They'll Call It Treason Read Free Page B

asked, getting them back on topic as Benson pushed them through the crowd of officers bustling around the scene. He wished he had brought an umbrella with him.
    “Um…” Agent Benson’s brow curled, trying to recall the name from earlier in the morning. “Lenny Hightower. He works just around the corner at The Big Easy. We talked to him a little, his story seems sound.”
    Ethan and Jason both nodded to Agent Benson, and he continued his overview of the murder scene.
    “The coroner placed the time of death at between eight and ten PM last night based on body temperature and decomposition. The murder weapon was definitely a knife.” Benson grimaced at the last few words.
    Up ahead the number of officers increased, and markers littered the ground denoting pieces of evidence. A small splatter of dried blood was visible by one of the markers.
    “This is where we believe Daniels was first attacked. At the least, it's where it got violent,” Agent Benson pointed to the blood on the sidewalk outlining the spread outward in both directions.
    Ethan nodded, observing the blood spray. “Okay, the report only mentioned the use of a knife but it did not yet state a presumed cause of death. Have you come to any idea on that yet?”
    “See for yourself. I think it is pretty clear how he died,” Benson huffed.
    A couple feet ahead the blood reappeared. This time it smeared down the sidewalk in two haphazard lines, indicating that the cuts were likely to the arms. The blood led a few more feet forward and then curved into a recess behind the coffee shop where a white steel gate hung open.
    They edged forward, following the crimson trail. Agent Benson waved them forward, “Here he is.”
    Ethan fought from stepping backward at the gruesome sight. Representative Daniels lay on his back, arched over a pair of stairs with his head hanging stiffly against his right shoulder. His mouth, caked in dried blood, sagged open awkwardly as if still screaming for help. A chalk white texture had taken over his skin, occasionally interrupted by patches of black and blue.
    His stomach and chest was hematic, coated in dark patches and smears of red. What looked to have been a crisp white button-up shirt was now scarlet red with a few remnants of white peeking around the edges. It had been reduced to tattered rags. Multiple puncture wounds spread across his upper stomach with one long gash sliced across his chest. His shirt hung open, exposing fatty layers beneath the lacerated flesh. Dried blood painted the floor around the body.
    Ethan moved closer, working to ignore the odor and squatted to get a better look. He examined the knife wounds, checking to see if there were any bullet wounds that might have been missed.
    “How many stab wounds?” Jason asked.
    “Counting the slash across his chest and the fingers missing on his left hand… We are looking at thirteen stab wounds and several lighter lacerations,” Agent Benson answered.
    To confirm, Ethan leaned to his right to view the corpse’s left hand. Only two full fingers remained, a thumb and index finger and the nubs of the missing fingers coated in dry blood. The three severed fingers lay strewn across the concrete floor a couple feet to Ethan’s right.
    “So we have thirteen stab wounds to the chest and three severed fingers.” As he made the verbal assessment, he checked the Representative’s arms for the defensive wounds he had postulated earlier from the blood smears on the sidewalk. Sure enough, they were there. “Defensive wounds from a knife on both arms, bruising to the face – from a short lived brawl, possibly.”
    Ethan stood back up and turned around, pointing to the blood on the sidewalk beyond, “As you said earlier the blood smears lead directly into this doorway, meaning he was most likely initially attacked further up the street. Then drug down the sidewalk to finish the business.”
    Jason turned to Agent Benson, “Did the killer take any valuables that you are