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Jamie entered the room furthest from reception with rain fresh on his coat. They all watched him take his seat but Bryant didn't stop speaking. The man sat opposite him was also damp, his briefcase wetting the carpet his hair sticking to his neck. His fingers sorted through the papers on the table in front of him, gentle and quick.
"Again, we're sorry to call you in like this, Dr Cullen," Agent Bryant said after Jamie had settled beside Faddin in the seat furthest from doctor. The older pathologist, Ian Reyes, sat on Faddin's left but the others were not present around the table. Despite himself, Jamie was glad of the lack of Gacek and her looming tendencies. He found it easier to level himself as he watched the doctor's white smile. "It's not a problem. I'll do anything to help."
"You preformed the fist post-mortem of the body within seven hours after death?" Bryant, like them all, flicked through the reports piled before each seat. "And you determined the cause of death to be an animal attack?"
"Yes. At the time it was the only clear and logical conclusion."
"So you hadn't been following the killings beforehand?" Reyes asked.
"I'm sorry to say that I hadn't, no. I don't do well with violence." Dr Cullen was placid. A man with an impression of endless patience. A flat stone that when skipped over a lake, would go silently and satisfyingly.
"Surely you would have heard about them, especially when they're so close to home." So he's a liar too, Jamie thought when he said it. He felt a nasty inclination of smugness, one that fit tightly around his pessimistic opinion of the flat stone man. The doctor looked at him, honey eyes gleaming in a way that Jamie found no less than vile.
"I'm sorry," Dr Cullen replied, tight but not clipped.
Something uncomfortable passed over the table. Hands smoothed down papers and fiddled with pens when it fell like a taut shadow. The doctor was the first to look away, back down to his notes. "The victim was mauled, lacerations going deep enough to damage organs. The Carotid Arteries had been severed, the left one almost being torn from the body completely." Carlisle paused, moving his mouth as if to swallow. "His wrists had been broken, and his left hand shattered. Eight of his nails were also folded back."
"He put up a fight," Bryant said. There was a note in his tone, a sombre pride that didn't seem out of place in the room.
"There was no tissue beneath his nails." Faddin turned to Reyes, who nodded in a quiet gesture. "No skin or blood. Like the others, there's not shred of DNA evidence."
"It's near impossible considering the way he was killed. They did it with their hands, wearing some sort of gloved contraption," Reyes said, leaning forward in his seat. "There should at least be traces of metal or oil, even fibres, but there are none."
