than five hundred pounds. It had to be a defective cable. In that case, you are right. Talbot is off the hook and it is the supplier of the unit and its cable that will catch the legal heat. It was installed exactly to the factory’s specifications and at least for now, the FBI is agreeing with the contractor.”
“So something weighing several hundred pounds would have had to jump all the way up and weaken the unit for our father to be unfortunate enough to be standing under it later?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would take a two hundred pound plus man jumping from the roof above and actually swinging on it to create enough friction and stress to bring the unit down. Remember it would be the weight of the individual and his added velocity landing on it to cause enough strain.”
“I think they could rule that possibility out.”
“There is one other thing they found interesting.”
“What was that?”
“They found animal fur and what might be blood on one of the higher tiers of the unit. The lab boys have bagged samples for both their lab and Junior to examine.”
Elizabeth blew that off as not being possible that an animal could have swung around on a chandelier with enough weight to bring the entire unit down on their father. It would have had to be something like an escaped gorilla to accomplish such a feat. Her mind returned to the strange phone call from Ed.
“Oh Ed called and wants to see us after lunch. He seemed to have found something strange as well. You think you can make your way through that?”
“For our father… hell yes.”
***
Tom ate a light lunch in the hope it would not be coming back up. He never viewed or been present at an autopsy. He didn’t know how he would react to actually watching one or viewing a body afterwards. Elizabeth and her brother went into her office. Tom could see several people still working on the remains of the trio. Elizabeth paged Ed and after a few moments, had his gloves off and came into the office.
“You and the others made good time.”
“We had help. The state CSI lab boys were here getting what they wanted and also preparing two other sets of evidence bags.”
“Two sets?”
“Yes we made a third set up for Junior and his father to examine. Some of the samples still appeared to be that of an animal rather than a human. Junior’s dad might shed some light on a set of samples. His father once worked at the federal level examining animal remains. Junior hated to put the dogs down. He was sure that they had nothing to do with any kind of a scenario involving an animal attack.”
“My brother and I were caught at a weak moment. We signed off on the detective’s request. Neither of us wanted to see the animals tested to the extent that they would be destroyed.”
“I’ll try to make this fast. Each of the three examining tables have video cameras mounted up above to record the entire procedure. You are also aware that we all wear microphones so that all conversations during the procedures performed are recorded.”
Tom nodded. He knew Ed had just said that statement for his benefit and his sister knew all the procedures.
“I want to show you the video from the groundskeeper autopsy.”
He turned on the video system in her office and stopped it at the beginning. Henry Barton’s headless body lay on the