
     back teeth and upper pallet. Something was jammed in there to keep her jaws open while the guy went about his work. Amy angles
     the deceased’s head back and swings down the overhead light. She uses tweezers to extract small traces of white plastic from
     the inside of the upper and lower back molars. Unless she’s mistaken the killer forced a golf ball in there to be able to
     get at the front teeth.
    Amy’s seen a lot of nasty stuff on her table but her tummy turns every time she sees something like this. Something she recognises
     as the unique work of the worst kind of predator in the world – the serial killer.

6
    LATE EVENING
CARSON, LOS ANGELES
    The dark-haired man with thick eyebrows and olive-coloured skin makes sure he’s locked the front and back doors and secured
     the windows. Burglary is not something he wants to fall victim to – the irony would be unbearable.
    He walks through to the Spartan kitchen and opens an old larder fridge that only ever contains three things: UHT milk – the
     type that lasts six to nine months – a box of eggs and a tub of low-fat spread. If he’s really hungry, he’ll use everything
     and make omelettes. Otherwise, like tonight, he just drinks milk. Fish and soup for lunch, milk and eggs for